8-Bit Shinobi Sprite

[Ersatz]

Hey guys, I'm a long time 8-bit theater reader, although I've fallen a bit behind of late. Anyway, I have an odd request but I figured that here was the best place to ask.

Anyway, many years ago Brian, inspired by the PS2 Shinobi game, created a Hotsuma sprite out of a Mega Man sprite. He also did a one-off comic using it he liked it so much. Words cannot express how much I loved that sprite - it was my AIM avatar for a long time.

I had the sprite and was going to use it on my Backloggery account. Sadly, my laptop was stolen before I was able to do so. So now I have no copy of the sprite and all my searches on the site and otherwise turned up empty. So I throw myself on the tender mercies of those here: does anyone have the Hotsuma Mega Man sprite or that Shinobi PS2 comic Brian did?

[bluestarultor]

I don't recall ever seeing either, to be honest with you, but I am a sprite artist. If you could describe it to me and tell me what era of Megs was used, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

[Ersatz]

You're a peach bluestarultor. I think pictures would do a much better job of conveying the image than a description by me ever could.

The base sprite was Mega Man's default standing pose from the NES games.
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpO7UPZv2jPvsrYq0TtMM_FK2-TfIPk1OHhuikdsU_i0ahUkQ&t=1&usg=__afx_WMW2nidRstpFSK3nQ_FBg40=

Here's the best picture I could find of Hotsuma and his rather... busy design.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2699/4202003257_985101c63e_m.jpg

Thanks again for the offer, I can't wait to see the results.

[PyrosNine]

Yeah, all the old cool extra comics brian had all went poof. I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't have the comic or the sprite on hand.

[bluestarultor]

Well, here's a shot at it.

http://i55.tinypic.com/15odszs.gif

And blown up to 2x:

http://i54.tinypic.com/2rggx0k.gif


PS - I did this from a Proto Man base, if that's okay.

[PyrosNine]

Make the eyes on the headband blue, and the blades on the arms as well.

[bluestarultor]

Make the eyes on the headband blue, and the blades on the arms as well.

Tried it while I was making it. It looked like crap. On top of that, it breaks the Mega Man format of only having 4 colors, black and transparency, which itself used extra memory supplied on the cartridge, as the NES only allowed a palette of 3 colors and transparency.

...God damn, am I ever a geek. I'll see about finding one of the blues in the NES palette that doesn't look like crap and do that.


Edit: This better?

http://i55.tinypic.com/1zdn8u8.gif

[Premmy]

scarf needs to be WAYYYYYYY longer

[Ersatz]

Tried it while I was making it. It looked like crap. On top of that, it breaks the Mega Man format of only having 4 colors, black and transparency, which itself used extra memory supplied on the cartridge, as the NES only allowed a palette of 3 colors and transparency.

...God damn, am I ever a geek. I'll see about finding one of the blues in the NES palette that doesn't look like crap and do that.


Edit: This better?

http://i55.tinypic.com/1zdn8u8.gif

That's some impressive results considering that you're using the limitations of the NES color pallet. This is actually inspiring me to give pixel art a shot myself. Would you mind terribly if I maybe used your Protoman/Hotsuma as a base?

[PyrosNine]

http://i55.tinypic.com/1zdn8u8.gif

Perfect!

[bluestarultor]

That's some impressive results considering that you're using the limitations of the NES color pallet. This is actually inspiring me to give pixel art a shot myself. Would you mind terribly if I maybe used your Protoman/Hotsuma as a base?

Not at all. If you want, I can also export you the NES palette I use. I got it from Wikipedia, but the NES palette is actually variable to a certain degree. The palette would only be good for Paint.NET, though. It's free software, but it's honestly much more of a general photo editor than something one would normally use for sprites.


Edit:

Just copy and paste the following code into a text file and save it in Documents\Paint.NET User Files\Palettes once you have PDN installed. It has the full NES palette and a bunch of the default palette's half-alpha colors because I was too lazy to black them out.
; Paint.NET Palette File
; Lines that start with a semicolon are comments
; Colors are written as 8-digit hexadecimal numbers: aarrggbb
; For example, this would specify green: FF00FF00
; The alpha ('aa') value specifies how transparent a color is. FF is fully opaque, 00 is fully transparent.
; A palette must consist of ninety six (96) colors. If there are less than this, the remaining color
; slots will be set to white (FFFFFFFF). If there are more, then the remaining colors will be ignored.
FF7C7C7C
FF0000FC
FF0000BC
FF4428BC
FF940084
FFA80020
FFA81000
FF881400
FF503000
FF007800
FF006800
FF005800
FF004058
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FFBCBCBC
FF0078F8
FF0058F8
FF6844FC
FFD800CC
FFE40058
FFF83800
FFE45C10
FFAC7C00
FF00B800
FF00A800
FF00A844
FF008888
FF080808
FF000000
FF000000
FFF8F8F8
FF3CBCFC
FF6888FC
FF9878F8
FFF878F8
FFF85898
FFF87858
FFFCA044
FFF8B800
FFB8F818
FF58D854
FF58F898
FF00E8D8
FF787878
FF000000
FF000000
FFFCFCFC
FFA4E4FC
FFB8B8F8
FFD8B8F8
FFF8B8F8
FFF8A4C0
FFF0D0B0
FFFCE0A8
FFF8D878
FFD8F878
FFB8F8B8
FFB8F8D8
FF00FCFC
FFD8D8D8
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
FF000000
80FFFFFF
80808080
807F0000
807F3300
807F6A00
805B7F00
80267F00
80007F0E
80007F46
80007F7F
80004A7F
8000137F
8021007F
8057007F
807F006E
807F0037

[Premmy]

Boy, You're still disrespecting the HELL out of Hotsuma's scarf, and I will not stand for this shit

[PyrosNine]

It's not being disrespected, it's just falling over his back and out of camera because he's standing still. It'd only be at full length if he was running.

[Premmy]

the scarf generates it's own wind and is always flapping, everyone knows that, don't be stupid.
Edit: and even if that shit you said was true, we'd still see about ten feet of scarf laying on the ground behind him.

[Ersatz]

Thanks for the help bluestarultor. You wouldn't happen to have a good image upload service I could use for the net, would you?

[PyrosNine]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4241108/Sprites-Adrian/Image4.png

Forgot how to make transparencies in Graphics Gale, but this is Hotsuma's scarf a blowin' because he's so ninja he doesn't need wind to make it move on it's own.

[bluestarultor]

the scarf generates it's own wind and is always flapping, everyone knows that, don't be stupid.
Edit: and even if that shit you said was true, we'd still see about ten feet of scarf laying on the ground behind him.

Just for you. ;)

http://i52.tinypic.com/23jmntg.gif


Thanks for the help bluestarultor. You wouldn't happen to have a good image upload service I could use for the net, would you?

www.tinypic.com is a nice one. If you're looking for something more permanent, www.photobucket.com is good.

[Ersatz]

Awesome. I'm going to get started with some of the main Shinobi characters and see where it leads me.

[Ersatz]

Ok... confession time bluestarultor - I can't figure out how to get that NES palette to work. I tried searching the program, I tried searching the official website, I tried using Google, and I came up with practically nothing. Could you provide more details?

Edit: Ok, I figured it out - it is not the most intuitive thing ever, but now I've got it set up.

[Ersatz]

Ok, here's my first piece of sprite art: Moritsune!

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs965.snc4/75859_972748222663_6226251_50565144_228017_n.jpg

Compare:
http://blogs.gamefilia.com/files/imce/u496908/shinobi-moritsune.jpg

For anyone who is familiar with Shinobi knows that Protoman is a good template for him.

I tried to conform to the whole "four colors max" rule, though I suppose I added a bit more detailing than is possible on a regular Mega Man sized sprite. More to come!