Character Sprites: Hana & “Za-Chan”

This morning I set myself a goal to finish two sprites for the two game characters I have so far, which initially seemed like an easy task but has consumed most of my day so far. I’ve learned in the past that a good way to create a pixel-art sprite is to draw it by hand first, scan the image and reduce it in size. This blur of pixels normally roughly shapes out a sprite, which can be traced with something like the pencil tool in Photoshop and transformed into some semblance of order. If you try to use this method for a sprite measuring only 16 pixels in height, you kind of end up with a grey square. So that method was pretty much out of the question! Time to rethink.
As a cheeky starting point, I figured I could see what works well by creating a Hana character in the style of existing games. I chose four really different sprites, which have similar measurements but use really different styles.

Top left: Gomez from Fez
Top right: Quote from Cave Story
Bottom left: something from Rogueline (I don’t know much about this game but the art looks really great. Check it out!)
Bottom right: NPC from The Archer
Right: Sylva from Somnium! This was my own project, which acted as my introduction to the world of game design. Obviously, the sprite is double the size of the other examples, I just though I’d throw it in there for fun.

Hana in each of these games:

Surprisingly, I quite like the fat-girl Hana based on my previous character sprite from Somnium, and tried reducing this in size to see if it could work:

My second favourite had to be the Gomez clone, as it resembled the style I used in my original concept art cartoons. The style I chose to draw in was simply a quick way to get a good impression of a character, however the star-shaped figures seem to translate well into the pixel world. I tried to conceptualise what this style would look like in a small, simplified way which I could use to create an original character sprite!

The two characters I currently have are the main character Hana and the antagonist Zashiki-warashi, which I have abbreviated to Za-chan for now until I properly name her! The sprite designs are based on my original drawings, and things I like about my Fez and Somnium character clones. Here is my pixel interpretation of the two:

Both a prone to refinement over the next few days, as I try to animate them etc. Also, if they resemble sprites from other games too much I will have to re-think the design completely.

Yesterday, I added a little bio for Za-chan* to the GDD, which explains a lot about her past and her motives for causing mischief. It’s a little long-winded, but the story is starting to come together at least:

Za-chan chose residence in a large house in the late fifties, and decided to stay permanently due to the welcome of the family and the space and qualities of the old house. The family consisted of a married couple and twin girls, who she frequently played with when they returned from school. Za-chan felt like she was part of the family, and almost forgot her naturally mischievous nature. While Za-chan was around, the family received a hefty income, the ageing house remained in good condition and Sakura always bloomed for long periods in their garden. The parents made a Za-chan kokeshi doll as a gift for their daughters, and a thankyou to the spirit for the bringing of fortune. However, as the girls grew up they forgot their friend and often stayed away from the house for long periods of time while Za-chan started to feel increasingly lonely. One day, Za-chan decided to go outside of the house and climb a Sakura tree to see where the two girls were going. As soon as she left the house, it started to creak and warp very slightly. She continued to leave the house to watch the two girls, jumping from tree to tree and every day getting slightly further away from the house. Every day, the house would start to crumble a little more. Eventually, Za-chan became angry with the girls for leaving and never went back to the house. She stayed in a Sakura tree where she could watch people and feel less lonely, and eventually picked up her mischievous ways once more by throwing things at passers by. Her old house fell to disrepair, and the family moved away. They boarded up the house, leaving the kokeshi doll inside as they considered it a sign of bad luck.
Eventually, bored of annoying pedestrians, and ultimately more lonely than ever, Za-chan conjured up her most mischievous act yet. She burrowed into her Sakura tree and spread her consciousness out among the blossoms. As they began to fell around the crowds of people around the tree, she used the blossoms to kidnap the souls of her new “friends” and bring them to the spirit world where she could satisfy her loneliness.

*In Japan, the suffix chan is applied to the end of the name of a child, or among female friends. I’ve noticed in anime that older characters abbreviate younger characters’ names to the first syllable and add “chan”. Za-chan doesn’t have a particularly nice ring to it, but I’m working on a real name RIGHT NOW.

Tiles & Sprites

I may have been wrong in a previous post where I stated that character sprites were often double the height of a single tile in 2D games. I’ve been working out some background tile to character sprite ratios, and firstly have found that there are very few recurring ratios, and secondly that there are a lot of games which use character sprites that are exactly the same height as their background tiles.

Most interestingly is that I hadn’t noticed this yet in any of the game I’ve previously written about on this Blog. In my head, I think I assumed that character sprites needed the extra detail provided by double height.

In Fez, Gomez measures the exact same height as the background tiles (with the exception of The Fez which sits on top of this height).

Again, in The Archer the character sprite and tile height are very similar, except for hats which seem to cause the illusion of height in games!

In Jonathan Lavigne’s Ninja Senki, the character sprite is not only the same height as the background tiles but is a pretty similar width too!

And in Cave Story, the character sprite for main character Quote is the exact same height as the tiles, however the NPC character is slightly taller.

What confuses me about this selection of new(ish) games, is why they all decided to work to these proportions. From an aesthetic point of view, I think it makes everything look neat and tidy, as every aligns nicely to a consistent grid. I can imagine that from a gameplay perspective, these proportions work in the favour of the player who must calculate jump and fire distances etc. However when I looked back at old NES platformers like the original Castlevania, Contra, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins and Metroid it seemed that traditionally, character sprites were double the size of the background tiles (actually, in the case of Contra I couldn’t decide what size the tiles actually were, so I could be wrong!)

Background tiles half the height of character sprites:

One slight exception I found amongst old NES platformers, was the original Super Mario Bros, and similarly Kirby’s Adventure. In Super Mario Bros, Mario starts the game as a half-sized sprite, which is roughly the same shape as the background tiles.

However, this reduced size is probably just a way to leave room for growth when a mushroom is eaten:

This might similarly explain Kirby’s small size in Kirby’s Adventure, as Kirby expands when swallowing an item or enemy.

In this case, it’s probably just more likely that Nintendo have tried to show how small Kirby is in comparison to the world!

Even as we move into the world of 16-bit, sprite sizes remain consistent with previous versions of games. In Super Mario Bros 3, the sprite proportions remain pretty much the same as the original. In Super Matroid for SNES, character Samus seems slightly taller than before. She does wear a helmet though, so this additional height is another one of those hat things…

So the question is “who is right??”
After reading various forums, the general consensus is that it all dimensions are entirely the choice of the designer. There is no right or wrong, or good or bad. Which leaves me at a point in development where I need to make a choice… So for now, I’m going to concentrate on creating a sprite equal to the height of my (hypothetical) tiles. This means creating a sprite which is 16 pixels in height, rather than the 32 I was expecting to be using. Personally, I think this makes the game look nicer and hopefully will make it play fluently. I will have to convert if I find it difficult to add a decent amount of detail to my sprites, or if the space limitations make it difficult to animate, although I’m feeling pretty confident and inspired by my Indie Heroes who have proven 16px sprites to be ideal!