RODEN'S PROFILE

@Craze: It looks great so far. Everything is organized very nicely, and the way the shop progresses (with the +100 Essence per skill) is a nice way to level things out. If I had to be that guy who throws out the super nitpicky comment though, I'd say that the faded faces aren't really faded enough. Maybe like, another 10% or something? I don't know, it probably won't cause any problems since you'll remember who has what skills anyways.

I actually haven't sat down and watched a lot of anime the whole way through. The only ones that I've seen entirely are Gurren Lagann, The Big O, Hellsing, Trigun, Power Stone, Evangelion (ugh), and I think Trinity Blood & Utawarumono as well. I also watched the entirety of Yu-Gi-Oh for nostalgia's sake, and Yu-Gi-Oh GX (against my better judgement, at the request of a friend).

If I had to explain what makes a great anime it would probably be the same core things that make a good movie or game. Characters, Story, Music, and Artistic Design. That's why The Big O and Gurren Lagann still remain my favourites, they just ooze perfection in those categories (with the exception of season 2 of The Big O, of course. Season 1 overshadows it and makes up for it though.) I would say that Trigun is really good as well, but once you read Trigun Maximum it stops being a great show and starts being a poor adaptation.

Things that I can't stand in anime would be annoying characters (Evangelion), forced moral dilemmas (Evangelion), and a confusing, misguided plot that likes to believe its really deep (Evangelion). All jokes aside, if you want to know what I don't like in anime you can pretty much look at NGE and have your answer.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that all of the anime that I've really enjoyed seems to have a "magic number" of episodes: 26. I don't know what it is, like I said, I haven't watched a lot of anime, so maybe that's why it seems to be a trend. I need to research this more.

The ability of sprites to express themselves is entirely dependent on the size and anatomy of the sprite. A bigger, more realistically built sprite will probably be able to pull of tons more actions than a smaller one. It's also largely dependent on your skill as a spriter, or the skill of the person you hire. If you're clever enough you can work outside of the boundaries of a limited size.

Something to keep in mind is that sprites don't necessarily have to express themselves like normal people. Just look at games like Final Fantasy 5 or 6- the characters jump and bounce around, wave their arms heavily, spin, and laugh with their entire body.

The good thing about animating expressions with sprites is that making a template that includes all of them will let you simply colour the characters over it and have a complete page of animations for that person. In that way having 80+ characters isn't a huge problem if you have the time and the will to finish all of them.

Don't know if any of that helps. I'm not so good at explaining things.

Sweet deal.

In the summer of 2014 me and my partner, matrixmancs are going to the Academy of Design and Technology in Toronto and studying Video Game Design. After that 18 month course we're planning to get started on our independent game design company. I haven't thought about much after that of course, since that's a good 14-18 years worth of time right there.

(Maybe that estimate seems ridiculously over-the-top, but given the production schedules we've lined up for ourselves and the projects we want to do I think it's fair).