"For SCIENCE!" yelled the adventurer, charging at the wayward Poptop in his path. "Do you really think this is going to work?!" inquired his companion loudly. "I mean, I know the circlet's fire doesn't go out, but sticking your head inside of a Poptop? Really?" "YES!" the adventurer replied, his confidence unwavering. "The lab records say it can only ignite the wearer's head!" "SCIENCE!"
Thank you! I tried to find a walking player sprite, but to no avail. I thought it would be neat to show what the effect might look like on something moving. It turned out a lot better than I'd originally hoped!
Try as I might, I don't think I can properly animate the bald flames without the sprites looking awkward. I'll work on concept art for the remaining races now that I've seen them, though!
The space hair is just amazing. I would love to see it in game. My only worry is that it might be too difficult to implement in the game.
Thanks! It's actually fairly straightforward for me to space out a player sprite's "hair" once I have the sprite itself. I'd certainly hope it was easy enough to implement, though I'd naturally be disappointed to find out that it couldn't be done. I've gone ahead and put together a (really) basic tutorial of how I've been animating the hair and how it might be programmable in the game. Check it out in the spoiler below if you're interested. I'm not sure how it's done on whatever engine the game's using, but I believe it's possible in some engines to overlay an image on only part of a sprite, designated (perhaps) by the hair sprite that's already there. I've seen it done in games like Realm of the Mad God and Pokémon of all things, so it's possible, but I'm not sure how difficult it is. If it matters, I'm currently animating them using GIMP as shown below (in a really basic overview). First, I start with a base sprite and two "space" images of the same size. I've already animated one of the space images, and if you look closely you'll notice that its animated part is simply an overlay of the first image (this is purely stylistic): Oh man, she's poking SPACE ITSELF with that spear. The consequences are bound to be dire! Next, I select the entirety of the player sprite's hair, invert the selection, and clear out any part of the first space image that isn't part of the hair: --> Removing empty space and replacing it with empty space? This process continues to baffle even expert astronomers! I then combine this layer with the player sprite itself, giving the appearance of static "spacey" hair. Ultimately, this ends up as a mere outline: + = In retrospect this actually looks kinda neat on its own. In the most complex step, which I've truncated for simplicity's sake, I select the interior regions of the hair and overlay the circlet, then invert that selection and remove it from the second, animated space image: --> It's all a part of a larger Universe in the end! This simply animates/pastes directly over the "spacey" hair static sprite as layers, finishing the "spaceflame" effect when the bottom two layers are merged together: + = Spifftacular. As I mentioned before, my understanding is that it's perfectly possible to overlay a single image over part or all of a sprite depending on the game engine being used. I realize that the way I've done the animation here isn't exactly conducive to easy programming, but going with a straight overlay and skipping the part with the boundaries could still look neat, right? Let's see: ...Apparently so? Of course, the pink hair decoration might also be part of what the programmer would consider "hair". In that case, it may also be overlaid with the space animation if it's generic enough to encompass all character-specific head ornaments: Why does this keep looking better to me as I make it simpler? ...well, dang. That actually looks pretty neat to me. I hope this helps in the event that someone wants to program this. I've added everything in the above spoiler to the first post as well for anyone curious to know how I've been animating. EDIT: Goodness, going back and re-doing the animation how I simplified it to the end of the tutorial does actually look pretty nice now that I see it on something else as well. "Reports of my hair's depth were greatly exaggerated." What do you all think?
Last-weekend-of-the-contest bump! I'm still trying to find good images of Hylotls, Robots, and Avians to try this on. Does anyone happen to know of any?
In my entry I used the character creator as a base, but all it has is the female head models. Should be enough for a hat though, right? http://i.imgur.com/84QKV.png
this has to win, it's done so well, and although it has special effects they aren't things like allowing you to climb walls or being able to fly, just your hair goes all spacey.
If I'd had enough time yesterday, yep! Thank you. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstance had its way with most of my day yesterday and I won't have the ability to finish these in the next few hours. I really appreciate everyone that's supported this idea and I sincerely hope it makes it into the game!
