*The reasoning for a different process is explained here: http://mugenguild.com/forum/msg.2153289

• Role 1-The first artist world sketch out all the animations, finalize outlines and solid fill the sprites blue. Below is the actual size that I prefer to work at, this is 1000% increased from a normal sprite size. I sketch with 1px in colors and finalize my lines with 3px in black.

• Role 2-The second artist would add the lighting to the character, resize and index the sprites. More or less colors can be added in this role to make the job easier for Role 4 later in the line. Below you can see were the sprite size has been reduced to 10% using "bilinear" and color indexed.

Spoiler: SF3 indexing tool (click to see content)

Color indexing can be a pain! I have made this tool to speed up the process, it works for single sprites or full animations. To use this tool you will need both items in this link Color choice and photoshop indexing tool.
*It is important to use only the colors used in the "index tool.png", the "SFIII Auto Index Tool.atn" only works with these colors.
*How to install atn file in photoshop
*to view the effects of this tool simply go to file and "Save for Web & Devices...".

• Role 3-The third artist would color separate the sprites and re-index. As seen below this was achieved by making new layers with 40% opacity on top of each frame and using lasso tool to carefully select the desired area to color.

• Role 4-The forth artist would clean and detail the sprites to a finished polished product.

Compare Role 1-3 to official.

• Inktrebuchet's-sf3-morrigan-work-file.psd has role 1 and 2. you'll have to make layers visible/not visible to see the full process.
• Inktrebuchet's-sf3-morrigan-color-seperation-work-file-psd has role 3.
• Inktrebuchet's-sf3-morrigan.gif is role 4 but still has some things I would like touch up in the future.

Was the average full character commission $1000? I thought it was 350 or $500 (unless I am missing something here, in which case a small explanation and a wall of text detailing myself being apologetic).

I do like the idea of the 4 way split, though. Easy mulla, everybody. Removing this line of idiocy to ask a better question: Would color separation be considered for this, and if the team would be made of 4 people, would the role be divided amongst them all? Or would you either get somebody to do it or cancel the idea of CSing altogether?

Will this be oriented towards certain styles, such as CPS3 (of which you are the emperor ) or will other styles such as CvS, CPS2, KoF XIII, Yatagarasu, and DBFC be considered to be under the wing?

Another question popped up, could this idea be taken to the outskirts of MUGEN, and be applied to possibly the area of indie game development? Since the basis of this idea is the Grayscale Method, and we saw that it can be applied to sprites of different genres (Like this for example), I think it would be worth a shot, with the only thing changing being the price of the comission (I think? Forgive me if I don't make any sense, it's not my strongest suite unfortunately.)

is this the same or similar method to how you already color separate??

If you have any ideas for developing methods to create sprites more efficiently, please mention them here.

This thread is open to any idea that could help efficiency in sprite making.

Black Hatter said, August 24, 2015, 11:25:23 pm

OK, off the top of my head, Kiwi's  Grayscale Index Method is essentially a painting-to-pixels method. There is also the Rumble Fish Method, which is basically 3D-to-pixels method.

In addition, the usage of Spriter for games with graphics in the vain of Vanillaware, Rayman: Legends, DuckTales Remastered, and Tembo The Badass Elephant could be a third, but that's all I can think of.

Based on the route you plan to go for, the first 2 seem feasible, but number 2 would require a fifth slot, so I guess that could be scratched, unless someone could double as one, but that's probably not gonna happen.

CPS3 style could be implemented in that Vanillaware thing I was talking about, but it would probably end up looking like what steamboy33 did (but with a high leve of skill).

Thanks Hatter. I will keep these in mind and try to see if anything can be applied. I know 3D models were used to help in the making of Hauzer, but in the end they were really just tracing over it, I'm sure it was a big help though mainly due to his size.

I have been trinyg to learn animation using blender, I have seen some end results of that program and I think it offers the most decent learning curve/results ratio. the program arksys used for ggxrd is good, but the learning curve is so high you have to pretty much make a game taht takes full advantage of taht, for static sprites the blender method seems to be the best (I suspect a similar method is being used by examu bread, especially because of volumetric shading and jagged edges ) but only for characters, not so much for other resources as getting the models ready might be too time consuming and using sketches should be more efficient (like drawing a person cheering in the background).

http://mugenguild.com/forum/topics/turn-3d-models-pixel-art-164991.0.html
For something like this I would think you would just need roles for secondary animations such as clothing and hair. I would imagine you could apply different colors for shaded and lighten area to make it work for SF3 sprites too.

this looks awesome! do you have anyone up for the 4th role? im pretty good at detailing and cleaning

I have tried indexing before resizing, it just doesn't give the desired result. I haven't made the tool to automatically index the sprites yet, but once I do it will reduce the messy gradations by one click of the mouse. *indexing the long way is time consuming and can be frustrating.

I plan to revamp, the CvS process soon. The images I have up now are not a good representation of how it should look, they were just what I had sitting around. The SF3 process is the only one up to date.

I also plan on doing a KoF process in the future!

and others if they are requested.

walruslui said, September 09, 2015, 10:10:36 am

this looks awesome! do you have anyone up for the 4th role? im pretty good at detailing and cleaning

Thanks man, I will keep you in mind! Currently everything is on hold due to low free time on my end. Hopefully others will be forming a team effort from the thread too.