The afterlife gets a facelift!

Today I’d like to show the art behind one of the characters in Why Am I Dead 2, and use it as a bit of an example for what can be expected in the sequel’s art.

Meet one of ten major characters in the game, Alton.

As you can see, I’m sticking with the Earthbound-esque style of the previous game, which means bright colors, strong outlines, and simple shapes.  However, I will be putting much more attention to detail in each sprite, making presentation better all around.  This particular sprite above is the result of many iterations, and a lot of time spent learning more about pixel art.  I’m generally not so concerned about visuals, but I really want to cram as much personality into each sprite, since the game is so character-centric.

But the part I take most pride in is the considerable improvements that all animations will have.  In the first game, every walk animation had four frames, but with the huge caveat that two of them were just the regular idle frame.  Doing that saved a lot of time, but it’s poor form and looks really shoddy.  To demonstrate, let’s revisit the character Cricket from the first Why Am I Dead.

These animations served their purpose at the time, but would be a huge limitation going forward.  You can probably notice that the legs come together and apart in an unrealistic way, which is the cost of recycling frames — and overall it’s a bit choppy.  All of the new animations, however, will use six frames rather than four, and all of them will be unique, and they will have full-body animations, not just moving hands and feet.

(There will also be some bonus animations that I shall not be posting yet, but which will be in game!)

The one thing that the previous game did have going for it was that all of the animations were done ground-up for each character; I never used character templates to speed things up, which means that every character had a different walk, as choppy as it was.  Quite a few people pointed this out, as it gave each character a different feel, and brought out their personality more — some ran, some hobbled, some sauntered.  Well, that is a practice that I fully plan to continue for the sequel, as time-consuming as it is.  So, expect to see more characters in the future, each with their own strut!