Fully agree. aesthetics are for weaklings!

[pixel resize]

Hey Ty,

I think I found a good and quick way to do these things. Here's how:

1. grab the 100x200 template PNG from the sprite directory and load it in GIMP.
2. Resize it to 1000x2000, using pixel resize (to keep the template line easy to select and delete).
3. Draw your sprites. Use a brush of size ~13 with hard edges, and don't bother about shading (at least I didn't) or excessive detail. Use Shift button to draw short straight lines if you have a shaky hand like me .
3.a. Also, use the Layer transform to mirror your sprite for a cheap walking animation in the case of otherwise symmetric sprites .
4. Save it in a good format at this size so you can reopen and edit it later.
5. Remove the gray template lines. Selecting them and pressing delete may be a quick way to do it.
6. Scale the image down to 100x200 using anything but Pixel Resize.
7. Use a Sharpen filter of strength ~50.
8. Export your image to a png file and there you go!

I just tried it out myself, and could make the following in about 20 minutes (first try).

Let me know if it works for you!

Looks quite awesome to me! Also good going with maintaining the color scheme! I love my blues .

I realized that another thing we could try is drawing them full size (say 1000x1000 or so) from the right angle with thick lines and then downsizing them to 48x48? Perhaps that makes it much easier to get the proportions right? We support PNG alpha channels so as long as the big versions lack in detail the resize may well lead to a decent result?

Btw. Ty, one other monster that would be really cool to have would be a Medusa. As BABS supports facing changes in combat, I think it would be totally brilliant to have a battle where the characters turn to stone if they accidentally end up facing a Medusa .

Made some major fixes to the shop and item system now, it should work a lot better! There are still a few smaller things to fix there though .

Meanwhile I'm giving the whole shopping and item system an overhaul .

Sounds good. By the way, do you want access to the background wiki, to get an idea what the setting is all about?

The game won't adhere rigidly to the setting, but it'll be heavily inspired by it for sure .

Well, at least it means we're loved, and that means something too I suppose .

lol!!! Agreed, we should work on things that are easy to do
 
In that case perhaps we should fetch a sprite artist from somewhere else though. Perhaps one roams around on the SFC forums or we can do a few commissions at fiverr.com?

Otherwise I can make the sprites, but they do take me ages and look like crap .

One more thing: the alpha channel is fully supported with PNGs .

Cheers! Thanks a lot Ty .

BABS supports both, but I personally prefer PNGs these days . The overall setting is a bit of a high fantasy very savage Egyptian desert-style environment, and I need all sorts of sprites really.

Regarding monsters, I think I mentioned some suggestions in the other thread .

Awesome . I'll just hammer away at whatever in the game in the meantime. You'll be able to follow my progress on the SVN revision log I guess .

One thing I still do suck at are game sprites though. Those things take ages to make, and they look weird when I make them...

Are there still others around? Or is it just you and me here... mano á mano?

Well, still updating the code. Fixed the healing animation and made it fancier, and I updated the item graphics now .