Final Fantasy Hacktics

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.

crap! I'll mess with this and give it a spin tonight.  Now that you mention it, I might not have put the back walking frames in the correct order (doh!)

I haven't tried it out yet.  I am pretty sure that some of the frames don't sync up yet(like walking might look jumpy)  I tend to like to leave the box frames on the sprite sheet until completion for easy reference..
  Also, I know that atleast two portraits already exist   i believe it was Mike Mitchi(sp?) they looked good from what I remember.

Here's what I've got for now.  The last back attack frame doesn't look very good, but I wanted it to match the front one... Dead poses are straight copy paste from the original.

QuoteI'm sorry, but I'm preferring the original Critical pose over trying the sword-lean thing.

LOL- I decided the same!  I tried to stretch out the abdomen a little bit and add like an extra pixel width to the back pose as well(to even it out to my own eye).  I never got very far with FFV so I have no idea if a tree of some sort would work as a dead pose or not(or whether I could pull it off).  I may just have to go with a traditional dead pose (shrug) oh well...  

Exodus is coming along pretty fast I can tell that making dead poses will be annoying, but whatever....  Basically I am down to attack poses, dead and critical poses.  I have to say that the critical poses looked smashed and didn't seem worth tweeking.  I am trying out some different ones.  The original is the first picture.

do you think I should finish it in a monster type or lucavi?  I think the only differnce is a "charge" pose verses a dead one.