A Battle with Pixel Art and the Creatures 1 Grendel
Written onAside from my time in Creatures and working on plans for the CCSF 2012, my other main project has been fixing the Creatures 1 Grendel. In particular, the final step rests with the female Grendel. Everything is all set… Except for a redesigned head. I have started on a design at least ten times, and each time is just as discouraging as the last! Actually, aside from the pressure of the release that many are waiting on, I have had some good laughs. My trashed designs have included female Grendels who resembled Donald Trump, Bozo the Clown, and a strange creature with a mop on its head. I actually wish I had saved these blunders to share! If ever anyone needed a reason to laugh at me, this would be it! Except I think there are already a bunch of laughable moments.
With the laughter out of the way, I am rather disappointed in myself. Though there are 26 individual images that make up a Creatures 1 head, one could get away with creating seven completed images to create a new hairstyle on an existing head. Yet my lack of pixel art and spriting skills has translated into a whopping zero completed images. Yet despite this apparent failure, I am more determined than ever to complete this project!
The easiest solution is to simply recolor the male Grendel head images, which is all that was required for the rest of the body parts. It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, though… There were over one hundred individual images to go through! My hesitation to do this is because the female would then end up with the same hairstyle. Not exactly what anyone had in mind! Yet this would allow female Grendels to be fixed in the same way as their male counterparts. They would still be distinguishable: Females have a much lighter appearance, after all.
I wanted to see if there were any suggestions or ideas from the Creatures community before moving forward. I intended for the completed Creatures 1 Grendel to be released long ago, with its many fixes that improved postures and gaits. The males have been completed for some time, yet the poor females still suffer from some issues! If having a recolored head for the time being wouldn’t deter players too much, I can have the completed release out within days. I’m open to any thoughts, though! The completed Grendel download can now be found here.
Personally, I think the best idea would be to make the original head fit on the fixed body. Adjust the BD (which appears to be the biggest issue with the current version of the updated C1 grendel), tweak the palette a little bit, etc.
I honestly don’t see a reason to try making a completely new head if it’s not necessary, especially if said completely new head is just a recolored copy of the males.
The only issue I have with reusing the original head is that it was created by someone else. I believe this was Don, so it might be easy to get permission from the original creator. I also made some necessary updates to the male Grendel head, including filling in dead spots that made some portions of the outline rather clunky.
I had wished to create something more than just a recolored version of the male Grendel, but it’s clear that my skills aren’t up to par in this department! At least it will mean a complete fix for the Creatures 1 Grendel, though, which I hope to eventually have in C2 and C3/DS.
I’m pretty sure the female head was actually included with Creatures 1 – it’s just that no one ever saw it because by default female grendels never appear in the game.
I can see where you got the idea that Don made it, but Don probably had nothing to do with it.
Here’s a trick you can do in MS paint for easy recolors. It lets you replace any color with another color of your choice.
Get the eyedropper tool. Left click on the color you want to replace. Get the eyedropper again, then right click on the color you want to replace the first with. Now get the eraser and hold the right mouse button as you go over the sprite. The first color will be replaced with the second! I work with Pokemon pixel art quite a bit, and that trick is a life saver. I hope it helps!
Thank you for your hard work on the C1 Grendels. I’m sure this will be a wonderful release.
With the shape of the grendel heads being as they are I can see how difficult it is to find a style that would fit them, especially with the females. Though I can see them having short hair like the males the only styles I can actually see are either punk or celebrities like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. But I’d be much more happy with a cleaned up and corrected female head. xD
Grendel Man: Very interesting! I had no idea that the female head was included with Creatures 1. I honestly thought that they had been created by someone in the community. I might ask around to be sure, but if that’s the case, I won’t have a problem with just polishing up the existing heads! Only thing I might change is the elder hairstyle… Something about it really bothers me, but it might just be a simple fix. Thanks for the information!
The Cheshire Cat: Thank you for that tip! I actually use Photoshop and change the hue, saturation, and color balance. If I was using Paint, though, this would certainly help me out! I’ll keep it in mind if I need to use the program.
SpringRain: You’re welcome! I was hoping to come out with something a little better than a basic recolor, but I’m pretty happy with the polished sprites and fixes to the body data. After the completed C1 Grendel has been out and tested for a bit, it will be making its way into C2 and C3/DS to help out with the issues of navigating slopes!
Mioonktoo: The Grendel head is rather difficult to work with, but I also blame my troubles with my lack of artistic skills! It’s a learning process and I can’t complain, yet I don’t want everyone to be stuck with a Donald Trump or clown look-alike! Ha ha! Looks like a cleaned up female head will be in the works. Now that I’m pretty sure of the direction I’m going in, this project should finally be completed within the next week or two!
I’d love to see a video of the updated grendels walking around Albia. :)
You read my mind, Malkin! I’m planning on putting together a few Creatures 1 videos, and it would be a perfect time to show off the updated Grendels! There is one gait issue that is bugging me a bit, so perhaps showing that off would explain the slight delay. There is also the most annoying one pixel problem with two head positions… I’ve tried many things, but no solution has been found yet. I’ll get there, I’m sure!