My first character: Brandy Oteigh (long post)

[Creamy_Goodness]

> Brandy Oteigh is a character concept I developed over ten years ago for a now defunct D&D like story I was working on at the time. Since then, she's gone through many different forms as she passed through several other projects of mine, most of which are also now defunct. Here is the latest incarnation of Brandy, this time as a Mugen character.



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STORY

> Brandy is an elf who was the protagonist of a fantasy webtoon whose target audience was preteen girls. She grew up in a village populated entirely by magical creatures, in the middle of an enchanted forest. Everyone in the village had magical abilities, and used them in their everyday lives. However, Brandy was born without the ability to use her inborn magic power, and as a result, there were a great many things that everyone in the village could do that she couldn't. Despite this severe disability, she was still generally accepted by her friends and family as an equal, and they were happy to make the necessary accommodations for her. However, there were a few people that looked down on Brandy as a powerless inferior, but this attitude only steeled her resolve and encouraged her to push herself that much harder to succeed. When Brandy was eleven years old, she competed with one of her detractors in some kind of contest, and won despite her natural disadvantage. Enraged by his loss, the elf Brandy defeated framed her for the theft of a very important village artifact, and this eventually led to Brandy's banishment from the village.

> No longer part of her native webtoon, Brandy spent the next few months of her life wandering aimlessly across the Internet looking for a new direction in her life. She eventually ended up on the Creamy's Wonderland website, where she settled down and enrolled in the local university in order to learn more about the world outside her village. One morning before class, she watched as a bully named Bobby Bradford beat up a smaller kid for refusing to give him his lunch money. Brandy tried to intervene, but the larger Bobby pushed her aside easily. Knowing she would have to defend herself if she was to ever confront Bobby or any other bully again, Brandy joined the local Watanabe Dojo to learn jujitsu.

> Brandy's lifelong disadvantage forced her to work much harder than peers to match their success when she was growing up, but now that she was in an environment where noone could use magic, the playing field was now level. But Brandy felt awkward without the disadvantage she had grown accustomed to, so she replaced her natural disadvantage with self-imposed ones, such as training with weights, and fighting in weight classes much heavier than her own. Despite these disadvantages, and fueled by the fear of inferiority that followed her even after she left her village, Brandy was able to stay at the top of her class, and become a jujitsu master in a mere two years. Impressed by her skill, discipline, and incredible commitment, Master Watanabe allowed Brandy to become his assistant instructor.

> Eventually, Brandy spotted Bobby about to beat up another smaller kid in the halls of the university, and this time she was able to stop him. But instead of the two becoming mortal enemies, Brandy convinced Bobby to turn his life around and join the Watanabe Dojo, and even went as far as to personally train him as his private tutor. This was only the beginning of Brandy's adventures in Creamy's Wonderland, as she would go on to compete in several martial arts tournaments, free an underappreciated kid from his abusive family, do battle with a beach bully, and deal with the corruption of her own magic energy.

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GAMEPLAY

> Brandy's fighting style is the Watanabe Dojo's variation of Jujitsu, and is centered around throwing and parrying. I didn't want this already long post to be too much longer, so I left out a lot of details.

- Disadvantages
- Very slow
- Very poor areal skills
-   - Only jumps at waist height
-   - Can't high jump or double jump
-   - Can't air block or air parry
-   - No areal attacks

- Advantages
- Excellent parrying skills
-   - When Brandy's health is full, her parrying timing window will be around average, but will widen as her health decreases. When Brandy's health is almost empty, the timing window will be three times the width as it would be if  her health was full.
-   - Brandy will gain 50 hit points on every third consecutive parry as long as she doesn't block or get hit.
-  Emergency parry
-   - Same as a standard parry, except Brandy becomes invincible for half a second after parrying.
-   - Costs one stock
-   - Can break out of any combo (Must be done while caught in a combo)
-   - Can't be done in the air

- Energy
- Standard energy meter (3 levels, 3000 points, 1000 points per level)
- Can't gain energy from strikes or from being hit.
- Gains 100 energy points per parry
- Gains 600 energy points per non-super throw

- Specials
> Brandy has five special moves, and all of them are throws except for an open-handed uppercut that knocks opponents back and stuns them for about a second. The throw specials include two counters, and a move that can snatch attacking opponents from the air.

- Supers
> Brandy has three super moves, which are a three slam combo, a very powerful spinebuster, and a super-defensive alternate state called the Stone Aspect that does the following...
- Requires at least two stocks to enter, but only costs one.
- Energy will gradually drain, and once it reaches zero, Brandy will revert back to her normal state
- Brandy must have 250 hit points or less remaining to enter the state.
- Disadvantages
-   - Half normal movement speed
-   - Can't jump
-   - Can't use super moves
-   - Can't gain energy
- Advantages
-   - Double normal defense
-   - Suffers no block damage from any attack.
-   - Can block any normally unblockable non-throw attack.
-   - Can't be damaged for more than 50 hit points from any single attack or combo, even insta-kills.
-   - Can't be put into any other alternate state, including throws or stuns.
-   - Emergency parry replaces standard parry, and does not cost energy to use.

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Making of Brandy

> In order to make the sprites for Brandy, I'm using a 3D model I made of her a year ago for another project as my base. Using a 3D modeling program called Animation: Master, I make the different animations for the model (stance, attacks, etc.). After deciding which of the animations' frames to covert into sprites, I set the camera at a pre-determined position, take a screenshot of each of the usable frames, paste the screenshots in Adobe Photoshop. I then crop the character from the rest of the screenshot, resize the character to Mugen size to make an undersketch, draw a cleaned up sprite over the undersketch on a new layer, convert the image to a pcx, then repeat the process with the rest of the sprites. Once all of the sprites of an animation are completed, I import them into Fighter Factory and compile them into a single animation. I will complete this process with all of Brandy's sprites until the character is completed.



> So far, I only have two animations completed...

> Stance


> Walk forward


> In addition to her karate gi, Brandy was going to have two additional outfits...

> Swim trunks


> Casual


> However, after posting in this forum's Development Discussion section, I found that I couldn't make multiple sets of sprites for a single Mugen character, so it looks like Brandy will only have her gi. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it saves me a shitload of work in the spriting department.

> When I'm ready to finally release Brandy as a Mugen character, all of her basic animations and standard attacks, as well as some specials and supers will be completed. In later releases, I will add special animations, so that Brandy has different intros, taunts, and winposes vs. certain characters. I'm also going to make Brandy asymmetrical, so that she uses different sprites when facing left than she does facing right.

> Any feedback is welcome.

[NukularPower]

just curious, why not just render her poses (with smooth/subsurf on ) and use those as sprites?  Would be a lot easier than redrawing them.  Looks good, though.

[MrSteve81]

That does look like a cool idea. I have a lot of respect for people who create original material.

[ultimatedude]

That does look like a cool idea. I have a lot of respect for people who create original material.

True, love the idea, and the portrait is awesome, I really like the walk

And, seriously, add a bra for the swim trunks

[Gmasta]

That does look like a cool idea. I have a lot of respect for people who create original material.

lol hes funny looking but i bet hes going to come out cool !!!

[ultimatedude]

That does look like a cool idea. I have a lot of respect for people who create original material.

lol SHES funny looking but i bet SHES going to come out cool !!!

fixed

[Creamy_Goodness]

NukularPower> I actually did consider that option when I first started spriting Brandy. I thought about rendering her model with toon lines, but it never gave me exactly the results I was looking for in the past. However, given that each clean-up sprite takes between 40 minutes to an hour to draw, I may reconsider the toon line rendering option.

ultimatedude> I'm not going to give Brandy a top with her trunks, because this is outfit she wears to the swimming pool and the beach. She is a tomboyish character, and wears only boys' and unisex clothing. Besides, I am a topfreedom advocate, meaning that I don't believe that a female's breast should be treated any differently from that of a male.

[MrSteve81]

Besides, I am a topfreedom advocate, meaning that I don't believe that a female's breast should be treated any differently from that of a male.

Same here. Which is why I wear bras.

[Creamy_Goodness]

> After playing around with Animation: Master's rendering options, this is the best result I could get without doing any major editing. I set the camera at a far away distance, took the screenshot, pasted it in Photoshop, and then made the background purple for contrast. Because of the distance of the camera, I didn't have to resize the image.



> It's not too bad, and it took me less than five minutes to make. However, I still prefer to have the outlines a darker shade of the sprite, which is a result I can only get from pixel-by-pixel tracing. Also, the hand drawing technique is the only way I know of that eliminates noise, and makes a perfect, one pixel-wide outline.

[MrSteve81]

I say stick with the old style. It might take a lot longer but in my opinion it looks a lot better.

[Creamy_Goodness]

> I've been working on Brandy for quite a bit since I first announced her, and here's how far I've come since then.

> I changed my method of taking screenshots of Brandy's model, so that I now render it with the toon lines. I re-sprited the Stance and Walk Forward animations from scratch, and this gave Brandy a little bit of extra thickness...

> Stance (before)


> Stance (after)


> Walk Forward (before)


> Walk Forward (after)


> And now, for some new ones...

> Walk Backward


> Crouch Stance


> Turnaround


> Crouch Turnaround


> Up next is Brandy's Jump, Hop Forward, and Hop Backward animations. Later on, I'll see if I can get some attacks coded, and that will allow me to code and test her hit animations.

[Tony 3rd]

both turnarounds need at least 1 more frame, of him looking straight to the player, between the 2 frames.

[Creamy_Goodness]

> I never thought of that, but now that you mention it, adding another frame to the turnarounds would make them look smoother. I may have to make each frame a few ticks shorter to compensate for the additional frames, but I think that doing so will make the animations look smoother still. Thanks for the feedback. .

[Cybaster]

Yep, as Tony said.
Other than that, the animations are smooth, congratulations on that.

[Creamy_Goodness]

Cybaster> Thanks, I would certainly hope they are, given the amount of work I've put into them.

> I just finished redoing Brandy's turnaround animations, adding an in-between frame to each animation, and cutting the number of ticks on each frame down from 10 to 5. This is the result...

> Turnaround (before)


> Turnaround (after)


> Crouch Turnaround (before)


> Crouch Turnaround (after)

[Creamy_Goodness]

> It's been a month and a half since I posted my last update of Brandy, but since then I managed to finish her hit animations, her blocks, and all four of her standing attacks.

> Hit high light and medium


> Hit high hard


> Hit low light and medium


> Hit low hard


> Crouch hit light and medium


> Crouch hit hard


> Block


> Crouch block


> High palm thrust (Standing light punch)


> Overhand chop (Standing hard punch)


> Knee kick (Standing light kick)


> Front kick (Standing light kick)

[Creamy_Goodness]

> I don't have a lot of time to post this, so I'll make this quick. Here are eight more animations I completed in the last month...

> Dodge


> Parry high


> Parry low


> Fall - Standard


> Fall - Tripped


> Knocked down - Standard


> Knocked down - Bounce


> Get up - Standard

[BC]

high palm thrust doesnt look very high, looks like brandy is hitting low(top of abdomen)
the knee attack also...the leg needs to be bent more to look like a knee attack, thats the only thing i can criticize, other than that looks awesome cant wait to see a video of your character in action 

[Creamy_Goodness]

> When I came up with the high palm thrust, I wanted to have Brandy strike as fast as possible with her hands, and that meant hitting the closest area of her opponent to her hands, which happened to be the upper chest area. Also, "knee kick" doesn't mean that Brandy attacks with her knee, but rather she kicks the knee of her opponent. As for videos, I wanted to do a video preview of Brandy for months, but I couldn't figure out how to make a smooth running video at a reasonably size until recently. I'm plan on releasing such a video preview during my next update of Brandy, which should be in about another month.

[Average Mugen Guild Poster]

These are awesome! :wink:
But they need a little more shading.