[quote="Kritter"][quote="soopakoopa"][quote="Kritter"]I was imagining something like Wario Land: Shake It, with its hand drawn frames of animation and backgrounds.[/quote] That's not a bad idea, either. I'd have no idea how to go about coding my own skeletal animation system, and true hand-drawn graphics almost always look and age better than graphics that attempt to "fake" a hand-drawn animation style using skeletons anyway. As for filesize, I can just shrink the sprites and use anti-alias; [i]Shake It's[/i] in-game sprites aren't actually that large in the grand scheme of things, and I want the sprites to be fairly small in comparison to the view size so that players can see what's ahead of them while flying.[/quote] [img]http://i.imgur.com/QlGNlvy.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Dbf8QYU.png[/img] At that size, it's really not much bigger than the old sprite, but infinitely more readable and nicer looking in my opinion.[/quote] Yeah, that's a pretty good example of what some in-game sprites might look like. I mean obviously they won't look EXACTLY like that, since they'll all have cell shading and will be drawn at a smaller initial scale so as to lose less initial detail when resized, but nevertheless it's pretty close. On a different but related topic, what should I call Kiku's species? Nova Jelly was just a temporary name, and it doesn't even fit any more given her more-insectoid redesign. Some options I'm considering are: Galaxect (A mashup of "Galaxy" and "Insect.") Sokonaraga (A mashup/shortening of "Sokonashi no hara ga," which roughly translates to "bottomless belly moth" in Japanese.) Rocketfly (Simple but descriptive) Comoth (A mashup of "Comet" and "Moth.") I'm strongly leaning towards "Sokonaraga," since I think it sounds a lot cooler than anything else I can come up with and also compliments the obvious Japanese influence on her design and name.

Personally I'd avoid Japanese sounding names. To most people it means nothing unless they delve into it and it has far too many syllables to sound good. Plus it comes off a bit... try hard? Not sure the wording I'm after. I'd go with something like Galaxect or Rocketfly. Really you have to listen to what sounds good after "Kiku the". Kiku the [species here]

Sokonaraga sounds way too complicated. I had to read the word twice to properly pronounce it in my head, which is probably something you'd want to avoid. I'd say keeping it simple would work best in this case.

Putting in my vote for Cosmoth (with an s)! It rolls off the tongue and is immediately obvious what it is.

I suppose "Cosmoth" would work. A bit "silly punny," but it's a bit of a silly design so I guess it works.

If you want something that sounds less punny, try Latin. Cosmic Moth -> Cosmicam Tinea -> Cosmita Star Moth -> Stella Tinea -> Stellati Rocket Moth -> Eruca Tinea -> Erucna Blast Moth -> Spiritus Tinea -> Spiratin etc etc etc

Cosmoth is my favorite so far.

[quote="DJ Coco"]Cosmoth is my favorite so far.[/quote] :agree: Rolls off the tongue way better than the rest.

[quote="Kritter"]Personally I'd avoid Japanese sounding names. To most people it means nothing unless they delve into it and it has far too many syllables to sound good. Plus it comes off a bit... try hard? Not sure the wording I'm after. [/quote] It just sounds really weeb to me.

Well, I wanted to show off an animated GIF, but unfortunately the extreme anti-aliasing pushed the color count up too high for a GIF. So, here're some still frames. Although not [i]every single[/i] frame is drawn from scratch and some are edits of previous frames (for example the second half of her idle animation is composed of the first half played backwards and edited so that her pants and antennae are swaying up instead of down), none of them are built from assembly pieces either. [img]http://orig03.deviantart.net/6f0d/f/2016/312/6/7/hand_drawn_graphics_preview_by_soopaderpcat-danrwu6.png[/img]

I like this so much more than the sprites. Shame to not see an animated gif.

fantastic style, cant find many flaws if any, pretty damn good.

That is some splendid art.

Glad everyone seems to like it. In this case, scrunching it down into tiny sprite form kinda helps me, since you're basically always seeing the art "at a distance" and I don't have to be quite as meticulous as I normally would.

Holy damn, I like that. Keep that up, it's legitimately impressive. Can definitely tell you're drawing influence from Shake It!, there

Anyway, here's another question for you all; where should I back up my open-source project files? The files themselves will be encrypted, of course, but what actual sites would you recommend backing them up on? It doesn't have to be the absolutely greatest; just something like Mediafire or IDrive Basic.

The frames look really good! I really like her new design! But anyways, I would recommend that you should use dropbox, since that it's pretty reliable and easy to put your files in. And you can share your friends with your files, as well.

i used drpbox for my RtYG damo and its much good but they disable uploaads if they gEt enough traffic throu ppl so i recommend a mediafire link also just to b safe so that ur uploaad is alSso safe and do not become diss able

[quote="soopakoopa"]Anyway, here's another question for you all; where should I back up my open-source project files? The files themselves will be encrypted, of course, but what actual sites would you recommend backing them up on? It doesn't have to be the absolutely greatest; just something like Mediafire or IDrive Basic.[/quote]GitHub or BitBucket

Sorry for the inactivity lately; my internet modem burned out, and our provider took their jolly good time processing our order and shipping a new one. At the very least, I was able to work on Kiku's new animations with minimal distraction, and now I have a new demo ready where you can finally see them in action! [img]http://orig12.deviantart.net/6b95/f/2016/323/6/6/kotms__engine_prototype_3_by_soopaderpcat-daoz6xx.png[/img] http://www.mediafire.com/file/f75a13ua4w6phlp/kiku_testroom_v3.exe Aside from the obvious change in artstyle, there're a few minor tweaks here and there. Most notably, I worked on momentum a bit more, and made Nova Bomb slightly better; it now travels further horizontally, and Kiku's forward momentum is factored into its speed and trajectory. I also made the health system and changed the HUD into something a bit more stylized and not-disgusting. The placeholder monsters now deal damage and knockback, as well as an idle animation, but still have no AI and don't react to Nova Stinger or Nova Bomb. Kiku also currently has no death animation, since I want to save that for when I actually get into the nitty-gritty of checkpoints, respawning, and all of that not-so-fun stuff. Additionally, the healing system is also in place; when Kiku's stomach is above 50% capacity, it will drain by a bit more but also restore a little bit of health per tick.