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2D ARTIST - Char Design/ Animation/ Spriting and more

Note: I only take paid offers. Also, please keep in mind, without the details, I can't create an estimate.

Portfolio Link: www.stefanbilly.com

I'm a freelancing 2D artist, offering my skillset and experience. If you're interested in working with me, or have any questions regarding this matter, please contact me under - contact@stefanbilly.com

More worksamples can be found in my portfolio gallery. Also, the pictures are easier to look at and in better quality - LINK












Whatchu Workin' On? Tell us!

And here is the first screenshot of my progress on a custom battle system in rpgmaker2k3.



It is a bit like the Grandia System with the huge timeline. While the hero icons are upside of the time-line, the monster icons are going to be shown below. I'm not sure yet weather they're represented as skulls (only bosses going to have their own icon) or if I'm going to make an individual icon for each monster. Though, if I'm already drawing every singly monster + it's animations, I guess making a little icon for each of them on top wont hurt.

The general idea:
CL1-7 means "Cell Level". During every section of the line, every character can act once. Attacks can be used once per line and wont move the icon back. Skills will move you back for a certain amount depending on the skill itself. Also, weather a certain skill can be cast or not depends on the current position (aka what cell level your character is).
I will also implement a Limit-System, which makes it possible to use Limits the same way (better limits available with higher cell level). Whenever your turn is used up for the current section, the icon will turn grey.

So far the timeline works great. The most time I spent on figuring out how to make Agility affect the speed of the icon moving to the right. I found a solve on how to make every single point in agi affect the speed, but also balance it. Especially because the player raises stats of the characters individually, able to get agility from ~50(at start) to 999. This huge difference shouldn't cause problems with the speed of how icons move to the right.

Just in case anyone else is going for such a system, here is how mine works (for one icon)

setting a variable for Y coordinate first. Then X is a random number between (in my case) 15 and 35, this just to make it random where the icons start and not having them hide behind each other. Now set a variable for the hero and call it "Agility Boost". I set Agility Boost to 500. Now set a Label. Make now another Variable for each hero ("Agility Pot") and add the 500+ the hero's Agility. Now add a branch: If Agility Pot is higher than 1500, add X coordinate+1. Then also subtract 1500 from Agi Pot.
Then add a waiting time (or empty battle animation if you want a more exact FPS timer). Then Jump to Label. You can also add Slow, Haste and K.O. to affect the moving speed or even halt it. For Slow, I set another variable (slow pot) equal to Agi Pot, divide it by 2 and then put it into a branch - if hero in slow subtract slow pot from agi pot. Haste, I simply set an additional +1 to the x coordinate (making the icon move 2 instead of 1 pixel). For K.O. just set the whole labeled process under a branch with an else option. Set the branch into if hero K.O. - change x coordinate to 15. In Else, just put everything you had labeled. If you want to stop the icon movement (for example to give the player time to think chosing a skill), you could also add a switch operation before the whole label and turn it on every time you want the process to halt. set a branch, if switch is on, and then only insert "jump to label".

For the mob intelligence: I didn't implement it yet, but it's theoretically easy. Make a random number between 15 and ~300 (the lenght of your line), set this as the destination in his x coordinate, then make him start moving there. More clever system would be of course to make it check before this, whatever curcial happens during the fight. Like when a hero casts a certain skill, the monster will try countering it with a reaction based on his own skills. Since this system is custom and self-made, it is FAR easier to make monsters act intelligent.

Edit: Since I'm at it right now: It can be a bit more complicated based on how the engine works. Making the monster decide for when to attack, you need to set a parallel process event first (I have absolutely no idea why it's not recognized when called, like all the other events). Set Label1 first. Then insert a Variable (Mob Dice) between 31 and whereever you want your monster's limit on the time line to be, set it to the end of the line if you want it to be able to wait until the end. Now set another Label (Label2). Add a Branch - if Monster X (the X axis) is equal to Mob Dice (=when the icon that moves to the right hits the random spot decided by mob dice), then fill the branch with the action it takes (you can include another variable with random nrs. between 1 and (amount of attacks the mob has) to make it chose randomly, you could even add on top, that it's based on where your monster icon is to make certain skills available for it depending on the time line. Just add branches in - if monster X axis is higher than - then include the skills that become available. But you set a new variable with 1 more random number for each branch, or make another label that re-dices if the monster decides for a skill that can't be cast yet. Finally, for this big branch (if X axis = Mob Dice), make an Else-Handler. Put Jump to Label 2 inside. This is because if Label 2 doesn't exist, the whole process will repeat like mad, making your monster attack almost at every single pixel it moves.

Whatchu Workin' On? Tell us!

Thanks a lot Aegis Drakan and Dreaded!

Okay, so by now the list of items is complete, and here is a video showing how I'm using the system:
(click the screenshot)


What's missing now are the effects of each app (materia), but beside maybe stat apps (those adding HP, atk, def etc), I have to wait with implementing this until I'm done with my battle system.

Edit: Looking at this now, I might be going to change the sound effect that happens when you equip an app. It's the boring same sound as when opening any menu. I'll see if I can find something catchier, that makes you feel happy when gearing up with Apps :D

Whatchu Workin' On? Tell us!

I'm so damn proud of myself, programmed a materia system all by myself without any tutorial in rpgmaker 2k3. When I started this, I never thought I'd get this to work ever, especially because you only find discouraging posts when you google materia system for 2k3. Anyways, here's a screenshot:



The basic concept: The party levels up 10 times in total (usually after boss fights). Every time you get a levelup, it raises HP, and either gets you access to a new Cell-Level (enabling better spells of the same kind), or a new cell (those hexagon forms). They are filled with Apps, which serve very similair to FF7 Materias. There are stat-apps (raising stats and HP), tech-apps (adding new magic skills) and support-apps (adding supportive abilities, such as protection from certain conditions, auto-positive conditions like regen or haste, double attack, double cast, etc. etc. - a lot like yellow/blue materia).


I'll post a video as soon as I'm done with registering all items (currently at ~50 of 200 apps, and I'll go to bed before I end up with a tendonitis. With this part of my custom menu, it's pretty much finished. After that, I'll start working on my custom battle system :D.

Whatchu Workin' On? Tell us!

Dankeschön! Allerdings bin ich Österreicher :D

So, finally fixed the item menu. That means, 3 more to go.





There is a video of how the interface works, as it's animated a bit too.
Also a video of the hardcore codes.

www.stefanbilly.com/data/hb2itemmenu.wmv
www.stefanbilly.com/data/hb2itemprogram.wmv

Sidenotes:
- Please don't bother with the item names
- I know about the text plugin, but I didn't want to mix 2 text styles (it's too much work to copy the font the way it's compressed ingame)
- The Facesets are portraits of my friends, they're drawn after portraits, but the size of the pictures makes them look like photographs again.

Whatchu Workin' On? Tell us!

This room was one hell of programming work. Every single corner is full of events with 3+ pages.

Here are 2 Screenshots:
canalization unwatered:

and watered:


Still, there are like 10 more Panoramas for the water animation and the animation when water is flooding / draining. Here is a video where you can see how much work was put into this room:


www.stefanbilly.com/data/kanal_rpg2k3_sb.wmv

BTW - yes, that is right, you see how my hero is using a human corpse as a bridge.

Which to use?

Almost none of the games you mentioned has anything close to a realistic proportion-styled character sheet. Compare the head-body proportion relation in almost all of the titles you listed before using them as argument (if you don't see the SD factor naturally). And no idea why you even mention Super Mario.
Also check the last sentence you quoted off me.

Besides, the spritecheets I posted can be considered non-SD as well, even though the heads are still way bigger than for real human proportions. Meaning, of course it's possible to make sprites look more "realistic" in a certain pixel limitation, the question merely is how much you're willing to sacrifice of the silhouette (showing legs, perspective on figure etc.) and detail (for example because human proportions mean small heads = barely any space to show at least even something that could be recognized as the eyes).

Which to use?

The "cutesy" style mainly exists because it comes from a time when possibilities where quite limited, and these where the best solution to fill the small amount of pixels existing. It survived for one reason - tradition. Honestly, decide a style that fits your scenes. FF7 had a mixture of mature-characters and SD-chracters, which would be an option too.

If you go for a realistic style, I'd suggest you to reconsider the appearance. First, remove the eyes as they are right now. Showing the eye's white makes them seem big, as well as making them round/vertical rather than horizonally shaped (based on the amount of pixels, but horizonal formed shape still seems more realistic). Also the proportions of the arms are a bit off.
As an example, I'm trying to fill the little space given in rpg2k3 with something mature looking. This is an example of generic male/female figures I made:

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu97/Moongrape/selectiveB2_zps7f206e0e.png
http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu97/Moongrape/selectiveC1_zps4d524f05.png

Maybe it helps you, maybe not.

Video Plugin - 2k3

Well it was the first map I made, and I've worked with chipsets back then. By now I've switched to panoramas instead, using chipset only for the elements above the hero. I will remake the map, I'm considering to make a transition from the cutscene into the map, by having the train end in the station, while the camera moves into position (ancle of the map). Since I'm using pictures, it should become a way smoother transition than in some scenes of FF7-9.

Here are some of the newer maps with paralax bg.




Yeah I don't think it's jpegs or anything like that when it comes to those artifacts. I generally render out via pngs or targas. But as soon as I index the millions of shades tend to crap out. I'm personally using RPG Maker VX Ace as a result anyway so it's not a problem for me anymore. But I'm still curious about your render settings. Do you use mental ray?

Maybe it's the program you're using. At least, speaking for PS4+ it works for me in most cases. The thing with the shadows might be, that the original keeps the same amount of informations inside them as if there was no shadow, while indexing limits these areas even more, since it's reduced into a palette for darker values and colors only. It might help if you add a layer and brush into it with black, at 50% or less opacity, if you're good in it, you could also try toning light and mid tones/values down.

As for the video: I used Global Illumination and Raytracing, but it shouldn't affect how noisy the picture ends up. It might become quite noisy if you're using this IPR function for editing, but I've never touched that so far, usually I'm editing stuff in different programs.

Video Plugin - 2k3

Just really need to share this:

www.stefanbilly.com/data/rpg2k3cutscene.wmv
(sorry for the ddl but it's impossible to find a video upload that works AND doesn't require you to register)

It's the ingame footage of the train video, thanks again for the idea with the battle animations used as fps buffer, it worked perfectly! Damn I'm so excited about making cutscenes for my game now. This looks so much better than I ever imagined it to be possible =).
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