itch.io

Hi. I am glad you like my work. I have had plans to include more animations but they are very time-consuming and I am slow in general (this is very much a side gig for me). I always strive to release highly polished content for itch which is part of the reason I’m so slow and why I occasionally take something down temporarily or indefinitely if I think it needs more work.

I like character design a lot but animation is still something I am not very confident with and I am seldom happy with the results. The result is as you find it: I have dozens of unique character designs but relatively basic animation. I could animate all those characters but that is a great deal of work. I could be selective but folks will have different preferences and usually a broad approach is best.

One idea I have played with a little is to release my character templates as a resource. If I were to animate those it would mean I only have to do each template the once but it would also mean all of my customers interested in the animations would have to figure out how to edit the templates to include the clothes, hair, accessories, etc that make up a unique character design.

It’s a bit of a conundrum so I haven’t pushed it in either direction except in experiments. A lot of indie devs do have passing or better familiarity w/ aseprite and similar programs so it’s possible templates would be good enough for many users. What do you think about that idea?

Not so much. Summer has brought some life changes, a big move, etc and I’ve been busy with the stuff that gets me paid. I will definitely be returning to this soon, however. There’s still a ton of Phase 3, 4 and newer Doomsday era stuff I’ll want to do.

Plus more classic costumes, villains, etc.

Right on. Let me know how you like it.

Hi. Sorry for late reply, was away. I do plan on eventually adding a few. They are more time-consuming to make and require a different approach to pixel art than the other assets I make from itch. I am assuming you mean RPG Maker static battlers. If you mean battle-animated character sprites, those are no less time consuming because of the animation requirements. I do have some plans for those as well, however. I am just slow!

Hi again. That character’s portrait is not yet available but will be added in a future update to the pack. The main reason it hasn’t been done yet is I am trying to figure out the best way to reconfigure the current pack structure for better user convenience. Once I’ve done so, I’ll be updating them all.

Try again, please. I think it was a naming convention issue but should be fixed. You now also have some free portraits for your trouble (from Pack 2). Sorry about the issues!

Thank YOU! I’ll keep any eye on your project, looks interesting!

The short answer is no. Animating sprites by hand is very time-consuming and by hand is the only way I’ll do it. I do have plans to release a template-based pack that would include the kind of animations you’re looking for, but it would be up to users to customize the templates to create animations for the unique character designs included in my itch packs. This would require some proficiency with pixel art and programs like Aseprite so it won’t work for everyone. Eventually this may turn into a project to add expanded animations to ALL my existing sprite designs but hoooo boy it would take me a while.

Just so you know, I’ll be releasing an update to this w/ the features you requested as well as an entirely new page of items. Different sorta theme than the others but I think you’ll enjoy it. I’ll try to get it out soon!

You’re welcome!

Fixed. This was quite the crazy oversight, the pack file uploaded was the wrong one. Now the pack contains the correct portraits with the correct range of sizes. Meanwhile, I need to double check all the other ones!

Ah. I should have asked you that in the first place. It seems the archive is packed incorrectly and I hid the update file! I can’t believe it! No one noticed this problem in over a year so thank you! I’ll fix it right away.

Which version of the pack is this? Have you downloaded the update?

Hi. Sorry, I’m not sure I understand. You don’t see the folder but the ones in the folder don’t match w/ RPG maker? I included an “RPG Maker Compat” folder w/ every portrait pack, I am looking at the .zip contents right now, and those sheets are made using the RPG Maker official template dimensions. That doesn’t mean I didn’t make a mistake somewhere! I definitely could have. I just need your help narrowing it down a little more. Please provide some more detail.

I can do that. It might take me a bit but I’ll comment here again when it’s ready and uploaded into the pack.

The way sprite sizing works, 16x16 defines the tile size not so much the character size. Essentially, the character fits on a 16x16 tile grid but is a little taller than the tiles because of perspective. You don’t want the character to appear to be the same height as a table or for their feet to line up exactly with the bottom of a tile. Doing so causes visual issues with this and similar art styles. There are, however, art styles that are stricter with this and you’ve likely seen pixel art games, especially ones with smaller resolutions (like 8x8) that follow different perspective rules. Games with sprites that are somewhat taller than the tile size became more common in the SNES era which is my main inspiration for the itch assets.

Some of the characters are larger scale because they needed to be much larger than the usual human-sized sprites (such as Hulk, Hulkbuster, etc). It’s probably not a mistake that you’re noticing the sizes aren’t exactly as labeled, it’s intentional, but I can see how this might be confusing if you’re new to pixel art scaling stuff.

If there is an error, like a 16x16 sprite that is twice as large as it should be, it could be scaling error from when I was producing he sprite sheets. To know for sure, I’d need more details. Can you tell me what you’re trying to achieve with these assets? Were there specific ones that seemed the wrong size?

EDIT: Misunderstood what you were asking a little. Here’s a better answer.

You could achieve this pretty easily by upscaling the 16x16 assets (there are 16x16 and 48x48 included in the pack) by 2x. You would want to use “nearest neighbor” settings to avoid distortion. These assets already use solid black outlines, you could in most cases simply paint bucket the black to white for selection UI stuff. There may be a few examples where this wouldn’t work but would require minimal editing to fix.

If you don’t have the know-how to do this, I can put together an update that includes both 32x32 versions AND white outline version. No one’s ever asked for this before but more options can’t hurt. I should probably just do it anyway.

I can do all of those. I’ll refer back to your list and make all the variants you’re talking about. I like to make variants even though I usually stick to MCU designs.

I’ve not worked in Tiled before but as far as I know, my spritesheeths should work just fine if you define the size of the sheet and the size of each cell (usually 16x16)???

If it’s not that simple and if you can tell me more, I can look into doing this.

Oh no worries. I dunno how good itch is about letting ppl know about updates so usually when someone specifically asks for something, I let them know when it’s available in the comments. Cheers!

Just an FYI that a major update has now been uploaded. It has somewhat different file name and packaging but all sprites have been tweaked at least a little so feel free to DL and use the new ones or mix and match! The new content is a few new sprites for AoU and a huge pile of Captain America sprites.

Pretty cool!

Yes those characters are all in some state of WIP right now. I am working on the 90s animated X-Men versions, I’ve got Netflix’s version of Daredevil, and a handful of Spider-man related sprites all in the works for example. Blade, F4, and Ghost Rider are all planned.

I think I did. I’ll release an update to this right away. My neurodivergent ass sometimes needs a push from the people!

Hmm. Yeah, actually. I have a few designs I never fully finished for different variants. Like the original 90s animated X-Men designs. Btw, are you making a fan game where comic Marvel characters fight their MCU counterparts?

This is such a good concept and the art is awesome.

Haha no worries. Thanks for coming back to edit! You can use these in commercial games just bear in mind I don’t own these IP so I release fanwork for free just to acknowledge that. But at the same time, there’s an entire fanworks gray market where people are able to make money producing art and material of big IPs. There’s also that the translation to pixel art might be enough of an aesthetic change to cancel out the similarities to the original material, whether it’s an animated show like Edgerunners or a live action movie like The Terminator.

So, long story short, use your best judgment!

Ah, ok. Cool. You’re looking for basically the Harvest Moon template of tools and NPC archetypes. I can definitely consider that.

I meant to mention that I do have plans for an animation template pack that will be basically “blank” character sprites in a variety of animations with instructions on how to recreate existing sprites from RCC, RDC or NR or make custom sprites. If and when I do this, farming animations are definitely something I can add.

Hi! I’m so glad you like them! I’ve actually been asked to add some features to Nine Realms that would work for a farm sim style game. I’m slow with new stuff but I like to try and respond to requests like this.

By farmer using tools I’m assuming you mean something like the standard roster of tools from something like SDV. So: pick, shovel, hoe, watering can, axe, etc?

If you don’t mind, can you say more about what you’d be looking for from an NPC pack focused on farming? I’m assuming you’d want it to be compatible with the Nine Realms theme overall.

Thanks for your input! I’m definitely willing to consider this so the more detail the better.

Massive bang for buck here.

Ah. Cool. I’ve worked on autotiles in the past, specifically for RPGmaker. I wonder how much overlap there is between Godot’s system and that one. Autotiles are interesting. When I started out, a lot of people were using custom maps made with placeable tiles and props and then importing them to engine. Autotiles just didn’t seem all that in demand but I imagine projects that use procedural generation (or folks who need to make a lot of maps quickly) could make great use of them.

Yeah! Gamedev (and related pursuits) is hard! We gotta support each other when we can, I think.

As for assets… what kinda biomes we talking? I haven’t worked directly with Godot’s autotile format (I mostly make grid-based tilesets like digital lego I guess) but is there a place I can find out more about that? It might be worthwhile to create some stuff that autotiles but in the past it hasn’t really been great from a time spent vs. client demand standpoint. Things have probably changed as Godot becomes more popular, though!

Hey, we can all relate to delayed projects or having too many to deal with! I’m so slow! Haha.

Don’t be hard on yourself and thank you so much for the compliment. There’s more to come including new portraits for the added characters, revamps of all the other RCC character sprites, etc. I am currently working my way through the Gang Packs!

Also got a few surprises in store that I’m slowly putting together. Can’t wait to share them but wait I must haha. Til they’re ready anyway.

Adorable art!

No problem! Thanks for using my stuff! More to come!

Hi there. It’s PNG only.

Ah no worries! Thanks, also, for the compliment and the follow.

I just followed you to follow you. Your projects are cool. If you wanna send me a key (to what though?) then you can email me at hedgewizardgame@gmail.com

Thanks!