Lots of news about official Spriter art packs in the works!

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Hi everyone,

Things are starting to heat up here at BrashMonkey. Not only is the new cross-platform beta of Spriter shaping up nicely, but some great progress is being made on the art-pack front as well. Here's the details:

The Platformer-Adventure art pack:

This one will be big, really big. This art-pack ties in directly with our long-term game project “Prophecies of Nnar”. All the animations we need to create for the game will end up in this art-pack. Due to the huge scope of this one, its definitely going to take some time to finish..but fear not, we'll likely release it in parts, with updates and addendum packs as the art accumulates.

The good news: In order to create the character animations, we're going to create 3d models of each character first, animate the 3d models, render out the frames to use as references, then recreate them with hand “painted” body part images in Spriter. The huge benefit for us to take these extra initial steps of pre-animating in 3d is that once the 3d characters are animated, we can render out guide animations from any perspective! This will allow us to quickly create additional art packs for overhead and isometric type games such as the classic Zelda titles!

One final plus: We're working with a superb 3d artist (Saika Fu), who's creating these models for us as optimized low-poly models, perfect for when we eventually decide to make a 3d spin-off 'Nnar game!

Take a look at the two models he's completed for us so far:

The game effects basic Platformer art packs:

The two art packs we're sure to finish first will be one with a huge assortment of special effects and “pick-ups” for games and another perfect for making Mario-esque platformers. Work has already begun on both... you can even get a sneak peak at them both by checking out the video below, but keep in mind, what you can see so far is the very crude beginnings, made with the beta version of Spriter and without tweening. Once the new beta of Spriter is a little further along and tweening is fully supported, all of these effect and character animations will be retooled and perfected to be silky smooth.

Even better news: I'm working with a great artist (Renita Orellana, whom I originally recruited for help with some art for Nnar), to not only create more art for the basic Platformer art pack, but to actually create a huge “companion” art pack full of several beautiful sets of environment art (tiles, “sky-boxes”, and props) which will be the perfect compliment to the character animations art pack.

How the deal worked: I agreed to offer artistic guidance and let her use/co-develop the basic platformer art pack to make her platformer game, and in return, she'll release all of her games environment art to be sold as this “companion” environment art pack. This works out great for everyone, I'd say..and we'll likely be doing the same for most of our art packs...'cause you can't just have characters and explosions with no backgrounds, right? ;)

Here's the sneak peak at some of the effects, Platformer game animations, and environment art we've cooked up so far:

One last note about the basic platformer art. If you aren't keen on MASSIVE heads, don't worry...the initial character art is designed with the biggest head someone might want..there will be character maps for several different head sizes, ranging from those giant melons, to almost normal size! Eventually there will be replacement “skins” to select from for all animation art packs to choose from a vast range of visual styles.

Before I sign off for the day, please visit this new thread in our forums so you can partake in a conversation to help me perfect the list of animations needed for each of these art packs:

http://www.brashmonkey.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

Stay tuned, folks, this is just the beginning. With your help, Spriter will revolutionize Indie game creation!

Cheers,

Mike@BrashMonkey

[Charles]

Is there a rough ETA for the arrival of the first part of the art pack? Like... a few months, end of the year, next year? Etc?

I've been itching to work on a platformer...

[Mike at BrashMonkey]

Hi Charles,

So far we're on schedule to deliver a fairly robust platformer game art pack and a "game effects" art pack around the same time as the official release of Spriter 1.0 (end of December).

Around that same time, a third party "companion art pack" should be availible with tons of environment art for platformers.

I'll post updates periodically to show what we're working on and let everyone know if we're on-schedule.. these updates will likely start happening 2 or 3 weeks from now.

thanks,

Mike at BrashMonkey