Alien sprite

Hi all,

I have built a nice alien character for use in 2D games. Here is a preview of walking animation:

<img src="http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/92bc1745177f35e23bc5e8321aae67a06g.jpg">

There are also sequences for Die, Defense & Attack actions.

Because I am not professional I have setup a small fee to check if there is enough interest. If anyone wants this character for his games then he can purchase only for 1,00 �.

My PayPal e-mail is: . Please include in your contact information a valid e-mail in order to sent you the files (a series of .PNG files 128x128 px)

Sorry if I'm ruining your fun and money-earning, but isn't it a bit overrated to sell sprites?

Just saying.

As I stated above, I have setup a small fee just to check if there is enough real interest for my work. Do you really believe that 1,00 � fee is actually selling?

Speaking generally, If I was a professional artist then I would make a site for selling sprites because there are no companies selling sprites. There is a gap in the market for this area. If you search the Internet for 3D models you can find thousands of them in any quality and for any purpose. Personally I didn't find a nice commercial site which is doing this job for 2D sprites .

Under this point of view, no I don't believe that selling sprites is overrated.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

EDIT: If you like my sprite just drop an e-mail and I will send the files without any charge. I would be happy to see my sprite in action in some of your creations

If you're handing over a product, or service, for a fee, then you are, by definition, selling.

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're trying to do here. It's obvious that you want to get your work out there (who doesn't?), but asking for a fee, though very small, for the use of one of your sprites and in the same motion calling yourself non-professional gives very mixed messages of what you're trying to accomplish.

There are no companies selling sprites because frankly, there's no market for it (at least not one that I've noticed). The reason several sites for 3D models exist, Turbosquid to name one, is that there actually does exist a market for it. There are people out there who either doesn't have the resources to do 3D art or don't have the know-how to do it, but still need 3D models. Be it for games, adverts or what have you.

2D Sprites are also much more tied to artstyle than 3D models. Most 2D games tend to look pretty different (excluding the occasional fan/clone game of course), so if you sell your sprite to a few devs and one or two of them makes a game that gets some notice, you will probably not sell many more of that particular sprite because people want their games to stand out.

Also, you can make drastic changes with very little when working in 3D. From something as simple as a different shader and texture combination, to something more extreme like re-sculpting an existing model. The equivalent when working in 2D would be much more time consuming and would ultimately exceed the cost of buying a spriteset in the first place.

I would instead suggest that you show some of your work and try to get some work as a freelancer if you want to make sprites and make some money at the same time. Or if all you want is to get your stuff out there and expand your portfolio, find some indie group to work with on a game. There are plenty of people out there working on stuff.

There's something I'm wondering about your sprite. It clearly isn't the actual size, since you state yourself that the actual sprite is 128x128 pixels and in png. But is it pixel art or something else (rendered 3d, vector, bitmap painting)?

Having a preview version of a work you're selling is fine. But when it comes to game assets, such as sprites, you should at least include one frame of the animation in actual size (and in png if it's pixel art), even if you slap a preview sticker on top of it. The reason is that if people are interested in your sprite, but all they see is a scaled down version less than half the size of the actual work, they're most likely going to skip over your stuff. Because they can't see what they would be paying money for.

Good luck to you.

[quote:2od59mxx]...but asking for a fee, though very small, for the use of one of your sprites and in the same motion calling yourself non-professional gives very mixed messages of what you're trying to accomplish...

And those who are not professionals may request a fee.

[quote:2od59mxx]...you should at least include one frame of the animation in actual size...

You are right. Here is the walk animation:

Only a walk animation? If I'm paying for a collection of images, I want the most bang for my buck, daggummit! Where's a jump, crouch, idle, climb, or roll animation?

Only a walk animation? If I'm paying for collection of images, I want the most bang for my buck, daggummit! Where's a jump, crouch, idle, climb, or roll animation?

You should read more carefully my first post:

[quote:3azem4wm]There are also sequences for Die, Defense & Attack actions.

[quote:1d58b7hq]You are right. Here is the walk animation:

Interesting, looks like a cross between Kiff from Futurama, and Disney's Aladin.

Any way, I'd suggest you get yourself a DA account, and perhaps a blog or website, and practice, practice, practice.

The key to success in graphic art is not standing on one sprite, but billions and billions of pixels.

And those who are not professionals may request a fee.

You are kind of missing my point. Of course you can request a fee, set a price, charge money, call it what you will, if you made the work and want to sell it. I'm not questioning your right to charge money for your work.

If you where hoping to make money by selling it, why so low a price? Like I said, when you've sold it a few times the work will lose its appeal to new buyers since other people already would have made games using the work.

If you just wanted some exposure, then why charge money at all? If it were free more people would be prone to use it since it doesn't cost them financially. To ensure that you get credit, and keep your copyright of the work, you could include a Creative Commons-license.

The Bespectabled One brings up a good point. As far as we know the character only has four animations. No jump, climb and/or idle could make a potential buyer go "Oh, it doesn't have that?" and then move on to something else, and since you can't really accomodate everything a character would need (depending on who'd use it) it would make much more sense for you to take commissions, this is fairly regular stuff at places like Deviant Art and the like.

What you would do is instead of trying to get people to buy your readymade stuff, you'd instead show people "I can do this" and point to your work and then have people ask you to do sprites for them. Whether you're trying to make money or get exposure (maybe both), taking commissions would probably benefit you more in the long run.

The character looks good. Looks like a fairly distinguishable silhouett. The animation is also pretty good. It could use some tweaking though. Since the 'things' that come out of his spine move fairly much he could probably ha a little more snap in his arm movements and bounce in his steps. I think he could benefit from loosening up his torso as well. Compared to everthing else, it's pretty stiff.

I recommend you get a hold of "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams. Any aspiring animator should read it.

And as Newt said, practice, practice, practice until you can't practice anymore. Then you pracitce anyway.

Hi,

Hi pap560 I wouldn�t normally comment on a thread like this but I�d say to you keep it up and see where it goes for you. Even if you don�t sell anything for a while at least you�ve created an asset, and improved your skills you can use towards a portfolio for any future prospective employer. There is still demand for 2d sprite artists for mobile gaming and such. You can always try your hand at 3d also.

My suggestion. That particular sprite animation isn�t something I would use in my games so you would probably want to think about better to targeting your sprite creation skills by finding out what people may want first. I think the value you offer is not the spite you create but your ability to create good quality relevant sprites people will pay for.

Good luck

Thank you guys. Your suggestions are really very useful for me. The 'Your Creations' section, refers to project creations. It would be nice if there was a section only for the game resources.

inkBot bring up some good ideas. And, so you have practice, why not start making just random sprites for free? That way, in a couple weeks, maybe you'll actually have something worth buying.

(Not to insult your first idea.)

OK, here are the rest of the animations I've made:

Die

Attack

Defense

Climb

Jump

Idle

Why don't you use them yourself? You could have the worlds first game about a camp alien!

Your sprite looks very cool indeed.Im using 3d models and then i render them so that i can use them in 2d games.There still is a market for spritesheets if you want to sell some ,But then these spritesheets must be at the very least as good as the streetfighter sheets to name an example.And even the streetfighter sheets are going for free seeing that they are copyrighted.

Create a demo game with your sprite to show how good the sprite will animate and behave in different scenarios.That may get people interested in buying the actual sheets.But with all this new tech at almost everyone's disposal it would be very difficult to sell any sheets for whatever reason.

Selling 3d models on the other hand is still very popular seeing that not everyone can create 3d characters or cars.Although that seems to be changing as well.I can create highly detailed models with zbrush ,Blender3d and even daz3d in a manner of minutes.So one of these days 3d models will also see a decline in the market as 3d model creation programs are getting more user friendly as they come out.