Final Fantasy Hacktics

Hmm, zoomed out this Cactuar looks better, but when you look at it in standard game size, it's still a mess. My suggestion is to leave off the lines right now: get the shading down using his lighter shades. You need to give him depth. Look at this Cactuar:

Imitate the gradient, the subtle use of light shades, the thinness of the lines, etc. Good luck.

Oh Cactaur is so fucking cute!!! I'm wondering how you'll put a 2 frame animation into 5. You might have to change the way it runs a little. I see it's a challenge to get the stripy textures if you can afford it lighten or darken some of it to achieve more depth.

The animation should be easy enough.  Just copy-paste the two frames to alternate through the five.

Thanks Mav, you gave me a good idea how to do this right. Also, I was thinking the cactuar needs 1 frame just like Mav's post up there, one where he is moving his arms and legs which I would use twice, 1 frame for his back, 1 frame of back movement, 1 frame for near dead and 1 frame for dead. Thats a total of 6 frames. Maybe this is too few because he might need a "spell casting/skills" frame, but overall once I get just 1 frame perfectly right, this will be easy peasy. Thanks everyone for giving me critiques, I really really need them

Edit: I know already that Kage and Mav will say use existing pallettes, but none of the colors I want exist, so forget it, I'm using cactuar colors! Also, I decided to first get the frame right, so here it is, lemme know what I should fix.

    edit2:

Bear with me, I know its tiny, but if you take Mav's post and shrink it to FFT size with a horizontal flip, it actually makes a very nice frame.

Cactuar colors? Nah, use Thief's colors, and if you will need one more, do it yourself basing on Thief's green values, it will work. Overall I wonder, why do you do forward facing frame? You should do forward side view frame instead, what I mean is, the angle is wrong. I remember Lydyn tried doing Cactuar some time ago, search for that topic, it should be easy to find. His Cactuar was a lot smaller, but the angle was a spot-on. Anyway, good luck with this, every sprite that is not a human is a pain :/(my net sucks, I can hardly write here anything, expect less activity from me)

Here is a decent finished 1st pose:



@Kage: Yeah, I saw Lyndn's cactuar, was really ugly. Who says it has to be at 45°? I have never seen a cactuar at 45° to begin with, they always fight side to side like them old Mario games, only left right, front back. I could do a side view one, but that I believe would ruin the essence of the cactuar.

Mhm, it was ugly, but angle was perfect. Runing the essence or not, this is FFT, side-view is required, IMO it will look even better at side-view. Looks good nenotheless. I wish I could post my monsters

Looks okay zoomed out, but the zoomed in version is such a mess. I think you're in the right direction now though. The sprite just needs to be combed over once or twice to reduce pixelization. Keep at it.

I'm liking that an attempt is being made, that is for sure. Like mav said it definitely needs some cleaning up. I would think that there would be at least two shades of black for the eyes and mouth.

His right (our left) knee looks a bit skinny compared to the left (our right) one. Also his right arm is a bit chubbier than the other. Cheetah, I definetly agree with you on the 2 shades of black, but a small problem is that this is 15 colors already plus the white background, which later will be changed black on the final spritesheet...maybe I can change 2 greens around or something. Honestly, the zoomed out version is all that is important in the end, right? I could be wrong, but isn't it best to see the sprites always at the size that they will be in game? I apologize if this offends anybody. Ah, I just noticed that also the rightest (our right) needle on his head seems a bit off, gotta change that. Okay, I'll keep choppin away!

(This should go on sprite request, oh well)- Is anyone interested in doing a portrait of the cactuar for me? I think we all know by now how much I suck at portraits, so if anyones willing, much appreciation!

Edited cactuar:



Notice his arms and legs are the same size to each other and the needles have been fixed. Now there are 2 blacks thanks to GraphicsGale. Question: should I get rid of the needles? The cactuar looks good without them and they are only 1 pixel in diameter...

The needles currently do not look good, but they are iconic...

The mouth is obviously zigzagging.  Try a middle-ground color between the black and the green in the jagged areas.

Okay, will do. Thanks for the tip Silvas!

New Dark Knight Ramza I did for fun:

if you're going for cecil colored armor, you might as well go all out and make the boots and gauntlets match in color, then perhaps add that little patch of red and yellow that he had in the ff4 battle sprite lol

I'm pretty sure all he did for color was make the helm he added the same color as the armor.  I can't say I ever cared much for that armor design in the first place.  It doesn't have the depth and sharpness of detail of other armors in the game.

FF4 Cecil, yeah I didn't think of that, I was just doing what Silvas said, equipping Ramza with Gafgarion's helmet, but making a Cecil sounds more fun, so yeah, I'll recolor him like Cecil. There are 2 overworld DK Cecils, one on the SNES which was a bluish color and the remake on GBA that was purple. When I first saw Ramza in the chapter 2 armor, I thought cool, it has spikes on the shoulders. The armor could be better, but those jagged sharp pieces of death potruding out of his shoulders are pretty awesome imo. As for the color of the armor, I'll do both, but first things first, gotta finish the cactuar. I know what you mean btw with the little patches of yellow and red, I'll try to figure that stuff out after the coloring though, Zozma. As for the cactuar, I need still to do what Mav said, get rid of the pixelization. I think that means to change all the dark pixels that appear anywhere that should be hit by the sun, not sure to be honest, but I definitely see things that are off kilter with it. Alright, back to work for me, more stuff on the way.

@Kage: Yeah, post some monsters! People practically only do humans or humanoid like characters, I barely see any monsters up on here. Monsters!! Mwhahaha! Besides that, FFT is missing some of the "essential" monsters, like the Flan family, Moogles (which technically is a summon, and also you're doing one...), Pheonix (which I tried), Wolves (from FF1 and many others, guess they figured panthers were more cool or some such nonsense), Sahagins (I think that's how its spelled, I mean the water creatures), 4 Fiends which are Lich (technically represented as a summon), Marilith, Kraken and Tiamat (which in FFT isn't good enough, Tiamat is a giant greenish dragon with like more than 3 heads), Minataur, Zombies, Hedgehog Pies (the thing Frog Cid has to get past in FF9), a portrait for the "Frog" status effect (so people can make frog enemies), Antlion, Adamantoise, a Gargoyle would be cool, a regular Lilith, maybe a alligator/crocodile for the lack of water beasts, Bats (I mean there is a difference between a normal bat and an Ahriman, every FF game has bats...), Calcabrina and other evil dolls, Medusa, Chimera (which was very popular to my FF9 characters every time he venomed them >_>), Ryu type dragons, Giant Soldiers and Iron Giants (I think someone was working on something like that), Octapus enemies, Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, and Rubicante, a Demon Wall (like in FF4 and FF7), oh man the list goes on and on. See, we need more monsters! Haha!

Sahagens could be done maybe using goblins as a base perhaps.. It'd be great to see

Huh.  Goblins as a base wouldn't be immediately obvious choice, but it does make sense.  The posture would fit well enough.  It would take a lot of custom work, for sure, but that's probably the case no matter what base is used.

Well I was working on a monster called Zombie Dog, I dunno why I left it unfinished. Yeah, moogle will be right after I finish my current work.

Had I time.. 4 fiends from FF4 would be a dream.