In my opinion the RotMG sprite editor is one of the greatest features the devs have ever built for the community. There are countless examples of amazing sprite art from hundreds of creative and talented players.
…but there are just as many examples of ugly sprites without any sense of design, color, or shape.
That’s not necessarily bad. It’s great to have the freedom to experiment and learn and share what you’ve made. In no way do I want to impair this creativity.
What I do want, however, is art that fits with the games established style. Design guides are a common method of defining the rules by which graphics and interfaces are to look and behave.
The designer of the original sprites used by RotMG had a clear and consistent style. To a large degree Willem, the artist hired by Wild Shadow and responsible for much of the games best art (trench, manor, guild hall, oryx castle, forbidden jungle, cemetery, Davy Jones’s Locker, and on and on), also had a great sense of how essential it was that sprites and environments harmonize but also distinguish themselves from one another.
That these things look this way isn’t by chance. Rules and conventions guided the game’s artists toward these designs. What I propose is to create a loose set of design guidelines for the wider community to use in creating art that fits with the existing art in the game.
However, i’ll be the first to admit I haven’t got a creative bone in my body. XKCD draws better stick figures than I do. By far. What I can do, though, is identify some characteristics of the current game art.
For example, look at that sprite sheet I linked above. Notice how all the art has no more than 4 colors in total? And how every class and monster have a different silhouette?
Next look at some of Willem’s dungeon art. Notice how it follows similar patterns? He used slightly more colors in his individual sprites, but he was careful to keep a limited number and often they were used to create shapes within the outline of the sprite itself. Pets are a great example of this. Multiple colors aren’t there to provide shading and gradients. They create texture and shape through contrast and lines. More than anyone else before or since he had a great grasp of color theory and sprite art in particular.
We’re not all graphic designers, and we don’t need to be. But if we can identify some basic patterns and build a guide on how to create art that best fits within the design of the game I think we could really improve the quality and usability of the art in the sprite editor.
So, what do you think? What do you think makes good art work, and what makes other art a bad fit for the game?
