Final Fantasy Hacktics

Okay, so the problem that you have is that your 16 colour version is less pretty, which is true, but unfortunately you need the sprite to be 16 or less for it to show properly in shishi (and in game). So we need to make your 16 colour version look similar to your 32 colour version.

So, I did that for you, and it pretty much looks exactly the same as your original. It basically depends on what method you use to reduce the sprite to 16 colours. Here are some things you should know with sprites:

- The sprite sheet has a palette of 256 colours aligned into 16 rows where each row has 16 colour slots. For Final Fantasy Tactics sprites, the first 8 rows correspond to the sprites palette. But only one row is used for a single sprite's palette, the remaining 7 (of the first 8) are used for alternate palettes. So this means you have to only use 16 colours for the sprite.

- The portrait works in the exact same way as the sprite, however the last remaining 8 rows, i.e. rows 9 to 16, are used for the portrait palettes and alternate palettes.

- The first colour of each of the first 8 rows must be #000000, and the first colour of the last remaining rows (9 to 16) must be #a8a088. In the case you arent using those rows for alternate palettes, just leave them as #000000.

Don't be too harsh with the critiquing guys, the Halloween event was always supposed to be a fun thing to do, and if any designs lead onto a better sprite, that will be when critiques may be needed .

I hope this halloween event gets lots of people involved in the community activity, even if you don't think you are good at pixelling, we would all like to see a big turn out of entries anyway.

Also, Taichii, you are improving, well done.

Please refrain from making extra threads to promote your work, its just plain annoying, it doesn't help with advertising your things at all and I have to clean it up its why this section of the forum is messy.

You've done some good colour choices for the skin and horns/feet/hands, I'm still undecided on the saturation of the red. Its just hard to make out what his face is supposed to represent, which is most probably due to his design in Revenant wings, try and simplify it or something. The only other thing I can suggest is making the cloth between his legs to look more like fur.

Another thing, its hard to see the sprite in 100% because it is blurry? I'm not sure what happened there.

So basically JimmyJw asked me if I could help him with his portrait (see spoiler below), and I showed him the steps I do to reach my final portrait. So I decided to turn the messages I sent him into this post here as a little mini step by step process/tutorial thing for all you guys to see. Perhaps I will record myself doing something like this as well, but you will just have to put up with my accent .



In no way do you need to follow this method, this is just how I prefer to do it, so it is completely up to you but I hope this helps you all somewhat.



First I flipped your image horizontally, it is a lot easier to work when the angle of your references are the same as the angle of intended drawing. As you can see, I coloured the hair with one colour for this first part, this is a technique I use where rather than drawing in the outline of the shapes, I make the shapes of the drawing with just one colour and add more and more colours to shape it further. Haven't done much else in this part, but I can already tell that the colour limit is going to go over. Some things to consider would be making yellow just the normal skin tone colour and the grey shoulder-pad as brown.




Because I had flipped the image, the entire position of the clothing was completely incorrect, so I had to redraw in most things. One of the most important things about this edit is the use of just one colour and its affects. Also, notice the headband; although it will later be covered by hair later, it is a good idea to get the positioning of it correct first, then draw over it.




Hair! This edit I basically just shaped the hair and added the (i guess you could call it tail) back bit of the headband. And you'll notice that things are starting to come together finally, all the shapes are finally set, they make get changed later but at least we have a firm idea of what we want them to look like.




Secondary shaping, now we are starting to shape the plain first colour into something more defined and recognizable. It doesn't matter what colour you use to secondary shape, just as long as the colour is in the same palette section (i.e. light blue, use dark blue to shade). Personally, I prefer to shade with something darker than primary colour that was used, and then more on to the third colour and fourth colour (the third and fourth colour I prefer to be one shade inbetween the first and second colour and the other colour brighter than the first colour. (You may also notice that I change the red, this is changed again)




Refining. I changed the reds, and lightened the blacks to a brown everywhere on the cloak/cape. As the light source is coming mostly (I will explain why I said 'mostly' at a different time) from the top left hand corner, I started shading accordingly. Now this is the part where references are really important as you are relying on the light source but this is difficult to portray for different clothings etc. Just use all colours that you assigned yourself (4 in this case) to shape what you want.




Further refining (ran out of time for more). Changed the yellow to the skin colour, you are welcome to change it back, it just looks like the colour limit could ruin things.




The cloak and shoulder pad are done! I'm pretty sure I continue working on it a bit more in the next edit but the basics are done. I also added the other tail of the head band. Not much else to comment on.




In this edit I basically just finished off the head band and the collar. The one thing to note here is how i blended the blue and yellow and the red and yellow. I mostly relied on the browns as brown is basically the result of merging all colours together, so it works as a good medium. Also, I added a new ear, I noticed the original was a bit too small and oddly placed.




Okay, here's where the fun starts, just using the same method as I did for the cape, i drew in the shapes of what i wanted the hair to look like with a darker colour. Once again, this method of shading is completely up to you, I just prefer doing it this way.




Here, I just did a small edit to show you how I build up the hair as I go along (see next edit). You just think of what with the light source hit first, and how some bits of the hair will affect the rest of the hair. But just make sure you have tons of references up to make sure you are getting everything looking alright. This is really important. One thing I would recommend is trying to not section the hair into little hair strands at first, FFT hair style is very flat and doesn't generally have little hair strands flying all over the place. Just keep things clean and you will be good.




And the hair is now mostly finished! We just need to either refine some more things or make a highlight, and this is completely up to you.




What do you prefer? Sometimes a highlight can make things look bad, other times not. However, with the highlight, I had to remove the white of the eye as I reached the colour limit. Personally, I prefer without the highlight (the middle of the hair may need a few touch ups because I just quickly changed the highlight back to the darker blue to show you). Also I noticed I didnt get around to completely finishing off the neck xD. So I'll leave you to do that .


Anyway, hope this helps. Also final note, sometimes its better to just start in a 32x48 box straight off, rather than making a big canvas as you waste time on making unnecessary parts. BUT on the other hand, it is really really good practice.

-Blake

On top of the 16 colour thing, make sure that black is the first colour on your palette as it is the allocation of the transparency which needs to be black.

ShiruXIII, start with a sprite that looks closest to the character you want to create. In terms of hair wise, you should start with the male monk and try to add things from there. Good luck!

This one will definitely work because i have proof

Ahh I edited it correctly already, what I meant was, to make a new one, do those steps.

Okay well basically you must be over writing the wrong palette. On the evtchr editor, you can change the palette number so change it to the squire colours (i think its 5 or 6) then import over that one. The one I posted you don't need to edit, try it and see what happens. And no I don't there is a tutorial.

There. Edit the palette first, then paste the frames in the position you want.

I'm really sick, give me a break
There its all done.

What are you going to do portrait-wise?

Id prefer if you waited until Jot5 was released and all the sprites are submitted before you use any portraits for your avatar, Jon.

Yeah, the palettes dont really work, keep trying to find some of the other colours. Ice looks the best out of the new ones probably.

Quote from: ShadowSkyle on July 21, 2012, 08:16:07 pm
Also, I know we're going to need spriters, so please.

If you want spriters to work on this patch, first you are going to have to prove that progress is actually being made. One of the most annoying things is spending hours of work and it going to waste.

I was going to offer to help a while back actually until I saw Lucavi mentioned. Spriting wise, monsters they are a massive pain to make as they take much longer to make and are much harder to get the shading down for newbies.

So basically if I can see some stuff getting done, ill offer help.

Quote from: Jon on August 03, 2012, 07:13:39 pm
were eaten by ferocious wolves or something.

I wish.

Most of us are working on getting the final touches done on JoT5. If I get all my maths assignments done by tomorrow, ill finish off her boobs for you, no promises though .

I'll eat your yoghurt friend so you can wear the purple helmet dome.

Quote from: Durbs on July 17, 2012, 02:48:17 pm
Me: Anything off topic

Elric: Get back to work. >_<

Me: Anything off topic

Elric: Joins in with topic, ignoring the fact that I have plenty of work to do.

I much preferred your previous colours for the hair, the saturation was a bit less and the darker browns/black didnt blend so much (which was good). I also preferred your previous version with the black rather than the brown, as the black had a hint of blue which worked well. But in both versions, the green stands out as weird to me, i just dont think it blends with the pinky-reddy hair (main problem) or the black/brown clothes (slightly), perhaps you could experiment with other colours for sash and headband?

And yes the remaining colours you have remaining should be used to fix the light boot details. Take a look at what I did for the male berserker's boots for blending ideas.

Its looking pretty good so far though, reminds me of Faris for some reason.

Don't worry, you're half way there! There are different sprite locations for the menu and the battle sprites.

At the moment, you've changed the battle sprite, now you need to change the menu sprite. Follow this tutorial: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=6702.0

This topic has been moved to Help!.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8977.0