Sprite help for a Pony FF1 rom hack

[Parakarry]

I'm working on a Final Fantasy 1 rom edit to be a MLP game. It works out, cause there's six main characters in the show, and six classes in game.
I have most of the ideas, but to really get things moving along, I'm going to need good sprites.
I'm trying a little myself, but I'm not really a good spriter, so I would like some sprite help and some input.

For instance, in place of Garland, the game will have this character, Sunset Shiimmer.
It actually works well. They're both villains who turned against the kingdom. (Shimmer gets redeemed in the first Equestria Girls movie, but her pre-reformed version is real good for this hack.

So I'm attempting to make the sprite based on that vector. Being NES, it has to follow the 3 color rule.


How is this? Is it too doofy?, Is there a way I could improve it?

I'll post more about what I need and whatever sprites I try to attempt.

[bigpotato]

Pretty decent. Looks like you've got a few stray pixels of other colours. You could probably pull off some antialiasing with that palette, but that's not really in the style of the original game, if you're aiming for that. The horn doesn't read very well. It's also.. kinda hard to tell it's a horse? But I suppose the reference doesn't translate really well.

[TheMeadTree]

Desaturate your colors a bit to make them less painful to look at. And whenever you have to make a choice between detail and readability, ALWAYS choose readability. It's low res, and you don't have many colors to work with. You're not going for a renaissance masterpiece, you're going for simple, appealing pixel art. So go for simple and make it sexy!

[Snessy the duck]

It also kinda looks like she's only got 3 legs.

My Switch friend code: SW-5399-6466-3493

[Evil Yoshi Toes]

Adding a back leg would probably get in the way of readability unless it was a very dark value, but I'm not sure if another color could be added when taking into account color limitations.

The silhouette on TheMeadTree's edit is working a lot better at reading as a horse. Silhouettes are really important in art so make sure you've got that down before adding in details. If you're trying to replicate the style that the horse reference you're using is drawn in then I'd say rounded forms are very important. It can be hard to make smooth rounded forms with small scale sprites but I think that's really a key element to translating the way the horse is drawn in the reference to the sprites. I've not seen the my little pony show so I'm not sure if this is true for all the characters but it definitely is an apparent characteristic of the way this character is drawn.

[Parakarry]

Hey thanks everyone. Yeah the little flecks of red on the detail on her legs is the sort of thing that's above my level of skill as a spriter, I love that.
If I devise another sprite

As for the color usage, the NES only has so many colors, so I'll have to try a few combinations of oranges and such to find the best one.

[SonicKade2048]

Never thought I'd see a My Little Pony topic see the light of day on MFGG.

I've done a bit of work with some MLP-themed sprites in my lifetime, but I didn't do too many. I usually stick to drawings, but sometimes I've done spritework of them. Though, if you really want to see some good sprites of My Little Pony characters (Especially in a Final Fantasy hack), maybe you should use this as a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvs7hsloEEw

It brings to life the aspect of the ponies walking on their back 2 legs rather than all four, meaning the assets can be used to be fit to a vertical height, rather than be stuck inside of a shorter width. This means they fit the human size, since they usually are more elongated sideways rather than up and down. This has been done a few times before for Mario games.

Here's what I mean in case you don't understand.


In this example from Pony Poki Panic (A Super Mario Bros. 2 NES hack), when using the normal stance, they go one tile more than what you'd need, while using the 2-leg stance fits perfectly fine.

Hopefully I fixed things up for you. If not, please explain what I mentioned wrong.

Twitter / YouTube / Bandcamp / Neocities

[Parakarry]

Never thought I'd see a My Little Pony topic see the light of day on MFGG.

I've done a bit of work with some MLP-themed sprites in my lifetime, but I didn't do too many. I usually stick to drawings, but sometimes I've done spritework of them. Though, if you really want to see some good sprites of My Little Pony characters (Especially in a Final Fantasy hack), maybe you should use this as a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvs7hsloEEw

It brings to life the aspect of the ponies walking on their back 2 legs rather than all four, meaning the assets can be used to be fit to a vertical height, rather than be stuck inside of a shorter width. This means they fit the human size, since they usually are more elongated sideways rather than up and down. This has been done a few times before for Mario games.

Here's what I mean in case you don't understand.


In this example from Pony Poki Panic (A Super Mario Bros. 2 NES hack), when using the normal stance, they go one tile more than what you'd need, while using the 2-leg stance fits perfectly fine.

Hopefully I fixed things up for you. If not, please explain what I mentioned wrong.

Yeah they would have to be bipedal, it's the only way they would work with the sprite fit.
FF6 had a pony hack too, which is sort of the inspiration for this hack, as FF1 is easier, and is one I know a lot of.

The fighter sprites in FF1 are 16x24 pixels, so it would have to fit that.

[SonicKade2048]

With the video link I posted, the FF6 hack is what I was referencing in the first place. If you clicked the link, then it'd show you a playthrough of that hack. The creator(s?) actually take into account the ponies' speech patterns and implement them into the game's text boxes, not just replacing names. It's quite a good hack.

Twitter / YouTube / Bandcamp / Neocities

[Parakarry]

With the video link I posted, the FF6 hack is what I was referencing in the first place. If you clicked the link, then it'd show you a playthrough of that hack. The creator(s?) actually take into account the ponies' speech patterns and implement them into the game's text boxes, not just replacing names. It's quite a good hack.

I played through an earlier version of PF6, I loved it.
With the sprite you posted i thought you were talking just about the Mario 2 one.
For mine, I've had loads of story ideas and who gets what role. Now I just have to impliment things.

For instance: The last season introduced the Netitus shield, wielded by a sort of Element precursor to Dash, and who share a real affinity. I'm so putting that in the game as an equipable.