Final Fantasy Hacktics

I've been slowly tinkering and playing around some since my last post and I thought I would show off what I had been crapily attempting.
  I finished the sheet for my generic-prince sprite.

  I decided to try and finish an R999 sprite that he had demo'd.  A "new" balk sprite sheet.  It needs an actual head- but it's about 75% finished.

  Also I wanted to work on a female demon sort of thing.  unfortunately I ran into a problem I hoped someone could explain to me*.  I wanted to use the itsy-bitsy sprite as a base, slap on some f-thief legs, add some dancer arms, pin a tail on it, recolor the skin into a red and add some kind of horned head on it.

  *I manually added dancer arms to the first 5 frames and then copied the first series of arms from the dancer(type2 arms) onto the itsy-bitsy(originally a type 1 sheet).  I opened up shishi and changed the settings to type 2 and the arms were completely off.  Tried again as type 1 and it wasn't looking right.  I thought I might need to shift all the arms over a pixel's length and it still didn't match.  Might I need to moved the pairs of arms closer together to make this work?  I 'm going to do work this out, but I figured someone had this same problem before and they could enlighten me.  I think I saw this same problem on the sentinal sprite I downloaded.....

ya-whoops....

There is already a perfectly good "magic missile" spell effect in the game.  Take the behemoth's "pickaxe" give it range and a spell cast animation.  Take a look at R999's complete spell effect post.

Ya- I looked back at him after I posted and really didn't like the close arm very much and the whole thing felt like it would be pretty tough.  The fact that there are so few frames was very alluring- but with fewer things to do more exactness and detai would be required.  I think this is one of those cases where the excitement of doing something new didn't allow for an objective look at what could be done very well.

Seriously though I would love to find a way to make an excellent boss/monster out of the altima/altima2 sprite sheets.  No doubt it would be epic.  

Since i'm on the subject- and I'm looking at the emoticons- I always thought that we could use a "humping Altima" gif...... Don't act like you dont know what I mean- pull up shishi and look take a look at her animations.

Quoteok so it would be quite nice for that little boy sprite to be done.

Ya, I didn't immediatly notice that when i started playing around with that sprite.  It still needed singing, dead and one of the heads fixed, correct?

I started messing around looking at monsters in game to mess around with and was inspired by a post from way back to alter Altima2.  I think every final fantasy needs some kind of kaiser/czar dragon in it.  To make this sucker work bone appendages need to be fleshed out and I think the robe could be converted into a tail. (I f'd up the robe->tail trying tinker with it)

I wanted to add some spikes to the shoulders, but got annoyed and decided to let that wait.  The shoulders should probably be rounded where they connect to the body, and this guy needs some new feet.  The untouched tiamat head should be spiced up but I think this thing could be worked out.

Unfortunately I can't see your picture Jon.

QuoteFirst humanoid monster from the left looks awesome

Are you referring to Seushiro's ExDeath/Exodus?  He's about as complete as I probably get w/ out adding a portrait(of which 2 already exist).

At the moment I'm trying to complete my first actual human sprite(I've started and given up on a couple).  It's just a color change-head swap tweak-plus cape generic noble. the progress is below. 

Also I have been thinking it would be nice to have some kind of prince Orinas type sprite.  I am aware he's only supposed to be like 3/4.  Maybe all  that royal inbreeding could have some kind of a positive affect for once, like great magic ability..... or the size of a ten year old at age three.  That would be much better than being a hemophiliac.   

I assume he's the Samuel L. Jackson of video games-he's in EVERYTHING!

Never seen this before it's very interesting... i have no idea who or what wakka is.

No....... Not a monster, but I had wanted to make something new and fun and it was either a king or pimp so....

What do you guys think, I may have chosen a poor cape to slap onto this time mage body.  Also the colors may need to be adjusted.  Purple pants and partial purple cape seem to blend in a little. 

Don't get the wrong idea I still love monsters (especially goliath sized humanoids like the titan), but I simply can't do it from scratch.  I enlarged a human body for the dragonman, but the proportions (especially arms) don't seem right.  I have also considered combining parts of other sprites to make big human monster-sprite types like Exodus but still find myself shaking my head at how to make it work ok. (The calculator front seems like it would be a great chest piece for a big warrior.)

If you guys have any suggestions, I'm all ears....

Swordskills are such a love/hate relationship for me, and i think this community at large.  Honestly, they are fucking cool, but in vanilla are also very overpowered.  They kind of piss me off actually in this game because you see a bad-ass will be a sword skiller too often in this game.

Preferably I would have loved if more npc's weren't just uber-knights and you saw more "master" types who could originate from other jobs.  I would have been easy to have uber-monk/mage/archer(ranger)/geomancer/whatever types.

Also if these guys developed their skills from whatever knightly order they came from, I think there shouldn't have been soo many "common" holy knight types.  Maybe all the hokoten could have been "holy knight" type skills, nanten could have "divine", and the church could only have beowolf/heresy examiner "temple".  Gaf would kind of make sense having his own "evil" type. 

I gave my own ramza the same skills as Zalbag(2 in chap2 and 2 in chap4).  They are a nice add on that i don't feel are too broken in standard battles (one on ones are a different story).  I always liked how destroy sword was unique and almost felt like a stepping stone to new/better sword skills. 

Your rfg sprite reminds me of a teepo sprite I had seen floating around some time ago... I wonder what happened with that.

I like your first sprite, although the colors on the waist almost seem a little too bold for my taste. Pink is something seems to fit sometimes, but not all.

....Ya, been busy with other stuff lately and always get distracted thinking about some new sprite to make rather than actually finish. (The thrill of trying to make something new> the tedium of touch ups and fixes)

  I kept trying to find a good way to make a vampire sprite who wasn't an obvious nonhuman/monster sprite.  I spent a fair amount of time trying to find a way to blend a cape with furled wings.  Imagine you come into battle with what looks like a normal human sprite walking around, but on jump (super jump), attacking,  blocking and level up unfurled it's now obvious wings.  Kept getting frustrated... with it.

Here is a more functional, but still in need of some tweeks Esperella.  Pretty close, but not front page material yet...

Some of these seem pretty sweet and definately viable.  I'm not sure I would use too many these, but Ifrit looks awesome !
That sucker is going to have find it's way into my own game!   I imagine we will need to make portraits for these guys, but still cool.

All around good job!!!

colorless... better clothes?

...................and this is why I try not to show off my terrible portrait skills...... if skills is what it can be called.

..........ya, much work.... need to adjust some color(s) as well.

Just a silly way of saying "more".  I suppose it is some sort of a meme.

Tried to make a quick block motion with the aura hand.

Quoteshe would use that arm to cover her torso or something like that

maybe i shoult try something like that instead. 

Tweeked the front/back flying poses.  Copied the charge pose onto the level up (Why not?).  Also added claws to the back poses.  Some more minor touch ups still needed.  The upper back for the back facing poses look cruddy because there use to be hair on it (not so bad on some).

Getting closer.... 

So I decided to take a look at "esperella" today and chose to rip off the dead frames from the ultima demons.  I also tweeked the "charge" poses.  I need to tweek the capes on the flying poses, but keep putting it off because it's less fun than coming up with cool stuff for other poses.  Also feet on the back poses look more like boots than claws.  I can easily fix that but it's not a major concern at the moment.

I guess I am asking for suggestions on what to do with the blocking and level up poses.  i can't seem to get an energy shield type of thing to look how i want, and I'm not big on the aura look for the level up(although it looks sort of cool for an instant when pulled up for spells).  I'm trying to imagine something to work well for both, but also look good for casting/charging.  Now that I am thinking about it, maybe an aura hand would be good for the block...

It definately seems chaotic and messy.  The shoulder pads seem all kinds of crazy-definately all kinds of details were intended.  The "crotch" area between the robe flaps is odd looking.  The torso/belt? is a little bit confusing i'm not sure the intention...  I was definately drawn to this sprite becuase it seemed so busy and clearly a lot of work was spent on it... It seemed sad for it to go to waste.

I think I'll have to agree about your simplicity is better remark.  What's the point of details I barely notice/ don't understand what they are supposed to be?

  I may mess with the mistakes of mine I pointed out in a previous post and then leave this on the back burner for a while.  I think front/back shoulder pads and the torso belt areas are the biggest issues in my mind. 

I tested the 2 monster for a couple of battles and a couple of flaws stood out.  
     On the front Exodus has an arm looks like it sticks out/ or almost unattaches probably from the shading.

QuoteEdit:Whoa, I just noticed a big thing that will make this look weird in-game. You see the second frame from the left, in the top row? The standing one? You used a walking frame for it, and you should use normal, forward sife-view frame. Point is that this will look weird in-game, since he will use this current walking frame for his standing animation, which should never, ever happen.

I see exactly what you are saying now, that frame stood out sharply.  That shouldn't be hard to fix.

     On the Back it definately looks like one arm swings out too much to be natural at all.  I need to lower the helmet/sword for the dead pose.
     I didn't get too many good looks at the attack pose.  I suppose that I should just give it as many attacks as possible to get a good idea.  I should really get a good look at the monster animations in the wiki...  
    Also, the charge frame features both hands upraised like I would imagine someone casting a spell, but perhaps it should look like a tensed wth clinched fist image.