Bluh bluh bluh. This is BwdYeti, author of Fire Emblem: Immortal Sword, and I’m reaching out to the community in hopes of attracting some volunteer artists to help speed things along. I’ve worked with dedicated graphics artists for years on the project, but one thing has proven particularly time-consuming for our small team: instead of displaying class cards, we opted for a set of generic face sprites for each class in the game. Currently, roughly half of these face sprites are complete. That’s (hopefully) where this community project comes in.
“Operation: Generic Rainbow” aims to create a publicly available set of consistent face sprites representing generic members of GBAFE classes, as well as classes added in FE7x. It’s like that rainbow of faceless soldier guys, except also every other class! These resources would be made free to use for fan-games and hack projects (with proper attribution to the original artists, of course).
Showing what’s done so far, and what we’re looking for help with: this spreadsheet will be used to keep track of progress.
I’ve spent the better part of six years working hard to make Immortal Sword a reality, even creating a custom engine along the way; both of which, when complete, will be available for a whopping $0.00 (+ whatever anyone feels inclined to donate wink wink). As an aspiring game developer, the experience has been invaluable. But the core goal, from the very beginning, has always been a simple one: creation for the enjoyment of others. My hope for this community project is that we can not only accelerate FE7x’s graphical development, but in doing so, we create a valuable resource for others. That’s why I’m reaching out to you today, so please, consider lending your artistic talents to this effort!
[/disengage arch ghost-writing, resume in-character austere correspondence]
Rules and Disclaimers and Such
- All pre-existing generic faces created for FE7x become public only after all vanilla GBA classes have a complete set of faces in at least one gender. Specifically, the remaining classes are: Assassin, Great Knight, Nomad, Dracoknight, Pegasus Knight, Cleric, Mage, and Sorcerer. This isn’t the endpoint of the project, but a minimum threshold of community contribution to validate sharing the substantial work already done.
- All FE7x generics will be part of this project, even for 7x exclusive classes: they could be used in place of vanilla classes, for new classes made in other projects, edited into new faces, whatever.
- Three judges will handle submissions: myself, @aeorys, and @Arch, representing a balance between striving for perfection and knowing when to call it good enough and move on.
- Any one judge can accept an edit into the official listing. Two judges can declare a sprite finished, which closes the submission to further edits to focus effort where it’s more useful. However, all three can reopen an entry if it’s later deemed no longer up to par.
- All sprites submitted will be publicly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial. Basically this means anyone is free to use or edit the sprites (for non-commercial purposes), but the original spriters must be credited appropriately.
Sprite Guidelines
- Each class is split into four ‘builds’, representing different power levels. the weaker two have designs vaguely drawn from the tier 1 class, while the stronger from the tier 2. FEXNA uses builds independent of tier, so a ‘strong’ Myrmidon would use the ‘strong’, Swordmaster-inspired face sprite, but alternative tier based schemes could easily be used for hacks.
- All sprites of a single class should use the same base sprite and pose. Male/female versions of existing sprites should use a similar or identical pose and should be identifiably similar to the corresponding sprite of the other gender.
- A single palette is used across all classes to simplify recoloring, so the end-user can design palettes to represent various countries or factions and easily fit any class into that palette. Other colors can be introduced for specific purposes (eg. Archer feathers, Soldier leather and scarf, non-skin tone leather color), but with the expectation that color will be the same for all country palettes. (Here’s the generic palette, and the FE7x country colors as an example)
- Eyes are universally blanked out, as a consistent stylistic choice for the project. It’s also preferable to include some kind of headgear to justify this whenever possible. Editing the faces for use in games is very much allowed, though, so they could be added in if desired.
- This project is targeted at FEXNA as well as hacks, so there are considerations to mind for sprite size. Faces should be extended some 12-24 pixels vertically compared to GBAFE and match the proportions of the existing sprites (simply use the battle sprites for height comparisons between classes), but the bulk of the sprite that is above that extension should fit in a hackbox. Only the strong build can be wider than the GBAFE 96px maximum.
