New Style: Progress and Preview (Patreon)

Note: This is a long post with lots of images, but there are no new assets for download at the end. If you're just here for downloads, you can skip this one. But if you are interested in the ongoing development of the next big release, then I would appreciate your feedback.

Here we go:

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I've talked a lot about the upcoming next project. It will be a new style that improves on Time Fantasy by expanding the flexibility of the assets, while addressing some of Time Fantasy's problems. I've improved a lot in the 5+ years since the first TF pack was released, and I want to build something that can be held to a higher standard.

At the same time, Time Fantasy has grown in popularity way beyond my expectations. The original release was intended to be a RPGMaker pack. Since then, more and more people have found these assets and I've expanded the scope of these releases. I want to create a new set that is designed from the start to accommodate other uses: more engines, more genres.

The new project can be considered in two parts: characters and tilesets. I'll be developing them both simultaneously, to ensure that the style remains consistent and everything fits nicely (also switching between working on characters and  working on tiles will prevent burnout from over-focusing on a single thing).

The tilesets will mostly be based on the existing Time Fantasy tilesets- since we're continuing to use the same 16x16 base size, the tiles don't necessarily need to be recreated from scratch: instead it will be a major remaster with updated colors and organization, likely only needing to re-draw some pieces from the oldest sets.

The characters on the other hand will make use of a new style and character base. I've mentioned in the past that one of the goals of a new character set is to provide additional action animations that go beyond the RPGMaker-style Time Fantasy sprites. Today's post is about the development of that character style.

Now that the Steampunk and the Faery Forest expansions are finished, it's finally time to forge onwards with serious development of this new set.

So this is what I've been working on:

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First off, I want to clearly identify the problems with the original Time Fantasy character base. I will use these identified problems to create concrete goals upon which to build the new character style.

Problem #1- Awkward size: the tilesize base is 16x16, but the Time Fantasy character base is 17 pixels wide. This is very very weird, and can potentially cause some issues with overlapping tiles. 

Not only is it a problem that the default base goes beyond the tilewidth, but even reaching that width creates a limitation on designing characters. Imagine a character variation that is bulky, or has some sort of wide outlandish outfit-- these are impossible to create without going beyond the width of the tileset, which would lead (again) to overlapping issues.

The width being an odd-number of pixels also makes it impossible to cleanly center the sprite on a tile:

Part of the size issue was fixed in the recent female base variation, in which I made sure that the width was less than a full tile. But in order to have consistency with the original sprite, I kept the odd-numbered width, which is illustrated above.

Goal: Therefore, the new sprite style needs to fit more naturally within the 16x16 tilewidth, leaving enough room for flexibility in character design.

Problem #2-  Color Palette: The original color palette of the Time Fantasy graphics is incredibly difficult to work with. The colors were created with a de-saturated aesthetic that was popular at the time, but even within that aesthetic the palette is awkwardly limiting.

While the original color palette was never a fixed palette, it was limited by its darkest and lightest colors, forcing the rest of the colors to fit within a relatively narrow range of contrast.

Notably, the darkest color was too light. This problem became quickly apparent to me when I tried to use the same palette to develop tilesets and locations with a darker tone. As a result, these areas ended up looking... weird.

Goal: A wider range of colors is necessary to allow enough contrast for variety in design and tones.

Note: In the past, it was recommended to avoid using pure black (#000) or pure white (#FFF) in pixel art. As most technological limitations are behind us now, this isn't necessary except for artistic reasons. I've made the choice to use pure-black and pure-white going forward: specifically because I am creating assets for general use by developers. Allowing the full range will make it significantly easier for non-artists to modify colors without worrying about clashing palettes.

Problem #3-  Lack of Structural Clarity: The original Time Fantasy sprites were designed with one use in mind: classic walking sprites in the RPGMaker style. As a result, a number of unforeseen limitations arose when used in other contexts.

The shadow is a notable example of this. The built-in shadow has potential to cause a lot of problems, especially if the sprites are used in some sort of system that creates lighting or shadows, or shader effects applied to characters. Even without that, the fixed shadow makes it more difficult to build on the base, as it can be confusing where the feet end and the shadow begins (this problem is magnified by the aforementioned problems with the color palette's weak 'black').

Another weird structural problem (though more subtle) is in the general proportions and limb definitions. It's hard to put this into words-- but this issue stems mostly from the awkward head and shoulders, which are scrunched together because the original style wasn't good at balancing the inconsistency of the RPG perspective (also the hands are unnecessarily huge, which looks OK from some angles but bad in others). 

Because of these problems I've had some difficulty in creating additional animations for the base, and I imagine that those problems would be amplified for anybody else trying to work with it. When I have made extra animations in the past, I've usually resorted to "breaking" the base and using fresh proportions.

To put it simply: the base could be a lot cleaner.

These structural problems also make it difficult to layer modular pieces on top of the base. In other words-- each character that I've made has been individually designed and animated. This approach makes sense for unique characters for RPGMaker, but there is clear interest in character generation, or effects like in-game visual equipment. The existing TF base was never originally designed to play nice with modular pieces.

Goal: A clean and readable character base that allows for a variety of animations. Design for modular sprite creation: clear definition of body segments. The shadow must be a separate image.

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OKAY, now we've clearly identified how we need to improve on the original Time Fantasy character base. It's time to get to work...

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Step One: Inspiration and reference. I know that I want to evoke a certain style: we're looking at the JRPGs of the 90s, specifically a few key games from the Super Nintendo.

 Here's a collection of sprites that I pulled together for reference (the sprites in the pink background were made by me; including some Time Fantasy examples).

Notably, this image also has some sprites in the style of the classic RPGMaker2000 RTP (these ones appear to be edits of the RTP, I just pulled them off of google). The RM2K sprites aren't as artistically impressive as the Final Fantasy or Rudras sprites, but they have a hard-to-define quality to them that I find appealing and would like to capture. They are also much friendlier to use in character generators.

With these ideas in mind, I revisited previous sprite styles that I've made, see if I can find a good alternative or at least something to build on.

In addition to the original Time Fantasy base (on the blue tiles), there are three character bases that I have here worth looking at.

The first one (top-right) was a base that I developed for Exodus, a short game I made for a jam with a pal. I like the vibe, but it's the same basic size as the TF sprite, which we have seen before causes problems. It's not particularly useful for our purposes, but it's an interesting reference as it looks like an alternate take on the TF style. The colors are weird for some reason-- I think that they got messed up somewhere as this was pasted across multiple documents.

The fourth one (the lonely guy in the bottom-right) we'll return to later.

The weird-pasted-color problem happens again in the third base (bottom-left), but that's OK because what I'm looking at here is the general size and style. This base is a bit out-dated, because the sprites associated with it were developed without it. I remember making the hero sprite first and then back-tracing this base from him. And then, going forward with this project, the sprites were all edits of each other, rather than building directly on the actual base.

This style is one that I've worked a lot with, because I developed it for a personal RPG project. You can see some of the sprites here:

The hero has a bunch of animations, too. I used this character to play with layering different weapons. Here's how it looks (prototype in Game Maker Studio):

The animation itself is empty-handed (without the weapon overlay, it looks like he just punches forward). Ideally, we can use the one animation and imply motion with the weapon: this way we can use the same character motion for a sword swing and a straight spear, for example.

He has jump animations too. In this example you can see one of the benefits of the shadow being a separately-layered image:

BUT... 

I don't necessarily think that this is the right style to move ahead with the successor to Time Fantasy. While this is absolutely a worthwhile experiment for these animations, and I learned a lot that we can apply going forward-- I don't think that the tone of these sprites will work.

Specifically, that's because I've decided that the new character style needs to steer away from the cute or 'chibi' direction. Personally I love the way these sprites look-- but it's not the best fit for every project. A more neutral style will be necessary to maximize the usage of the new sprites (there's also a lot of existing 'chibi-style' material out there, especially for rpgmaker, and keeping the tone netural will provide an alternative.)

So, let's back up to the bases from above.

This guy here on the right was a step in the right direction, an attempt to explore the RM2K-RTP style. I think the influence is obvious, though this rough draft lacks depth. Since my reference is the SNES JRPGs, I continued by pushing this RM2K style into the direction of the SNES references:

This is where I am now (green background). 

This character base is heavily influenced by the SNES side of things. It also has a more 'neutral' tone: I can imagine it being used in a whimsical adventure but it also doesn't look too ridiculous to fit in a setting with gravitas. In the end, it feels like a mix of the RM2K and SNES styles-- which is a good thing, I think!

Note: These examples include the shadow built into the sprite. I talked above about how that is a mistake: don't worry-- the final exported assets would include the shadow as a separate image that can be layered underneath. It looks something like this:

Here is some more exploration and development of this character base:

The characters above are uniquely designed: notably, the three characters in the bottom-left of the image are different heights. The height difference wouldn't be possible in a generator with modular pieces: the results of generator sprites could look more like the characters to the right.

I imagine that a final release would include a set of uniquely-designed characters, good for use as hero characters or recognizable NPCs in the classic JRPG style. And then it would also include individual pieces from those characters spliced up into generator parts. So for example you could use the same heads, but you might lose some individuality that requires a specifically-crafted sprite.

Regardless -- I haven't yet put too much thought into how I'll do generator pieces; (though I'll probably want to have full heads instead of swapping hairstyles). For the time being I'm still working on finalizing the base and style before I dive too deep into the modular stuff. 

(If you have thoughts and suggestions on the subject of modular pieces, please share your ideas-- though I'll definitely have a separate post covering that topic when I get to it).

And here are some sprites in action. This was made in RPGMaker2003, and it makes use of the recently-released SNES-inspired terrain tiles.

My next step is to explore more character possibilities and finalize the basic walking animations-- I'll probably spend a while designing characters and making NPCs (including elements that later I can use to get started as generator pieces, hopefully). 

Once I feel really comfortable with the basic four-directional walking sprite, I'll be ready to develop the other promised animations, and by the time I'm working on those... I'll be back with another progress thread like this.

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Wew, this was a huge write-up (took me a lot longer than I'd originally planned, I ended up going into a lot of detail: hopefully you find it interesting-- in the end, this post feels more like a real development article than a simple progress update).

Anyways-- please share your thoughts with me here. If you have suggestions and ideas, now is a good time as I'll continue experimenting with this style before I finalize it.

Going forward, as I work on this new style (the characters and also the tileset remasters), one or two regularly-scheduled updates each month might be posts like this. 

But don't worry-- I still plan on keeping up our regular schedule! I'm gonna spend some time this weekend putting together the next release based on a patreon request, so you can expect some new graphics next week-- see you then.

Thanks!