The VG Resource

Recently, I decided it was time to start focusing on creating my first completely original game, so I chose to start with making an action platformer. After a short amount of planning and work towards the game, I came across one problem: I never actually made any characters from the side before(unless you count that unfinished toadsworth I made a long time ago) and I don't fully understand what I'm doing.

Well, at the very least this is what I have so far today



I can kind of make a character facing the front, but when I make them face the side or add a weapon, I sort of mess things up a bit.

EDIT: I fixed a few of the mistakes in the sprite (still quite a lot left to fix DX)

I just started the walking animations(still a work in progress)

Worked on it a bit more and added another walking animation.

I don't like this type of walking animation, it's more like the feet sliding across the ground than a walk. That's just preference, though.
You might wanna check that your animations are consistent, and by that, I mean the static parts, like the head. On the right walking animation, there's a disappearing and reappearing pixel near the head. I see it on the sheet, as well.

Would something like this be a bit better?




EDIT: I'll try to get it finished on Monday.

I fail so see any difference... my eyes hurt through looking.

I think his point is: use knees. Look at games like Moon Crystal and/or Super Metroid to study leg movement.

Also, although these sprites are fine, they are very uninteresting. Sometimes when working on small sprtes, less is more. Too many shades just make it hard to read or look 'cluttered' - try scaling your coloUrs back.

I don't know, that sprite reeks of M&L a little, especially movement. It doesn't really fit the pure sidescrolling view look you are going for, to be quite honest. The fact that the sword that small has 4 colors, and it keeps the horizontal position in the whole animation makes me feel really uneasy, because it's unneeded for the former and unrealistic for the latter.

I reduced the palette to 11 colors + the transparent color, shrunk him down(not exactly what you meant by less is more though) and I changed the design a bit.

I worked on the walking animations a bit. It's at the very least getting a bit better, but the knees still need a lot of work...

His eye touching the black outline gives it a bit of a sploched (yeah that's a word) look. It still seems to be using a lot of colours for something so small though. I'd also work on the hood (I think it's a hood) as it looks like purple hair at the moment.

I don't really know what to do with the hood, but I did reduce the colors a bit more and got rid of one of the eyes

I want to try to work with larger, more detailed sprites, but I am currently having a bit of difficulty with even the standing position.

It's not very good, but this one is the best standing position I could get so far.

I liked the hooded character. He just needed a better walking cycle, IMO. Have you tried using other sprites as a reference? For example, my character's running animation uses Klonoa as a ref. I feel like Sonic's (Advance 3) slow walking would be a good reference in this instance.