Credit to Ryu for the original base sprite that was awesome to start with, and Smash for a recolored version.
Current Progress:
Good looking thing. If I was ever to use this, would promptly get rid of the tree-like monsters to begin with. Flans as much more FF-like than those trees.
Well done! :)
This is great Choto, i hope someone finishes it :mrgreen:
One pose isn't really a base, but I must admit that does look pretty good. Here are a few more possible bases:
http://spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/phantombrave/sheet/5079
http://spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/phantombrave/slime.gif
http://spriters-resource.com/other_systems/crystaldefendersr1r2/sheet/33280
There's more, I'll post later.
Well it is one pose, but once its refined to a satisfactory level i'll just copy paste it into other poses... I feel like that's not an overwhelming task. Those sites will serve as a decent reference though, thanks!
I mostly posted it to get suggestions from those with a much more talented eye for art, mostly because i dont want to go making other poses and then have to refine ALL of them. If anybody else wants to take a crack at it, can't hurt to have more examples.
Here's how he looks in game:
Big Flan is big. I feel it should be smaller, myself.
I think I agree Et, Is there an easy way to do resizing in graphicsgale aside from the ol' click and drag?
Also, I tried doing a little bit of recoloring to fill the thing in with some color, while trying to retain the dark patches on the bottom a little bit... thoughts?
There was a smaller flan laying around somewhere long ago, more complete too. could have been ripped from FFTA though.
Quote from: Choto on March 12, 2012, 04:18:44 pm
Lets finish this damned thing because its an awesome start. Here is where it was left off, I think Ryu made the original and then Smash offered a refined version, so I took his and messed around with it for a bit. Couldn't come up with anything that looked better in the end, so i'm posting it here for suggestions. Credit to Ryu and Smash, this is pretty much all their work:
Tasty.
Et, there could be two versions, big and small. Remember FFXII?
Or maybe even boss sized.
Anyone know or has a vid on how this idle should look?
If you finish this you are a hero.\o/
I like the shading on it.
I think the size is good as it is; it'll look bad if you resized it so you'll have re work it entirely if you shrink it down.
Much too big...
that's all I got to say.
Nope, IMO this big sized flan looks badass. Plus it will give more place to add details to various frames, while a small frame would make it hard to put any details. Big flan, big win. I will have to make my Tortoises as big one day, too.
I completely agree with Kage about BIG flan
Attached is a small preview I made using paint's resize and copy/paste tools of two smaller flans, and one bigger. I think the second one from the right is the most appropriate for a normal flan, but the original size looks more threatening. I'm imagening two smaller flans get spawned when the bigger one is defeated myself, and so forth.
That's a pretty neat comparison Tea :P
As for right now, I'm gonna continue with it the size it is... because its easy and I wont have to worry about resizing. I added another shade slightly less than the shiny brightest shade to give it a little more dimension, seems to be working well... thoughts?
I love how happy he looks ^_^
Looks great so far!
K, I think i've settled on a coloration that is moderately complete, so on to poses!
Flan can now charge, cast, be damaged, and be critical
I'll keep a reference spritesheet up on the main post and add frames as I make them.
Any ideas for a good evade frame for a Flan? The bottom left small frame is what i was messing around with and didn't complete. I was thinking kinda like the bomb's smirk.. idk what else though. Anyway, here's the latest:
Yeah, A smirk with eyes closing would be good. Shouldn't be too hard either.
Sweet! I was just thinking that FFT could use a flan monster and then I found ur work. Super happy that you working on it. Good luck, can't wait to see this finished.
You can have the attack frame and evade frame the same- have the flan stick his tongue out! :P
Doesn't the Evade frame share it's course with the Defend frame?
Would look kind of odd, if the Flan is able to Defend, of course.
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. Keep the evade/defend ideas comin!
Now Flan can pogo stick to higher elevations! The resize kinda sucked, and i still have to see how it looks in game, but this is the only way to simulate a jump i can see.
I <3 the pogo/spring flan idea.
haha this is awesome, keep it up Choto!
10/10, but a gif or something would be the ultimate judge if it works
Thanks for the kudos guys, fortunately these are the easy frames.
Dead Flan :( This is version 1, Pride suggested a puddle which I'd like to try sometime down the road..
Use marlboro's puddle as a reference. get rid of the tentacle
Quote from: GeneralStrife on March 15, 2012, 08:16:57 pm
Use marlboro's puddle as a reference. get rid of the tentacle
But the mere fact that the Marlboro already has one kinda kills giving the Flan the same thing.
I personally think the little blue cube is great Choto :mrgreen:
I'm really liking the cube, but i'll try the puddle just for due diligence.. and using the malrboloro's puddle as a reference will definitely be helpful!
OP updated. I messed with the back-facing walking base a bit, it was giving me quite some trouble, but I think it's on its way. We're lookin pretty good with this fellas! The main obstacles are the evade/defend frame (which i have a little idea for), making the walking frames and attack frames (which shouldn't be impossible), and a portrait (which I've never done).
SO. Any portrait volunteers? You know this thing deserves a badass close-up ;)
Edit: Updated evade pose, and damaged pose. Need opinions on these 2 critical poses: the second has flan slumped over a little bit to make him look tired, out of shape, and wounded.
I like the right one better, for reasons you stated.
Quote from: Choto on March 15, 2012, 09:26:30 pm
SO. Any portrait volunteers? You know this thing deserves a badass close-up ;)
I rove fran; it's so sweet n tasty! I'll do it
(http://i.imgur.com/yfWx5.gif)
(Edit: It looks like I may need to make its mouth longer.. I'll do it tomorrow; I'm very sleepy)
Mmmm I dunno, looks weird somehow, what about the FF IX Flans as a base for a portrait?
(http://i.imgur.com/dErqv.png)
Quote from: Lijj on March 17, 2012, 07:11:41 am
(http://i.imgur.com/dErqv.png)
LOLED XDDDD
should be added in paint war XD
Definitely an interesting port. The coloring on the top of the head there makes it looks like a...hell, I don't know how to describe this. Like a 'wet rock'? It has a very solid appearance with a crumpled texture to it as opposed to looking like a chunk of living JELL-O or jelly. I wish I could put that into words better. It just doesn't look like 'goo' to me, not like how I would picture a flan. I love how the dripping bits across the mouth look, though. Eyes are good too. Just the texture on the top of the head feels wrong.
It looks like a post-apocalyptic helmet to me.
I took a final fantasy xii flan, worked some ms paint magic (I don't know how it happened) to reduce it to Ljj's colours, and this came out. I don't like the eyes, but I can't sprite.
Lijj, your version is awesome. You just need to add more angle to the eyes, and probably make the colors much brighter, since, sprite is. FFT blues all the way, Rofel should work. Edit:, by saying brighter, I mean the shading, since you do have bright colors.
Sprite should use the puddle for death frame, cube looks flat and in-game it would be even worse.
Edit again, I marked the parts that needs to be brighter, plus I lined by how much you should shorten he mouth for better angle.
Red-where mouth should end
Agua-the part that is too dark
Green- position of the eye
You need an evasion frame? Hmm. Well, maybe think of the phantom brave example:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/psx_ps2/phantombrave/sheet/5079
It bends and contorts its body frequently; maybe have it bend to the left or right like in the 7th (or so) row down?
You should use the Phantom Brave Slime as a base, indeed. Hell, this lil guy looks pretty awesome. I like the Flan sprite how it is now but it looks still a bit FFTA-like, maybe a totally different approach? And yeah that portrait is giving me the willies. :P
Edit: The Phantom Brave Werewolf looks familiar, Kage.... XD
Awesome feedback Celdia and Kage, I posted it last night late in hopes for just that. I'm glad I pulled off the wet look heheh.. but damn, I think I will have much trouble not making it look stoney. I followed your example Kage so far for the right side of the mouth and extended the other side to match the sprite more.. the eye looks better pushed up too. The dark shading I barely lightened because I'm looking at lucavi portraits here and they all have a hard shadow like that which I really like.
I had it in male chemest's portrait colors when I made it but at the last moment before posting tweaked it because it looked too violet. I will open up Rofel now and play with the palette.
I like the other port too in general just the pixels need refining.. I'll finish up here and attempt to lessen the rockiness and just leave it up here as one option of hopefully more to come.
Edit: Oh and Jon I'll put the gun away now I was just tired and delirious lol
Edit2: I smoothed out the stoniness as much as I could bear and used Rofel's colors (much better in those colors.. what the hell was I on?[tradesman's secret]O:) I am happy with it so here's my option Choto:
(http://i.imgur.com/Z5pIe.gif)
Lijj you're the man! That's a load off my back...
Kage: I'll try making a puddle one more time, the first time was quite underwhelming.. otherwise I'll try to throw the cube in game and see how flat it looks. I feel like the cube adds a little more character flavor than the puddle. Hopefully i'll get some time in on it tomorrow.
The problem with bending for the evasion frame is that it shares with the defend frame. That's why i was leaning towards the "bomb smirk" concept. We'll see what happens though.
Well Lijj asked me to post my rework attempt so here goes. ;o
(http://xifanie.ffhacktics.com/temp/flan_rework_attempt_major_fail.png)
How about something like this for evading/defending?
(http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/3/37/GreenCell.png)
Here's an update of the small one based on Xifanie's edit:
Wait a minute...
Don't Flans have teeth? Portrait would be better with sharp teeth.
Many have bone teeth, many other have goo teeth, and others have no teeth at all.
Edit: Choto's sprite seems to have gooey teeth. It would indeed better if they matched.
The original design only had goo, no teeth... so i went forward with that. I think the portrait looks great without teeth. I would like it to reflect the sprites "feverish yet happy hunger" look a little more, but not all portraits look just like the sprite anyway.
I was thinking of something like that for the evade frame Et... like a shield or circular wall of goo held up in front of his face... i'll try it down the line but i think it'll be challenging.
Here's a little group of backwards facing frames. They're a little rough as of yet in terms of coloring, but i plan on going back through all the frames and cleaning them once they're all made and before submission. I was having a little trouble with the eyes on these.. much tougher than front-facing.
Also, here's an in-game shot of the cube.. What do you think Kage? The brightest colors are actually dimmed more than I expected in game... maybe I could throw in a little more shine on it.
Edit: Just tried the jumping frame in game, and it works like a charm \o/. Looks a little awkward falling down, but it fits perfectly with the jumping sound
I didn't see the things in Flan's mouth on this sprite as teeth but as webs of viscous saliva.
Choto, looking at the screenshot I think the flan's frames are about 3 pixels too high up on the sheet.
yeah... i just threw the sprite sheet in haphazardly to see how it looks in game really... i'll straighten them up once i do the walking frames since it'll be important then :P thanks though!
Quote from: Choto on March 18, 2012, 02:45:42 pm
Also, here's an in-game shot of the cube..
I, for one, welcome our new polyhedral overlords.
(Oh, hey. I wondering earlier this week what had happened to the Flan sprite since I kinda need one. What a coincidence....)
Great work with the spring/coil idea for the jumping action. I honestly didn't think about something as simple as that, though I suppose it doesn't help that I've been able to play any version of the game for more than a year....
Anyway, I rather like the cube "death" despite the fact that I was also leaning towards the puddle sprite ala Malboros for that was mentioned earlier. I guess I'm feeling the geometry of it, which is rather ironic.
Aside from that, yeah, the "teeth" of the flan are pretty much always just either saliva or goo. I can't remember ever seeing any version of Flan with actual calcium-based teeth and I've been doing a fair bit of research on them in the past couple of weeks.
I'd go with the historic "I have a mantle" dodge for Flan that Eternal posted rather than a tongue or the seemingly extreme dodge of that Phantom Brave example. I'd also go with the slumping over for Critical state since the first instance is way too subtle.
However, those are just my preferences (for Embargo), especially since I planned to try my hand at Flan if need be considering it seemed like the easiest sprite between it, Cactuars/Cactoids and other things....
Good luck with this. I'll try to "help" (read: nag the hell out of you).
I am still more up for a puddle, cube is just isn't working for me. But it's my personal preference, so if you guys like it soo much, it should stay.
(Oh, hey. My Internet's still up...for now.)
Meh. I'd be up for seeing for how the puddle looks and I also imagine that puddle would be really easy to do (relatively speaking) given the Malboro reference. I was just saying that cube turned out better than I expected in-game, is all. (At least, it does from the angle in picture, though I can't imagine it would change much given its cubic nature.)
I just love how silly a floating cube is as the last remains of a blob of goo of undefined form that goos it's way where it wants to go. Also, nothing like it is in the game yet, which means a nice change of all those "iconic body part" monsters.
Cube and puddle are both totally fine but what about the "run over" dead frames you can see in FFTA? Outta the question?
He is but a mere pool of his former self :(
Quote from: GeneralStrife on March 19, 2012, 04:22:17 pm
He is but a mere pool of his former self :(
I'm horrible when it comes to spriting, but that puddle seems to have way to few colors for how the Flan normally looks, or maybe they are just oddly placed in the puddle, i dunno, but something about it doesn't look right.
Yeah its not the same color as the flan in this thread. And it looks weird because I got rid of marlboro tentacles hastily.
Even though Twinees attends Uni, he still managed to do an amazing alternate version of Flan, and sent it to me. I don't think reworking the current progress you have, Choto is a good idea, I just wanted to share the epic version Twinees did.
(http://i43.tinypic.com/kc1glw.png)
In the other news, the shading you had on back frames bothered me, cause it looked like it was made of squares laying on each other, so I tried to make it more slimy and round. Here is how it came out. I used damage frame for fixes, but I bet you can do the same on other frames too.
just a suggestion for defending.. how bout copy one of the shields from WEP 1 sheet and make it flan like :D
That's a nice idea-Taichii. There is a lot of good progress on this thing, and to think it all started as a single frame!
Quote from: Kagebunji on March 20, 2012, 07:47:35 am
In the other news, the shading you had on back frames bothered me, cause it looked like it was made of squares laying on each other, so I tried to make it more slimy and round. Here is how it came out. I used damage frame for fixes, but I bet you can do the same on other frames too.
Ahh yes! Thank you Kage, this is immensely helpful. I thought they looked a bit wierd but didn't know how exactly to go about fixing them. I'll apply this same style to the rest. TwinHulk actually sent me a similar-looking alternate flan design... is that really Twinees and i didn't realize it? I was thinking it would be cool to use that one as a boss-flan type thing.
As for that idea, I know SecondAdvent has been messing around with graphics data pretty extensively. If we could make that sprite bigger with the graphics data and make the squares adjacent to it unwalkable somehow... we'd effectively have giant multi-panel boss sprites :) However i'm sure it'd take some work making that all function correctly with targeting/movement/jumping... Maybe someday
Yes, TwinHulk is Twinees, heh. If Second could do that, then this would really be great deal of fun. I already imagine Tortoises....
I took a shot at recoloring the front and back frames. I like this one alot more than the old one. I used the "shine" color a little more generously because the game really dims it once its in there. There seems to be some different concepts of a Flan bouncing around. I envisioned this one to be more of a gelatinous constitution rather than a slimy one. I know it kind of clashes with the gooey teeth/saliva idea, but I think i could design it that way and not have it be a noticeable problem. For these reasons Kage, I took away the bottom shiny layer and tried to make it a bit less square, while keeping more of a firm gelatin look.
I also tried applying a style more like twins, but it didn't look too fitting.. at least the way i did it. I didn't really appreciate how awesome that thing is till i tried that either.. the thing is colored damn well.
also, Taichi i may try that, but i'll probably procrastinate that frame till the very end lol
Anyways, what do ya'll think?
Looks good.. I think this is darkening only because of the stage it was being tested in? I could be wrong but I think that is all. Were you testing in Aruguay or Sweegy woods? Certain stages darken everything and depending on the weather darken more etc.
That casting frame makes him look unsettlingly happy.
Casting frame looks like he's about to be fed some meat or something. Not bad not bad...
Posting for opinions.. The other FFT Monsters are a bit fuller with color so i tried to give Flan some more color.. no t sure what i think about them though.
I noticed something, not too important but details are details, the red around the golden eyes is only one color, maybe mix in that lighter red that you see in the open mouth to give the eyes depth? Like I see you have 2 colors for the eyes themselves, maybe 2 reds to surround them?
Yeah, the old eyes were better. if you really like the red around the yellow pupils add another shade. but im loving the body even more now.
well this is the casting frame, and i made his eyes darken while he casts hoping it would give it a bit of a dynamic. It is a bit flat though.. Once I finalize the body colors i'll try to consolidate colors and organize the palette. I'm just hoping that it doesn't look out of place next to FFT monsters because if the non-uniformity of color. Transparency is kinda hard to pull off lol.
Hmm, that's an interesting point about transparency. I think in Photoshop you can make like somewhat transparent colors (here a bluish hue) and I wonder if it would work in game. Kinda like a bluish transparent (as in the status effect). Maybe that would make the Flan too see through though...
I would have to pick the bottom right.. I think it was either the bottom left or right before but after consideration.. I like the bottom right option most.
Hokay, spritesheet updated with a full set of recolored sprites for those frames that I've done so far. Now i have to choose one of the hard things to tackle, walking frames, evade frames, or attack frames. I'm still in the process of recoloring the cube too, i don't want to mess with it too much and mess it up. I'll post the spritesheet here for convenience.
Any ideas for the walking frames? The obvious choices are.... having him opening and closing his mouth.. which may not be enough movement. Or, having his "base" shift around a bit to make it look like he's moving around. Or both. What else could we do though?
\o/ Gotta love that sexy Flan.
Glad to see how well this is coming together. Cannot wait to see what you do for the attacking frames!
(Let me continue my futile efforts to "help" for non-altruistic reasons.)
When it comes to movement, I'd still personally say that modeling after the Morbol/Malboro seems like the good thing to do. As such, the mouth opening and closing seems like the way to go, especially if accompanied with a "subtle" sliding effect as it moved. If it's one or the other thing ultimately, then I'd say to focus on the mouth since that's way more noticeable and thus menacing.
This is gonna be one for the record books. I think a tongue attack would be awesome, like the FFTA flan.
(Ugh, FFT:A. I know it seems hypocritical to dislike it still with all the stuff I'm lifting from it, but....)
I know the whole spriting thing is difficult as it is, so this is perhaps unreasonable to ask, but if you do the whole tongue thing, then could you please make it optional, Choto? Some of us don't want something noticeably cartoon-y on the flan or for them to even have tongues, really.
Of course, just like with the cube, I may eat my words when it comes to the final product given your work thus far. However, in this instance, I doubt it.
hehe sorry GS but the french kiss attack just ain't my style.. in my eyes that's on par with uribo's fart attack.
Thanks for the feedback TheDamned, its actually quite helpful. I'll use the marlboro as a reference for walking frames and see how it comes out. Some things are worth trying to see what happens even if it doesn't wind up being the be-all end-all.
For the walking frame, you can use, besides the mouth motion already suggested, those blueish spots on his basis as if they were pseudopodia, a slight sort of movement similar to that one you see when a caterpillar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sqja5yHrtg&feature=related)moves, where the blueish hues will be 'pushing' each other in order to prompt the flan forwards. Dunno if I could explain that fairly...the gif below is only to try showing more or less what I'm talking about (it's crude, I know). Adding a little inclination as the effort to pull itself from place to place and the mouth motion, that should go ok.
As for the attack, there's the FF XII's flan (0:44) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS_9hcbrHNQ)attack which is called slap. It sort of can inspire you, perhaps.
I never saw those flans in FF12 (then again i never really played FF12) I always thought the flans in Phantom Brave (? maybe it was Makai Kingdom) Had a pretty good attack, with the whole turning into a fist and punching the enemy then turning back :P. Tho fitting that into the 7 Frames used for an attack might be kinda tricky.
Yes.
I was thinking on an easier motion, subtle yet nice. Given that in FF IX or X flans don't attack, FF XII ones are the most fit in my point of view as I can recall, but of course, flans can also have a breath like attack, magical gaze, or so the mind inspires one to make them do. ;)
Interesting ideas... I will surely consider these when i get to developing concepts for moving/attacking. Keep the ideas coming!
I may be biased from my martial arts backround :P, but my first attempt will probably be making a big flan fist and blasting the opponent with it. Although i'll probably try walking frames before attacking frames.
Quote from: Choto on March 31, 2012, 01:32:28 am
Interesting ideas... I will surely consider these when i get to developing concepts for moving/attacking. Keep the ideas coming!
I may be biased from my martial arts backround :P, but my first attempt will probably be making a big flan fist and blasting the opponent with it. Although i'll probably try walking frames before attacking frames.
Haha that's a lot like what i was suggesting, of course it is completely possible to give the Flan a SP2 with a secondary attack set :P
Ambitious, I like it. I figured the french kiss attack would be easier since theres a reference but this sounds better.
Alrighty, time to get back on this horse. I've been battling feverishly with attack animation ideas. This is what came from first trying to draw a fist, then trying to draw a shield... then realizing the shield looks like a mouth with something about to burst out of it... then slapping things together... thoughts? Don't mind the coloring as its just concept atm
Hahahahaha nice work Choto!
I would suggest using some Zodiac beast fist as reference(Belias, Hashmal etc.), or even Steel Giant and recolor it to blue, probably would be cleanest and resemble fist more. Secondly, I doubt you have enough colors since of all the highlights added, but red fist would be hillarious and heh. Last, erase the outline on his eye on 2nd, 3rd, 4th frames, our left side.
Quote from: Kagebunji on July 02, 2012, 01:48:54 pm
Secondly, I doubt you have enough colors since of all the highlights added, but red fist would be hillarious
What if he did the eye in red tones and then used that for the fist as well?
Having a bit of trouble putting some definition into the outstretched arm, but here's a little cleaner version
Quote from: Kagebunji on July 02, 2012, 01:48:54 pm
Secondly, I doubt you have enough colors since of all the highlights added, but red fist would be hillarious and heh.
For your amusement:
(also please post any opinions about it, I think i should not make him pucker his lips in the 4th frame... kinda makes it look strange.)
Flan walk v.1
Fist itself looks nice, I just would complain about how flat the arm is, maybe add some highlight, or use some references for an idea of how to shade/shape it. Walking looks good, got nothing to it, dripping is nice, heh.
Great! I like the way this is turning out. The walk is looking good.
As hard as this has probably been for you, I have no important crits. It's pretty solid.
Tried to recolor it to make it resemble Twin's flan a bit more to get a little more definition, i think i'm liking it better.
Very nice! The 3rd one (or bottom most one) looks so cool, like it knows it is the best monster or something. Pretty sweet, keep it up! :mrgreen:
Yep, you went the right way with it, Choto.
Small update with the new style. Not sure if i'm gonna keep the attacking frames or try something else. Still looking for a good defending/evading pose.
Defending pose could be it turning into a wall of some kind. Evading pose could be it going flat to the ground like a puddle or something.
I like the fist concept for the attacking frames. I'd need to see how it looks in-game because some of them seem questionable on the sheet itself. Could you use the Sprite Animator to toss up some GIFs of the forward attack animations?
I haven't been able to get the normal attacking animation out of sprite animator yet.. its different from monster to monster. I have to update them yet though. You can get the basic idea though
Took Eternals advice on using that FF4 flan as a base... This is for defending and evading as they share the frame:
Getting so close!
K, Here's an full updated spritesheet. I'm totally excited about it being aaaaalmost done. Also included some gif's just for fun. I plan on going through each frame and checking the recoloring, once it passes quality control checks I'll submit it. I also have to check how it behaves in-game. I'm not totally confident the frames are in the correct spot.
Edit: fixed the .gif's. If anybody has trouble getting the animator to output the correct frames, try erasing all files that start with "sp-anim" in the sprite animator folder before exporting.
I love the evade animation, Choto. Totally makes me think of the FF4 ones looking like that. What's left to finish on it?
This is going to be badass
Really nice animations there, Choto! Keep it up!
Just my cents, I think the portrait that Lijj? made is over-texturized compared to the sprite, if you know what I mean. It doesn't suit the sprite you made, and it looks like it's made from a metal material rather than a translucent one, if you'd ask me.
So nice to see a full monster sheet. This is going to be badass- I agree.
I also agree about the portrait. It was made for the darker version and was even then dark.
The shading on this looks really good though.
Testing
Yet another monster to add into a Tactics patch. When I make mine, I'm making a Type A with the original special characters, Type B with brand-new ones, and then both types get a different set of monsters. The Flans will be in the Version 2.
updated with tentative palettes. Seems a little saturated, but they look neat ^_^ I tried to make them element-based... water thunder fire ice
Yeah, they are way too saturated. Use Bomb palettes as reference, it will make stuff easier.
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.
(What the other two said? Also, why is the Lightning one green?)
That said, as Twinees just said, Ice does look the best.
Good work and thanks for sticking with this. I look forward to pilfering it for Embargo far sooner than I imagined.
Not to continue backseat-spriting, especially when I've never done any spriting, but I "have" to ask in light of the green palette: What are you looking at for the coloration of these?
You mentioned using FFIV as a base for certain aspects due to Eternal's advice. Have you looked at the coloration of any other Flans (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Flan)? I ask--perhaps condescendingly--given that while green has occurred, it's been more a paler green. Also, yellow, black and white are overall more common.
Whatever you do, please don't do two blues.
haha, I certainly appreciate your interest TheDamned... These palettes are just me messing around to finalize a couple different iterations of the sprite. I wanted to stick with the elemental theme because I think its the most fitting for the classic Flan design to be a physically resistant magic user, and green seemed to suit lightning. I guess yellow would do just as well, and i'll try to include one when I de-saturate these palettes. as for black and white.... i just don't feel like a dark or holy based flan would be fitting, but you are free to create these palettes if you want to :P
Next pass, i'll try to make the existing colors fit better, which may result in paler colors
(Yeah, paler in this instance is probably better for most colors.)
Oh, I can completely understand wanting to stick with an elemental theme, which is part of the reason I eventually decided on using Flans for Embargo before there was even the possibility of sprites for them; yellow or even purple are far more associated with Lightning element than green, though, which I don't think ever has been. Similarly, I can understand not wanting to do a black or white coloration: I honestly don't think black would work out and white would evoke too many immature male-effluvia jokes; a deep purple might work in lieu of black, though....
Regardless, I meant what I've said about appreciating this. Outside of feeling iffy about the "mouth-fist" normal attack animation, this seems to have come along quite well. I'm glad that you stuck with given how easy it is for things to go incomplete around here; real life takes priority after all. I've been watching this for a while obviously, but only figured I'd comment again now given the coloration issue and my curiosity with the origins of its inspiration.
palettes.bmp = before
palettes2.bmp = after
I like it more, though I surely couldn't tell That the second palette is a Lightning flan, looks more like an Earth version, which is kinda awesome too. Overall they are well desaturated, I like it.
Fire flan look a 'lil earthy to me as well. Prolly lower the hue value by 10 or so. The Lightning flan, as said by Kage, doesn't seem to represent Lightning at all. It's more like a Wind flan. The Ice flan is good.
(I have to agree with the others still that Green doesn't suit the "Lightning" one. It would work better for Wind or even Earth.)
That said, I concur with MiKeMiTchi the Fiery red one is now looking a bit too ruddy and brown-looking in its paler form. That one could easily pass for an Earth elemental flan--Coco Pudding?--as well now, which is actually more problematic than the Lightning one not being yellow (or purple) given that it started out as red....
Maybe trying going brighter for that one? (And a/the yellow one if you do it?) A non-blue eye color for the red one might help a bit. It's difficult to tell, especially with my lack of sprite work.
Otherwise, I agree with the others in that the others look better, particularly the already good looking Ice flan. Good job.
If you want Thunder, go for yellow. That's what FFTA/A2 and a few other FFs do.
You can rip the palettes straight from the existing Dragons from Vanilla. I tried them out myself and they looked almost perfect. Yellow, green, purple, whatever you want.
Thanks Mav, i'm gonna try that out... probly do a yellow one for lightning I guess. maybe brown for earth just to finish it off lol.
Was messin around with doing a sprite the size of the bigger werewolf in phantom brave