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Drawing a reference

By volsung on August 7, 2010 1:24 AM

(Click to embiggen)

I still haven't traveled back home for holidays, so I'm spending my time with busty barbarians. That picture over these lines should help modeling Zarna by using it as a reference (front, side, back) making it easier to get the correct shapes. Or something closer to what's correct, at least, as I kind of suck at this.

What will come out of this? Probably nothing during this week, as I'm leaving most of my stuff in Gibraltar, and only picking the laptop. Not that I couldn't model it in the laptop, but considering I have like 5 days of "pure" holidays if I remove the 10 hour travels by car and some legal stuff I have to arrange back in Bilbao, I'm not planning to use these for 3D modeling.

Worry not, however. A titted potato with some horrible topology and terrible textures will follow soon enough.

More sketching

By volsung on August 4, 2010 12:26 AM

After some work I'm starting to get closer to what I wanted to reach. Obviously, not with the previously published sketch, but with all those that I was doing and didn't post.

So, the other day I was playing some Dark Cloud 2 (or Dark Chronicle, as you prefer), and noticed some interesting models in the game, especially when it came down to adults. OK, maybe they weren't really unique. OK, maybe it's even a quite common style, but I noticed it while playing Dark Cloud 2, that's what matters.

While I was trying to replicate/adapt (with not much success, I must admit) the style, somehow, I remembered some of my old Sapphire comics (Barry Blair's Sapphire, not DC's superheroine). Then it was just a matter of minutes to come with the rough crap on the left. That helped me get a general idea of what I wanted to achieve... and I mean GENERAL. Just look at it! However, half an hour ago I was getting the figure on the right.

Being handless when it comes to drawing, I'm quite happy with the result. That has nothing to do with Dark Cloud 2 style anymore, and at the same time, it shares a very basic proportion, while being more... hm... Western looking?

Now, what's this for? Who knows.

Sketcho

By volsung on August 3, 2010 1:18 AM

Please, forgive the author, that is, me. He, that is, I, wasn't thinking on anatomy while drawing this. Probably not even in humans. Still, it shows Zarna's new outfit design. Sort of.

Stuff

By volsung on June 14, 2010 2:05 AM

I did play Champions Online when it was released. While the game felt just "meh", I really enjoyed the character creation part. In fact, I'd say that was more or less the whole thing for me, as it was with City of Heroes.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I was searching for Zarna's psd file and found a different one that has quite some time...

The file was actually called "zarn.psd". So, what does this have to do with Champions Online? Well, it was the character I was playing there what inspired me (click for full size):

She was some kind of Alien Huntress, kind of like Predator... but way more "primitive", as in using spears, javelins, bows, daggers and that kind of things. As you can see, there's an "overall" similarity with the original Zarna, though.

And after one hour and a half

By volsung on June 14, 2010 1:45 AM

The torso is just to help a bit get the idea. The size of the thighs and boots changes in every frame (and the pivot, in the thighs' case), so it still needs quite some polishing, but this is as far as I'm going today as I'm already half asleep.

Probably I'll look at it tomorrow and facepalm myself until the skull shows up.

Projects, projects...

By volsung on June 13, 2010 9:27 PM

I've been quite absorbed these past days by videogames. One in particular (League of Legends, ironically) has stolen loads of my time. Anyway, It came to a point where I had to chose whether to do something or to write something. Guess what I did. Yeh, I used the time I wasn't playing LoL to play "other stuff"... and to actually work on something else. Obviously this meant the blog would be a bit abandoned. Well, I'm still alive, and in fact, I can bring you today the latest stuff I've been messing with at x4 size:

I guess I don't need to explain who she is. The original size is 64x64, and while I'm not particularly happy about the result ("meh", I'd say) it took me surprisingly a matter of just minutes (10?). Enough to make me think I can actually animate it. Thank you, Wacom.

That's where my "non-LoL" time went to (also, to watching Spartacus). Tutorials, tutorials, tutorials... I've read loads of them, and I guess I got at least the basics. This is what I got in some minutes, trying to create a rough skeleton to sketch over:

OK, it's far from perfect, and it's only 4 frames (will be 8 when there's something shadable). What do I want to achieve, you might be asking yourself. Well, obviously, animating Zarna is the immediate objective. The longer-term target, however, was mentioned some months ago in this same blog you're now reading. Meta-Refresh.

And this time, I actually made some basic tests already with the game engine (click to embiggen):

SquareZarna jumping and -colliding- with the (tiled) ground and the (shameful black) walls. Fantästisch! Isn't it?

More updates soon to come!

Another animation attempt - WIP

By volsung on March 6, 2010 5:28 PM

I've been messing with Construct these past days, and decided to finally give it a chance and try to do some basic stuff; some kind of basic platforming + hack&slashing game. Maybe even just a short level, no more than 5 to 10 minutes to get through. Anyway, as I'm still thinking on how to deal with it, I'll show you what it'll get for sure:

(Original size)

(Zoomed x2)

Yes, it's our mandatory barbarian chick, holding two battle axes. Why's that? Well, I was thinking on giving her a sword, or even a two-handed something, but I thought that it would mean either reworking all the animations for left direction movement (time-consuming), or making the character left-handed each time she looks back, which didn't sound that good even if it's the way it's normally done.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to post an update showing some progress!

Small animation

By volsung on January 20, 2010 11:01 PM

Just testing the animation features of Photoshop CS4 with a small animated sprite of an unarmed Zarna.

(x2)

Not much action here, but it only took me a while. I might even write a small tutorial soon, not on animation, of course, as I'm not really good at spriting, much less at sprite animation, but at how to do so with Photoshop CS4.

Photoshop CS3 works more or less the same, but before that either ImageReady or other specialized software, but now, the cheap (only $699 or $999!) graphics suite allows its users to do it as well. So, soon, a small tutorial on how!

PD: Yes, I do have a barbarian fetish of some sort.

My adventure game - Starting the design document

By volsung on December 22, 2009 3:10 PM

So, finally I decided I should really begin the adventure game series I've been mentioning these past weeks ([1],[2],[3]). It's just a side-project, so, don't expect anything professional grade. I'm still trying to animate Zarna's walk-cycle, and won't have that finished until I rebuild my rig (currently spread into two different bags, I really hope nothing's broken!). I'm probably waiting a couple of days tho, as I don't have any case at the moment. I was flying with Ryanair, and the bags I used were already heavy enough to add the ~7KG of the Antec Nine Hundred and not pay more than the case's price for the extra weight. Hilarious.

Anyway, I started the first draft of the design document while on the train to Bilbao. I really would like to post it, but I think, it would be like releasing the walkthrough even before the game was made. I will probably be publishing it at some point, maybe some months after the game is available. If that ever happens, of course.

Animating Zarna

By volsung on December 18, 2009 4:38 PM

So, here am I, animating our favourite barbarian chick's sprite. I'm still working on the first stages of the walk cycle, and even if I can see this is going to take quite long (I don't think I'll be able to do it this weekend) it doesn't really matter if it doesn't finally become the main character of the small adventure series I was thinking of.

I mean, if these adventures weren't made, I'd still have the animation prepared for the uncertain future. Maybe I could even make her star in her own adventure game! Oh, wait...!

I'm using Manning Leonard Krull's awesome walking cycle tutorial, even if it's not the first time I work on animating the walk cycle for a sprite (In fact, it's the second time!). The arm might look a bit funny in the picture on the left. Well, it's not where it's meant to be, but, as I will be animating the legs first, I wanted to see them. So, the arm works as some kind of placeholder.

Will Jon be able to finish the animation? Won't he? Stay tuned to see how everything ends!

Results tagged “Zarna”