Galgana's creature sprites

[Galgana]

This weekend, I took some time to revamp some predator models. Check them out in the before/after demo picture under the spoiler. Their prone sprites are also revamped.
The bird models had a bit of recoloring to make black grouse and capercaillie more distinguishable.
I also revised the water spirit after witnessing him walk on shore because the vanilla sprite did not help my immersion (especially since he showed up with nothing in his inventory).

Installation: unzip and drop PNG files into the truetile folder

list of revised sprite sheets:

• black grouse
• capercaillie
• arctic fox (updated v1.03)
• red fox
• lynx
• wolf
• water spirit
• dog (v1.01)
• elk - male and female + antlers (v1.02)
• sheep - male and female (v1.02)
• squirrel (updated v1.03)
• hare (v1.02)
• small mustelids (v1.03)
• willow grouse (v1.03)

See Wickham's Graphical Enhancement Project v1.3 for revamp of the forest reindeer by Krutzelpuntz.

Preview and comparison of animals with vanilla eastern man and prone bull for scale (v1.0):

Spoiler: show

Preview and comparison of water spirit (npc-wtrman):

Spoiler: show

[trowftd]

These look really nice, superb job especially on the waterman. May I ask you what program did you use while creating these, I've done some small editing on my own in paint but I find the workflow to be a little clunky.
Thanks in advance.

[Galgana]

Hah, these were all done in good old ms paint (not paint 3D, for clarification's sake). I gotta admit, my first attempt at the wolf went disastrously because I hadn't saved my work before hitting undo in several steps to look over my progress, though it wasn't a terrible loss because the silhouette looked overly similar to a giant squirrel.

Workflow indeed is clunky. Some of what I've done involved opening other sprite files to grab colors for my palette. In fact, the waterman's feet and the color of his reed kilt were taken from the forest spirit, while some of the flesh tones for his body were from the vanilla northern woodsman's face. I also kept to one side of my screen either photo or illustration references for pelt patterns or pose inspiration.

Perhaps the most painstaking part was applying a checkerboard-style recolor on the black grouse: that involved using the eraser tool to swap a vanilla color for one of the program's default colors and then going over the marked section with alternating left-/right-clicks to paint on the target vanilla/vibrant hue.

(Oops, I realize I forgot to flip the arctic fox for some of the directional frames. Original post has been updated with the corrected file in the compressed folder.)

[trowftd]

Yep my biggest problem is quickly using and creating color palettes too. Thank you for the long reply though you hinted some stuff that I didn't really thought about using. Good old paint never lets you down

Not saving always happens to the best of us, it is always annoying though.

[Ezezaguna]

Nice!

[Galgana]

The mod has been updated! The attachment on the original post marked v1_01 now includes a revamp for dog sprites inspired by the Finnish Spitz and other Arctic breeds. I think they are very cute and heroic. When compared with the wolf sprite, dogs stand a bit taller because they are not trying to be sneaky predators.

I also made a tiny adjustment to the wolf sprite: eyes have been moved 1 pixel down to make their long faces slightly less silly.

Preview and comparison of dog, before and after:

Spoiler: show

Before


After

[Privateer]

 Nice,
jmho I think the dog needs to be reduced in size by about 15% to about 75~85% from the spoiler shot.

 Good work!

[Galgana]

Nice,
jmho I think the dog needs to be reduced in size by about 15% to about 75~85% from the spoiler shot.

 Good work!

Lucky for you, I have a puppy version in my working file.

Preview and comparison - vanilla and 2 revamp variants:

Spoiler: show

[Ezezaguna]

Lucky for you, I have a puppy version in my working file.

Preview and comparison - vanilla and 2 revamp variants:

Spoiler: show

This is so cute!! <3

[Buoidda]

Skilled work! I'm happy to see artists' exchange too. I too use the trusty paint for my edits, but didn't expect you pros to do the same But there must be something more sophisticated even for pixel graphics? No?

[ineedcords]

This weekend, I took some time to<snip>

Nice work! I agree with the post saying it would be better to scale down the dog slightly.

Skilled work! I'm happy to see artists' exchange too. I too use the trusty paint for my edits, but didn't expect you pros to do the same But there must be something more sophisticated even for pixel graphics? No?

I too heard mspaint (the classic one and the not 3D one) being used surprisingly a lot.
Some people even prefer the old UI (non-ribbon version) of mspaint for productivity reasons which instructions available on the Internet ( https://www.askvg.com/how-to-get-the-good-old-ms-paint-without-ribbons-working-in-windows-7/ ).
As mentioned there is also mspaint.net or the big one GIMP which some people use for pixel art ( https://www.reddit.com/r/GIMP/comments/29btcq/how_to_set_up_gimp_for_pixel_art/ )

In terms of focused pixel art area software, two dedicated tools I know of are Pyxel Edit & Aseprite. Latter has tooling and automation although I haven't used it personally. First one IMO have better UI.
https://pyxeledit.com/index.php
https://www.aseprite.org
They were about USD15-20 if I recall correctly. You should be able to try both, without paying anything.

Aseprite is open source, some people download the source code, compile it and share the resulting binary (EXE) which is easier to find for Windows that way compared to other OSes (might come in handy, for a while, if you need the full one but having budgeting issues). It is always a risk to download from unknown sources though.

Both Pyxel Edit and Aseprite have learn sections with lots of resources to start/get better at these tools linked from the main page.
If you are considering buying but not in a rush, check out humble bundle for Pyxel Edit. IIRC it was cheaper there.

Edit: added top part re art in the original post.

[Galgana]

Happy New Year!

New in this update:

• elks are now ENORMOUS
• hares sport summer coats
• rams are adorned with horns and sheep have faces
• squirrels stand a little taller and look like they actually climb trees

Housekeeping and other notes:

• download includes a readme with credits and links to assets made by the community
• file sizes have slightly decreased by a few kb due to optimizations related to tile borders
• both variants of the revamped dog are bundled together for the player's choice of either av-dogSMOL or av-dogTOL; the larger sprite is the default replacer
• the base game's white hare is also bundled in the archive for easy file renaming; summer coat is the default replacer
• elk tracks edited to reflect the sprite's standing pose and larger size; inspired by Buiodda's Crafts
• prone sprites for elk remain the same size as in the base game

assets used in this update:

• elk emoticon from Steam points shop
• Brian Shapiro's Livestock Sprites & Fur Variety Sprites
• Wickerman_156's Graphical Enhancement Mod

Preview and comparison - elks, sheep, hare, squirrels

Spoiler: show

[Ezezaguna]

Marvelous, I'm watching this mod progress with great interest

[Buoidda]

Those elks are gargantuan! Wooow... Great work! Endorse and recommend!

EDIT: edited semiautomatic change for summer/winter fur for the hares in my batch files...

@Galgana: How about coloring a winter jacket for the famously white willow grouse as well?
Other ideas:
- summer coat for arctic fox
- winter coats for weasel and ermine
- gray winter coat for squirrels?

[JP_Finn]

- gray winter coat for squirrels?

I thought gray squirrel was brought to UK in late 1800s from Americas? And introduced post-war to continental Europe.