Putrefier Baddie

[Ed]

Started working on sprite models for my home-brew old school FPS, Putrefier. The right arm isn't attached yet, I'm waiting for the clay to dry, from there I'm drilling into the shoulder and inserting a pin for the arm to rotate on. The rest of the animations will be done mostly via photoshop after catching all of the angles. This is the first time I've worked with sculpting of any kind, but have definitely taking a liking to it.

[Phobus]

I like it - looks like it'd convert well to sprites because there's not tons of fine detail to lose as well. It works well with broader strokes from what I've seen.

[Ed]

There's more detail in there, but the camera wouldn't pick it up under that light / lack of tripod. It's a bit blurry. I'll have most of the detail / muscle texture done in the paint.

[Nasesrtyhcfhk]

What engine will this home-brew fps use? also, looks very good!

[Phobus]

Ed said:

There's more detail in there, but the camera wouldn't pick it up under that light / lack of tripod. It's a bit blurry. I'll have most of the detail / muscle texture done in the paint.

Heh - if you're using a low resolution engine I'd say go with that bit of blurriness then. It's pretty easy to imagine it in Doom or something from that picture.

[Ed]

I was shooting for an iPhone/Classic Doom platform, but I can't rationalize putting all the effort for what would be a sub-par gaming experience just for the sake of being a 'commercial' title. It's looking like a freeware GZDoom iwad. I've been resource farming since the beginning of summer-time, at 100+ texture, 12 finished audio-tracks, sound-design well under way and quite a bit of sprite work done as well. Haven't even attempted the mapping yet, not until the resources are nearly complete.

[Impie]

I think the lack of detail on the face makes it creepier. Its face is a blurry semi-human nightmare with two black holes for eyes.

[Coopersville]

The right arm isn't attached yet, I'm waiting for the clay to dry, from there I'm drilling into the shoulder and inserting a pin for the arm to rotate on

[...]

This is the first time I've worked with sculpting of any kind

I was gonna say...

Anyway, it's pretty creepy and cool. I'm really interested seeing the process of you turning it into sprites.

[Ed]

Just wanted to test what the guy would actually look like in-game. Only capped one frame. The gun-arm isn't attached yet (still drying). Still need to mess with the colors, but I think it's off to an OK start.

You can't see it, but the ass end is actually a long tentacle, thus the no legs.

Excuse the crap-designed room, just using it to test textures.

[Phobus]

All looks pretty nice to me!

[Ed]

Got a full rotation done yesterday / pictures for all the frames needed to complete the sprites. Came out better than I thought.. also learned to appreciate all the work Adrian Carmack must have done for Doom.. what a time consuming process.

[Vader]

I'm quite impressed how well the photos taken of the model actually translate into Doom... did it take much work to adjust the images to fit the palette and get them shrunk down?
Anyway, I'm really tempted to try this method myself!

[esselfortium]

This all looks quite cool; congratulations on coming this far with your game!

I have to admit the shading and shadowing on the monster sprites looks somewhat odd to my eyes, but it might make more sense to me in the context of other similarly-styled sprites.

As an aside, I really love that hexagon flat in the upper left of the latest shot :)

[Ed]

Vader said:

I'm quite impressed how well the photos taken of the model actually translate into Doom... did it take much work to adjust the images to fit the palette and get them shrunk down?
Anyway, I'm really tempted to try this method myself!

The camera I used wasn't anything to cry home over. It's a generic HP Photosmart, no flash with the focus set to the foreground. I mounted it on a mini-tripod and had a platform with all the angles marked with a line. Under that was a piece of paper with the same angles marked up. I'd take a shot and rotate the platform to line up with the points on the paper.

I didn't end up painting the figure. It's all colored in Photoshop. I found a skin color that worked and created a multiply layer for that, a layer for the gun, and a layer for the blood. I'd cut the background from the image, transfer the color layers over to each new frame and apply a mask over each of those. The only real touch-up to the base picture was a 25% contrast increase and a little bit of Dodge tool to high-light the muscle detail.



Up-close shot of the final sprite, all cleaned up. All Decorate is done, still cranking out frames.. should be 100% before next weekend!

All together, I spent $11 on a massive brick of grey clay, $2 on sculpting tools and I had the camera from 4 Christmases ago.

It's a slow-ish process but beats the hell out of hand drawing each frame.

[Marnetmar]

The enemy itself looks great! However, it doesn't really seem...cartoony enough. Well, not cartoony, but it's so realistic it looks out of place. Perhaps you could reduce the number of colors in the sprite?

[Impie]

I like it better without the cyber-arm, where it has a stronger "oh god what the hell is it" factor.

I agree that it clashes with the level art, but I don't think it's the colors necessarily. Maybe it's the sprite resolution? I see lots of sprites in custom wads that are scaled down but obviously higher-res than a Doom sprite is supposed to be.

[MmM]

That's really cool to see a sculpture converted into an actual working game sprite/enemy. I agree with some of the others' comments that it doesn't quite match the DOOM aesthetic because it's too detailed in comparison to the game's graphics, but it's still neato regardless. Nice work!

[Ed]

The sprites just didn't cut it for the look I want to get for the game. Sprites just aren't scary anymore. I started messing around with Milkshape and came up with this;

http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/tt237/capslockrivet/milkshape.jpg

[Coopersville]

I can see how it doesn't fit in with Doom's art style if the other Doom monsters are present, but I think it looks really good, and also potentially really frightening if you can find the right sounds for it.

[MmM]

Dovetailing what Coopersville said, if you replaced all of the DOOM critters with new monsters similar to this one then the contrasting style would no longer be a concern.