2015-10-07 - Sprite Update (round one)

[erobey]

fantastic! thanks!

 

[Nectaris]

I second this.

(one of the sprites could be flipped to make the two more different. The old nillia could be the male and the new male the female if the female needs to be 'longer')

Meh, I disagree. As someone who was never a fan of the old one, but likes the new I am rather glad it isn't being used.

[Daypaw]

-Climbs into the 'not a fan of the new Nilia sprites' boat-

 

I like the changes to the Holly, though- and the new Horse male looks pretty good. Just wish they'd at least kept the original Nilia sprite for one of the genders. I really don't like either of the new ones- that female in particular.

 

I do love that the Holly kept all the spirit of the original and fixed some of the things that really bothered me about it. Very nice.

[Ruby Eyes]

I bred this specifically with the Nilia's pose in mind: https://dragcave.net/lineage/wrDp2 because it somewhat matched the Dark Myst female's.

Obviously, that's not working anymore.

 

I daresay, those who didn't like Nilias before didn't breed much with them, didn't build lineages with them. Keeping the old sprite wouldn't have taken anything away from them.

 

For those who loved the old Nilia, this change made quite some lineage designs obsolete.

[Shin'a'in]

LOVING the redesign for the horse dragon! 10 thumbs up!

[JavaTigress]

I dunno, pretty significant 'pokes' if you ask me.

 

Personally, I would have liked to keep the original nilia as the female and just have the new male one. I've always really liked the old nilia sprite and I'm disappointed to see it go.

 

Loving the new horsey, though! Really cool pose.

I got the SENSE that the artist wasn't REALLY happy with their work on the Nilias.

 

That they felt they didn't portray well enough the original intent for the dragons. HENCE the significant changes to both genders.

[Red2111]

love Love LOVE the male horse!

[Ribombee]

The holly update is great! It fixed the few anatomical issues and really polished up the colours and shading!

 

I LOVE the male horse. I never did much with horse checkers, but I might now! If we get LL's silvers for the update, they would look gorgeous with the new male horse (plus it's the only actually new sprite, not just polish, that I really like and won't totally screw up my checkers).

 

The male nilia is very cute! I like the change. The female I am very much not sold on, though. I don't mind that she's bigger. I figure we got dimorphism for a reason. It's just that neck... It does not look natural. The rest of her looks fine, but the neck looks rather broken with the angle it has. I think it's going for serpentine, but the sharp angle where it attaches at the shoulders throws that effect off. I think there's one pixel layer too many at the top and bottom where it attaches to the base of the skull, too. The neck gets very thin at the bend then looks awkwardly thick where it attaches. In the male, it is a tiny bit more slender right where it attaches, which is pretty usual for slender animals. I'm glad to see the spriter is taking constructive criticism well. I certainly don't mean to be a jerk about it. I've just a very critical eye for anatomy issues (comes from being a biologist as well as having bred and shown animals, in which the tiniest detail can be the difference between winning and losing).

 

Overall, I don't mind sprite changes (and even welcome many), as long as they make anatomical sense. My biggest concern is always that lineages made with poses in mind will be drastically affected, and I do feel for those who have had lineages messed up (especially if they are long lineages!) I'm still holding my breath on the silvers, as I have a ton of silver checkers which could end up looking very weird.

Edited October 8, 2015 by harlequinraven

[walkinslow]

I bred this specifically with the Nilia's pose in mind: https://dragcave.net/lineage/wrDp2 because it somewhat matched the Dark Myst female's.

Obviously, that's not working anymore.

Exactly! Nilia/Dark Myst lineages don't look that good anymore. Sadly, I didn't make any screenshots because I hadn't expected the change to be so radical.

I even like the new sprite, just not as a Nilia...

[Paintra]

I am so impressed with the new horse sprite. It's so amazing, I want a million of them now! ^^

 

The Nilia and the Hollies I'm pretty neutral on- I don't own a single of either dragon. However, the change to the Holly's neck looks so much better. It can finally hold up it's own head now!

[tjekan]

Ok, so we... updated the holly to have a less broken neck and the nilia to have a more broken neck.

 

I'm not sure I get the rationale behind these updates, but I'm so glad the holly escaped without losing the richness of its color that I'm not going to complain about it. :-)

[DragonNighthowler]

I love the new horse, it looks amazing. The holly update is also very nice, and while the old nilia sprite never bothered me, I quiet like the male too. The female, not so much. I have to add to the same everyone has already been saying, the neck looks broken. Aside from that the sprite is really nice, it gathers in dynamism and I can almost see it moving.

[Karasu Hime]

The updates look great except for the Nilia. I have to say, it's broken many lineages that I have collected. I see lots of Wild Dragons in my near future...

I loved the cuteness of the original Nilias! They were perfect for the Pumpkin Dragons and Dark Mysts.

[Nine]

Maybe something was gained with the Nilias as far as original intention goes, but plenty of things were lost as well. I lost my favorite pygmy dragon; sprite personality means a lot to me, maybe even more than actual quality of work, so the trade-offs are no longer in my favor. And I'm pretty bummed about that.

 

More importantly, I am absolutely dreading what other changes may come now that the tone of the revamps has been set. I wasn't before-- just a bit anxious-- but now I really am worried. The Holly is reassuring, but worse case scenario still looms in mind (and I'm not gonna say it, because I'll jinx it).

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Just had a SECOND nightmare about hating the silver update. OTL

 

Can you tell I need to know like, now?!? D:

[Arra]

Oh my word, they all look fabulous.

[tjekan]

I just don't think enough thought is put into how sprite updates are going to affect lineage views. I think the new horse design looks great in the large view, but in the lineage view, it changes everything. The whole horse used to be visible in the lineage tile, which gave lineages using it a certain look. Now because of the way the wing protrudes forward, the body of the horse has been shifted over so far to the left that you can't even see its back at all anymore in lineage view. It no longer looks like a horse at all in the thumbnails, much less a dragon. And the lineages now look completely different, so time spent cultivating them is pretty much out the window. And the kicker is, it's not even because anything was wrong with the old horse sprite, which is still being used for the female. Somebody just felt like making a second pose and changing it.

 

Purebred horse lineages look seriously weird now, y'all. With half the squares looking like a horse and the other half looking like, well, half a horse.

 

I know lineages aren't the only part of this game, but I don't really get the point of just "adding dimorphism" to existing sprites basically just for the heck of it, in a way that is bound to ruin lineages some players have been spending their time on. Why not just put the same time and effort into making a cool new dragon instead of changing one gender of an existing sprite? I seriously just don't get it.

 

 

[Pixxelation]

I just don't think enough thought is put into how sprite updates are going to affect lineage views.

I can personally promise that this is absolutely untrue for the vast majority of updates in the works.

[ishlia]

RE: Nilia's.

 

First of all, thank you for all of the crit!  I say that seriously and without sarcasm.  I'm glad to see that people care enough that they see things that still need fixed.  I know that as an artist I still have room to grow. 

 

There are two things I'd like to address -

 

-

1) The sprite went through weight loss

 

Yes it's true!  And this is due to my original intentions of the breed.  The original sprite was done when my spriting skills were much more primitive and I was unable to get the look I wanted.  I like to thing of them like kittens - lanky, fast, a bit awkward, thin, kittens.

 

2) The female is bigger/longer

 

Once again true! This is also intentional.  In Nilia's their dimorphism is a bit more extreme than other breeds.  The females are always bigger and longer (which you can see in my thread about them and probably on the wiki).  It's been that way since the beginning and I wanted the sprites to show that.

 

This isn't me being RAWRspriter® but just me trying to explain some of the changes.

I'm one of the few who like the new Nilias the most, they are overall much more dynamic than the original, it's a major improvement. And they have totally different design, as a person who like new things I always prefer the new and different, minor defects are negligible. And the clarification is great. Thank you for your remarkable art!

Edited October 8, 2015 by ishlia

[cyradis4]

I just don't think enough thought is put into how sprite updates are going to affect lineage views. I think the new horse design looks great in the large view, but in the lineage view, it changes everything. The whole horse used to be visible in the lineage tile, which gave lineages using it a certain look. Now because of the way the wing protrudes forward, the body of the horse has been shifted over so far to the left that you can't even see its back at all anymore in lineage view. It no longer looks like a horse at all in the thumbnails, much less a dragon. And the lineages now look completely different, so time spent cultivating them is pretty much out the window. And the kicker is, it's not even because anything was wrong with the old horse sprite, which is still being used for the female. Somebody just felt like making a second pose and changing it.

 

Purebred horse lineages look seriously weird now, y'all. With half the squares looking like a horse and the other half looking like, well, half a horse.

 

I know lineages aren't the only part of this game, but I don't really get the point of just "adding dimorphism" to existing sprites basically just for the heck of it, in a way that is bound to ruin lineages some players have been spending their time on. Why not just put the same time and effort into making a cool new dragon instead of changing one gender of an existing sprite? I seriously just don't get it.

I've been looking over the horses, male to female and in the lineage view, and I think a little thought is exactly what it needs to fix most of the problem.

 

I think that if you shift the new horse male forward in his frame, it would help a LOT. Their poses, while very different, fill the frame in the full size more or less the same way. So pulling the male horse forward to be like the female should eliminate the "dead" space in front.

http://dragcave.net/lineage/xd1rQ

 

Hmm.... I don't think there's anything that can be done about the size or busy issue, but I do think that pulling the sprite forward to fill the frame more like the female horses would really help the lineage view.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[ParticleSoup]

I can personally promise that this is absolutely untrue for the vast majority of updates in the works.

And I can back-up this promise.

 

@C4, in the past TJ has shifted sprites around so they do better in lineage squares, and it's usually right after updates like these or if new releases look funny. I'm sure if this was suggested to him he'd agree to shifting it over a bit~

[cyradis4]

I can personally promise that this is absolutely untrue for the vast majority of updates in the works.

I have never personally spoken to a spriter, or come across a spriter, that was a huge lineage builder. I've come across some that do do some lineages, and I'm sure that large lineage building spriters are out there, but I've never *spoken* to one (I'm not talking about buiding lineages where they mostly collect spriteA x anything else... I'm talking about building dozens of lineages with all different sprites).

 

So how can I, a huge lineage builder with dozens of 5 gen checkers either complete or building, who pays attention to both pose and color, feel confidence in someone's ability to decide what is best.... when they do not play as I play?

 

I'm sure the spriters and TJ spent a lot of time thinking about it. But in the end: they DO NOT play as I play, or as many lineage builders play.

 

And just because someone thought long and hard about something.... does not mean that they settled on the best solution. Or the solution that would have the least impact.

 

Cheers!

C4.

[Verridith]

I have never personally spoken to a spriter, or come across a spriter, that was a huge lineage builder. I've come across some that do do some lineages, and I'm sure that large lineage building spriters are out there, but I've never *spoken* to one (I'm not talking about buiding lineages where they mostly collect spriteA x anything else... I'm talking about building dozens of lineages with all different sprites).

 

So how can I, a huge lineage builder with dozens of 5 gen checkers either complete or building, who pays attention to both pose and color, feel confidence in someone's ability to decide what is best.... when they do not play as I play?

 

I'm sure the spriters and TJ spent a lot of time thinking about it. But in the end: they DO NOT play as I play, or as many lineage builders play.

 

And just because someone thought long and hard about something.... does not mean that they settled on the best solution. Or the solution that would have the least impact.

 

Cheers!

C4.

And you also don't realize the extent of which we spriters think about such things when we do updates like this. I may not do lineages like you do, focusing on colors, silhouettes, poses, etc etc - but it's at the forefront of our minds when we do updates like this. Because you the members care, and we want you all to be as pleased and happy as possible about new, updated sprites.

[blueeowyn]

I like having more dimorphism. Everyone plays this game differently and while some of the lineage people have their proverbial knickers in a twist, those of us who like a variety of sprites are very happy. My eventual goal is to get as close to a full set of adult male, adult female, S2 male, S2 female and S1 for each dragon as I can. Having the male & female the same makes my scroll look less interesting to me. However, it is up to the spriters and TJ to decide what they want for their dragons. I'm just grateful that they spend the time and effort making such interesting dragons. I use the dragons look and description in how I name mine and I know others use other methods.

[cyradis4]

And you also don't realize the extent of which we spriters think about such things when we do updates like this. I may not do lineages like you do, focusing on colors, silhouettes, poses, etc etc - but it's at the forefront of our minds when we do updates like this. Because you the members care, and we want you all to be as pleased and happy as possible about new, updated sprites.

I'm not saying you don't care, or that you don't try. I'm just saying that when people look at things from different directions, there is often a disconnect.

 

And I've felt in the past, and I know others feel that way too (tjekan earlier is a case in point), that more often than not, despite the best intentions and CARING on the side of the spriters, that lineage builders often feel shafted when dimorphism or major sprite changes are added after the fact.

 

The horse dimorphism change isn't a biggie. Of all the dimorphism adds after the fact, that is the smallest one, and I think a shift in the lineage rectangle will ease most of the small problems that are cropping up. The Holly change is also having a small impact on the lineages. Other changes... are having major affects.

 

And that's what's so distressing, when spriters say: have faith, we are doing our best! You ARE trying your best, but there is still that disconnect.... And when people get upset because of destroyed lineages.... both sides hurt.

 

Cheers!

C4.