CAP 20 CAP 20 - Sprite Submissions

[DougJustDoug]

Sprite Rules

• Sprites should be inspired by the winning design from the Art Poll. It does not need to be an exact rendition of every detail of the design; "artistic license" is granted to all spriters. However, drastic deviation from the selected art design is discouraged.
• All sprites (front and back) can have a maximum size of 96x96.
• All sprites (front and back) must have a complete, unbroken, distinguishable outline. It does not need to be a black outline, but it must be clearly distinguishable from the adjacent interior colors of the sprite
• No action effects, move effects, environment effects or additional objects can be rendered on or around the pokemon.
• Sprites must be in PNG format.
• Use 8-bit truecolor (aka 8-bit RGB) or less. This does NOT mean 256 color mode.
• Use transparent backgrounds.
• All sprites must be scratch sprites that are completely original works by the spriter. Fusions of other sprites or pixel-overs of other artist's lineart (including the main design) are not allowed.
• Do not alter, fuse, recolor or otherwise modify another spriter's submission unless the original artist explicitly gives permission.
• All sprites (front and back) must use roughly the same size and pose when compared to each other.

Final Submission Post

All spriters must make a final submission post conforming to the sprite rules (listed above) and the following:

• The post must have "Final Submission" (in bold) as the first line, with the sprites at the top, and any additional description or comments (if applicable) below them.
• Final submissions must contain a minimum of 4 sprites - Front Normal, Front Shiny, Back Normal, Back Shiny. If spriters choose to include gender differences (Male and Female versions of each) then 8 sprites must be submitted. Gender differences are NOT required.
• Only submit ONE PNG that contains all the submitted sprites. Please do not submit separate images for every sprite. One "cutsheet" makes it easier for mods to track submissions and ensure each complete set of sprites stay intact.
• Only make one (1) final submission post.

All legal final submissions will be included in the sprite poll.

Advice for Spriters

There are 8 possible sprites:

• Front Normal Male
• Front Normal Female
• Front Shiny Male
• Front Shiny Female
• Back Normal Male
• Back Normal Female
• Back Shiny Male
• Back Shiny Female

In most cases, spriters post a Front Normal sprite first. Once feedback comes in and the poll nears, they make the other sprites. You do not have to make different Male and Female sprites. Typically there are only minute differences between male and female sprites, but some spriters make noticeable changes between genders, which is also fine. Shiny coloring is completely up to the spriter to choose, even if the design artist posted suggested shiny coloring with their art design submission. Please look at your transparent sprites against different colored backgrounds, not just white. In Pokémon Showdown, the sprite will be displayed on multiple background colors in battle.


Main Design

---

CAP20 so far:
Leadership Team:

nyttyn - Topic Leader
Ununhexium - Typing Leader
trc - Abilities Leader
HeaLnDeaL - Stats Leader
Snobalt - Movepool Leader​

Concept:

Name: Use the Boost to Get Through!

General Description: A sweeper with several boosting options that result in completely different checks and counters. While each set should be viable in its own right, the unpredictability of this Pokemon should make it much better than any one set alone.

Justification: In the early days of Pokemon X and Y, we experienced the first Pokemon that could (viably) boost and sweep from either the physical or special side: Mega Lucario. While it was clear his unpredictability could have a devastating effect (having your Chansey eat a Close Combat, Will-O-Wisping on the Nasty Plot, etc.) the true extent to which this could make a Pokemon better was masked by the fact that Lucario's sets were both already amazing. The purpose of this concept would therefore be to explore the impact of unpredictability in sweepers by creating a Pokemon that can run several boosting sets, none of which are dominant in their own right, but that when combined can result in an extremely dangerous threat.

Questions To Be Answered:

• Is there a limit to how much unpredictability can make a Pokemon better? Can it make a decent Pokemon great? Or can it only make them usable?
• How does being unpredictable with boosting options compare to other forms of unpredictability (such as uncommon coverage moves or trying to speed creep certain threats)? Is unpredictability in sweepers inherently more dangerous because of how easily they can win a game?
• For a Pokemon that is already unpredictable, will we see the use of strange coverage moves (as many sweepers tend to run) or will it tend to stick to standard sets because it already has the element of surprise?
• Which boosting moves are distinct enough to completely change a Pokemon's checks/counters? Are Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, and Agility the only ones that can fit this concept? Or is there a way to incorporate moves such as Dragon Dance without giving the Pokemon "the best of both worlds".
• How effective will double boosting sets be on this Pokemon? Will the ability to "pick your counters" on a Pokemon already designed to bypass its counters be too good? Or can it be designed so that the loss of coverage will still leave it with several checks and counters on any set?
• To what extent will teams have to prepare for this Pokemon? Will they have to pack several checks/counters like for M-Lucario? Or will they be able to just use a standard team so long as they can identify the set early?

Type: Water / Steel
Abilities: Water Veil / Heatproof
Stats: 103 HP / 110 Atk / 90 Def / 95 SpA / 65 SpD / 97 Spe

 

[Quanyails]

Boring work-in-progress sprites for Mos's longboat. Feather-oars are currently detached from the sprite until I'm comfortable with the pixels underneath. Decorative shields are more round than pentagonal given the trickiness of angles in pixels. As I'm not exactly sure what the stern of the longboat looks like, the back sprite subject to change dependent on Mos's drawings.

 

[HeaLnDeaL]

Here's my current WIP. I still want to mess with the colors more (and my shading isn't really in line with BW standards yet), and pixel pushing is a forever ongoing task. I haven't started on the backsprite yet, but hopefully this gives an indication of my overall direction.

EDIT: Quanyails, I love how smooth your shields look!

 

[Falgaia]

WIP of Longboatasaur, tried to pose him in a way that fully showed off his build and size while making him look proud and dignified like the Vikings of old. Currently really enjoying how this is coming out. Might play with the wing oars a bit more, but I think this is a solid foundation at the very least.

Comments:
HeaLnDeaL Currently your eye appears to be facing to the up-left. I'd recommend angling the pupil to appear more as if he was looking to the down-left, as that is where the opponent will be located during battle. Other than that, your shields have a very bright outline color, and makes them "pop" a lot less than they could. Lastly, I'd try to spend some more time on the feet and toes, as they currently feel a little too similar to one another. Maybe try to show the angle of each toe a bit better by varying their outlines some more.

Quanyails I feel the proportions are a bit off on yours. For the most part, the shields seem to be the same size as the head in Mos's artwork, and currently they appear a lot smaller on your sprites. On the backsprite's shields, its also worth mentioning that due to the perspective on the rounded shields, the gold outline shouldn't be visible all the way around as they go farther from the viewer. Aside from that, I'd try messing with your color pallet a bit more, as currently the shades seem very pastel.

Also, to both of the above, especially since you're looking down on Longboatasaur, you should be able to see the far side-s shield poking out from over the hull. Always good to keep in mind. +)

 

[Mova]

aXl That sprite of yours is my favorite so far because of the way you have to look up at him, rather than standing alongside him as if he were human-sized.

Quanyails The greyish-blue looks a bit bright, and (somehow) a bit too green. I suggest darkening it a little, similarly to Falgaia's sprite. EDIT: Nope; other than that, I think you're good to go.

 

[noobiess]

Here is my entry: :)

I decided to go with a similar pose as Mos-quitoxe's pose since I think it gives off a "I don't give a f*ck what you do, I know you aren't a thread of any kind"-vibe.

And now, some comments:
In general All entries so far look so big( My sprite is already taller then salamence's sprite.
Quanyails I love the colorscheme but the red is a bit too bright in my opinion. The shield now look really flashy. The head also looks a bit awkward, but I can't really say why...
HealNDeal What bothers me is that the body goes really straight. Because the body is tilted sideways in your sprite, the body is really long. Also the curvature or the "feathery thingies" looks a bit off. The looks a bit too 'dangling'.
aXl God those legs look amazing! I love the detail you put in them. But them look really big compared to the body. Other then that I think the angle of your sprite is not like the B/W sprites. Yours is a bit too much "frog perspective".

But overall really nice sprites. I'm excited to see the final results.

 

[Quanyails]

Newer version without/with front feather-oars. Said feather-oars will be adjusted so they look heavier when I get to it.

Changelog:

• Flared out the crest.
• Added a toe on each foot.
  
• Dampened the palette. Still a tad saturated.
  
• Polygonized the shields.
• Reduced the underbyte.
  
• Enlarged the tail.
• Smoothed the neck's thickness.
• Sprited far side shield bits.
• Updated the localization files.

Criticisms:

• In general: Mos drew the longboat with a low camera angled up. I don't recommend you use the same perspective in the sprite, since sprites should be at eye level compared to other sprites.
  
• HeaLnDeaL: The eye appears to be looking up rather than forward, and the crest looks could be fleshed out in depth. The body of the boat looks stocky/tall compared to the reference. I'd cut about four pixels off of its height. The main body could be more saturated, since it's more plain-gray than green-blue-gray.
  
• aXl: Fantastic sprite. It'd look great in a Gen. IV game. It's a bit too detailed and dynamic for Gen. V in its current state. I'd first pull the position of the head down so it's not rearing and remove the texture on the feet. The foreshortening on the feathers could be lessened just a tad. I love the details on the feet, but I agree with noobiess that they're oversized.
  
• Integer Mova: Anything else I could adjust?
  
• noobiess: Your sprite may be taller, but the overall mass at the bottom of the boat is pretty small in comparison. It shouldn't be a problem to make the sprite larger. :) The colors are just a tad dark, so I would lighten them half a shade. The line of the mouth looks flat, and I think some shading to imply contours would break up that flatness enough.

 

[boxofkangaroos]

Newer version without/with front feather-oars. Said feather-oars will be adjusted so they look heavier when I get to it.

Changelog:

• Flared out the crest.
• Added a toe on each foot.
  
• Dampened the palette. Still a tad saturated.
  
• Polygonized the shields.
• Reduced the underbyte.
  
• Enlarged the tail.
• Smoothed the neck's thickness.
• Sprited far side shield bits.
• Updated the localization files.

Criticisms:

• In general: Mos drew the longboat with a low camera angled up. I don't recommend you use the same perspective in the sprite, since sprites should be at eye level compared to other sprites.
  
• HeaLnDeaL: The eye appears to be looking up rather than forward, and the crest looks could be fleshed out in depth. The body of the boat looks stocky/tall compared to the reference. I'd cut about four pixels off of its height. The main body could be more saturated, since it's more plain-gray than green-blue-gray.
  
• aXl: Fantastic sprite. It'd look great in a Gen. IV game. It's a bit too detailed and dynamic for Gen. V in its current state. I'd first pull the position of the head down so it's not rearing and remove the texture on the feet. The foreshortening on the feathers could be lessened just a tad. I love the details on the feet, but I agree with noobiess that they're oversized.
  
• Integer Mova: Anything else I could adjust?
  
• noobiess: Your sprite may be taller, but the overall mass at the bottom of the boat is pretty small in comparison. It shouldn't be a problem to make the sprite larger. :) The colors are just a tad dark, so I would lighten them half a shade. The line of the mouth looks flat, and I think some shading to imply contours would break up that flatness enough.

I really like where this is headed. Perhaps make the overall "skin" tone a bit darker, and make the head more imposing-looking? Besides that, looks great!

 

[noobiess]

Here is an update of my sprite:

-->

Basicly these are all the adjustments Quanyails suggested.
I decided to upscale my sprite a bit because compare to official sprites of other pokemon it looked way too detailed

Quanyails Like you already said, the feathers look a bit too light and 'curly'. Other then that, lovely sprite ^^

 

[Falgaia]

Made a few small edits to the frontsprite, mainly oars, and a slight foot edit, but also put together a back sprite. Will probably mess with these two a bit more before putting out a final submission, but everything is here now at least, as well as a WIP Shiny sprite.

noobiess The eye is a bit small now, so I'd try to make it a bit more noticeable. Other than that, the oars and legs could probably be a bit larger/wider as well. There's also this white spot that I keep seeing underneath the mohawk that I think would look better if you were to fill it in with either the mohawk's Gold color or the head's gray.

 

[HeaLnDeaL]

Alternative Shiny

So, I guess this is where I've ended up so far. In terms of the front sprite, I lowered the eye's pupil to the lower left corner, flared the crest a tiny bit, played with the back foot, and messed with the oars. For the back, the main source of freedom is the "tail." I really didn't want the white part of the tail to be very wide since what I assume is the same piece of wood/steel that makes up the white part of the neck follows through across the underbelly and to the tail... and I guess I found it weird to suddenly have it be super thick on the tail end when there's no indication of it getting thicker from the front end.

Overall, I'm not really happy with a lot of my angles on the sprites. On the front sprite, the far side of the open boat is curved downward, whereas on the back sprite it is curved upward... I tried getting these curves to match, but really couldn't get either to look "right" after flipping the angles of the curves. I also want to lower the back oar on the front sprite, and maybe include it peaking out on the other side of the back sprite as well...

Since there's so many different hues used on the design, I don't really want to go crazy with complete palette swaps on the shiny. By shiny basically just swaps blues for reds. In my alternative shiny, I also made the body a gold-ish color, since I've heard gold was a popular request among the PS CAP room.

Comments for others:
Quanyails: I think so far you're definitely the one to handle the angles and the perspective the best. Your choice of colors works quite well, and I think you also follow the BW spriting etiquette the best as well. My main critique is that your head deviates a bit too far away from mos's art for my tastes. Deviation is of course part of spriting though... I think that on your back sprite the head is too large and on the front sprite it just quite match what I see/imagine from mos's art. If you're going to be making any edits, I recommend focusing them on the head. That said, the body of your sprite is definitely my favorite so far.

aXl: Your treatment of the shields, the oars, and the gold parts of the feet is simply phenomenal. Your colors match the art extremely well, too. On the back sprite, I find the angle of the neck and head to be rather odd, and the head feels very squished as a result. The bottom of your feet look gorgeous, but the legs themselves are very long, as others have pointed out. You seem to be taking on very challenging angles, and I almost feel that you'd be more successful if you took a simpler approach to your use of perspective and posing.

noobiess: I'm glad to see that you've made your sprite taller! Individually, I like all of the separate body parts that come together to make your sprite, but collectively they seem to be of differing proportions which creates a disconnect within your sprite. Your neck seems a bit wide, whereas the tail is short and the shields are small... Overall, I feel that you're trying to pack too much detail into such a small amount of pixel space. If you expand your sprite horizontally more and make it so that the side of the boat can be seen just a bit more, then I think you'd be more successful. I really do like how you made the front of the boat and the blue stripes, though.

 

[Quanyails]

Changelog:

• Darkened body's colors more.
• Added webbing between toes.
  
• Thinned the back sprite's crest.
• Thinned the aft on the back sprite.
• Raised the angles of the heads on both sprites.
• Lowered the tips of the feather-oars.
• Recolored the outline to be off-black.
• Adjusted the contours of the hull pattern.
  
• Updated the localization files.

Short comments:

• noobiess: Nicely done. :) Two small criticisms I have to make before you start on the back sprite: The mouth line looks a bit too even--I would think the contours of the mouth tip would make it look less flat. In addition, aren't the scales on the feet a single color? Or is that artistic license?
• aXl: Ooooh, that's a gorgeous shiny. :D I still hope you would tuck the head down, however. At least make the eye look more focused toward battle in the back sprite.
• HeaLnDeaL: Your back sprite is a bit odd in perspective. The head and tail in particular could be more fleshed out. The head might benefit from shading and I expect to see the other side of the aft on the far side of the hull if I'm interpreting your sprite correctly. In addition, what do I need to fix with the head?

 

[paintseagull]

Hey guys, looks like Movepool is wrapping up tonight (or maybe a bit later b/c of site downtime, but I'm not sure about that). That means we only have a few days left for people to submit their sprites!

I thought this was a pretty difficult design to fit into the limited pixel space, but all of the sprites are looking great! Great job, all :)

 

[Falgaia]

Final Submission

I have no idea when the submissions are going to close, but I'm not going to be in town tomorrow anyways so I figured now was as good a time as any to post this.

General posing was inspired by Serperior to a degree, as I thought that it's pose possessed an air of superiority that worked well with Naviathan. Vikings are often depicted as a very proud people, so I tried to channel that through its prominent chest and upturned chin. In addition, I tried to make the pose be reminiscent of the way boats crest a wave, and I'd like to imagine the animation further adding to the imagery by bobbing up and down as part of its idle pose. The pose also tries to emphasize the mass of Naviathan and showcase its bulk.

But yeah, if I have time to tweak it anymore, I'll be sure to just edit this post.

Best of luck to all of the contestants! +)

 

[paintseagull]

This is your 48h warning everyone! Submissions will close 10pm EDT Tuesday June 2nd.
If you need an extra 24h of grace time, please let me know asap! :)

 

[noobiess]

I'm afraid I won't be able to finish in time. Luckily there are some other nice entries to vote on ^^

 

[hendrix96]

I had a front sprite that was just about done... But finals refuse let me finish it or the back sprite... Damn you finals!!!

 

[HeaLnDeaL]

Final Submission

So, I'm not fully content with my angles still, but I have other things to work on and might not have time to tweak this more (there's an off chance I'll still stealth edit this, but that's unlikely).

Background Color Test
So, the sprites won't be in battle on PS unless animations are turned off, but in that event here's a background test.

Teambuilder Test
Since we're using renders of models for PS, the main place where any sprites will actually be used is in teambuilder (and there, only the front sprite will be used.. of course, sprites are used when animations are turned off still, so the whole set is important for that too :]). The crappy and unfortunate thing, though, is that the space allotted for sprites in teambuilder is LESS than 96x96 pixels. This means that tall sprites, like Naviathan, have the risk of having their heads cut off in teambuilder. Now, having part of the sprite cut off in teambuilder is no big deal by itself. Plasmanta's tail is cut off at the top, and even the top half of Cyclohm's upper head is cut off just above the eye. However, if teambuilder is the main place where the sprite will exist on PS, then I think we should at least try to make sure the head isn't cut off at a bad angle. For Cyclohm, it doesn't look that bad since the other two heads give reference, and the cut off itself happens above the eye. Pretty much, if you're going to have a cut off, making it above the eye just looks better I think. Here, in this screenshot, I used inspect element and replaced Syclant's sprite in teambuilder with my Naviathan sprite to show what it would look like.

It's unfortunate that the feet kinda blend in with the word Pokemon, but as you can see, all of my sprite's face is within view, and only the top most part of the crest is cut off. We know we're dealing with a big sprite, but it's nice to try to make sure the head is in almost full view. I encourage all other spriters to consider this as well, especially since teambuilder is where sprites are still used.

I can't wait to see Quany's final sub, and I'm still hopeful that DougJustDoug will make a last minute entry.

 

[Quanyails]

Final Submission

Whoops, I've got work to do now, so here are my sprites.

I had initially wanted a sunset theme to Naviathan's shiny, but I didn't want to make it too dark, since I've noticed a trend of mine that makes shinies darker than the original. I also didn't make the design mostly golden despite the theme, because as much as I like the idea, Cawmodore, Aurumoth, and to some extent Revenankh incorporate golden metal into their design, and I had to try something different. What came out was this gradient from cyan to red. I had the Great White Fleet in mind as the colors developed, but I don't think the shiny has any relation besides in name. I'm not satisfied with the shinies, and if I have time, I'll fine-tune them.

Note that Pokemon Showdown! has a sprite mode for in-battle graphics, so sprites are used outside the teambuilder!

Background test:

Comparison test: