Characters (Part 1)

September 2, 2011
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This is a 2-Dimensional game(2D game). So, most of characters in this game I drew them myself. If you are not good at drawing and painting. You probably look for free sprites from anywhere you can get from the internet. If you draw something in Flash, the graphic will be vector. If you use sprites from somewhere else, the graphic will be bitmap.

Figure 4.1 Drawn in Flash
  

Vector graphics comprise mathematical representations of lines, fills, colors, and gradients, whereas bitmap graphics are a pixel-by-pixel representation of the color, and optionally, alpha channel information in a visual element.

The greatest advantage that vectors have over bitmaps is that they can be scaled (both up and down) and translated without losing any fidelity. After all, you're only performing basic addition, multiplication and matrix operations on mathematical formulae. Flash is regularly spoken of as a "vector animation tool" although it can (and does) handle bitmaps really well too.
 
Bitmaps, on the other hand, also have several advantages over vectors. Vectors, especially complex ones, can be both larger in filesize (and thus bandwidth requirements) and slower in performance than the same visual element rendered as a bitmap.

Anyway I prefer drawing my character in Flash. Here are all my characters for Muay Thai 1.(see Figure 4.2)

Figure 4.2: Characters from Muay Thai 1

  

Some of these characters don’t have names. My main guy is with the red pants. His name is “Goh”. Hahahah,  you should know the guys from Street Fighter. They look pretty crappy. I did not put a lot of time drawing them back then. Figure 4.3 shows all my characters from Muay Thai 2.

Figure 4.3: Characters from Muay Thai 2
  

Let’s talk about how to design your main character. First thing to think about is the basic movement which could be standing, walking, crouching, guarding, etc. Then we will go to attack movement, i.e. punches, kicks, special moves, etc.
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-Standing-
  

If you just put only one graphic for a standing pose for your character, he would be really bored(if he could feel anything). In Muay Thai 1, I did put only one graphic because I am too lazy :p And yes, my red pants guy told me he doesn’t like it.(see Figure 4.4).

Figure 4.4
  

So, in Muay Thai 2 I do loop to my main character as seen in Figure 4.5 below. This makes my character more interesting even though he is just standing ;)

Figure 4.5

I drew only 3 pictures to run standing loop. As you can see above, the 2nd picture and the 4th picture are the same picture.
 
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-Walking-

The same thing goes for walking here. As we can see from Figure 4.6 below, there are 4 states of walking animation(I drew all 4 states).

Figure 4.6: from Muay Thai 1

Let's take a look at walking animation from Muay Thai 2 in Figure 4.7.

 

Figure 4.7: from Muay Thai 2

Only 4 pictures would be just fine to animate walking motion.

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