Hello! I'm doing a resprite project for a game called Space Station 13. My goal is to make everything more realistically-proportioned and crisp while keeping the style simple. There are thousands of sprites that need to be redone so it's important that anyone can contribute art!


I've made progress on the human base but I'm not quite satisfied with the proportions and posing. It's important I get it perfect because once I draw the hundreds of pieces of clothing, there's no turning back. C&C is appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't expect to find a fellow spaceman here!



I brought down the shoulders of the NS poses and tweaked the posing of the WE poses. I toned down the detailing of the base sprites and took out some cluttered details here and there. Everything should look more natural and the side-facing hands should be more visible.

In-engine SS13 has separate sprites for fallen characters but it's just a rotated copy of the standing sprite. it always looked incredibly goofy to me so I think the extra bit of effort for a dedicated fallen sprite is worth it.

You mean something like this?



I'd like to stray away from shading so anyone can replicate the style, but if it's a signifigant improvement I can go with this.

I decided to take a break from the sprites to make some tiles. Hopefully, seeing these sprites in-context will help me make the changes I need. I already noticed some weird anatomy with the side-facing sprites and fixed that.



Keeping with the simple style, tiles will be sharp and minimalistic so anyone can help produce the hundreds needed. The grid is 32x32 but the tiles are 32x64 which creates a neat 3D effect. Unfortunately, this means wall-mounted objects can be hidden behind walls. Possible solutions are to add an indicator on the top of walls, make these objects flash, add toggleable wall heights or a transparency slider for walls. The latter can be seen on the right.

Since the prone sprite is foreshortened more than the standing sprites, it looks weird to have horizontal elements (e.g. the floor tiles) in the scene not be foreshortened. The prone character looks like they're lying on their head with their legs floating above it, pointing more towards the viewer.
I think it would look better if your environment tiles were in faux perspective, that is, wider than they are tall when representing squares. This means the locker top would change its dimensions depending on whether it's seen from the front or the side.

I think that fits much better! I can see how it would make your life harder though xP You could use the varying tile sizes for a more "imperfect" look by making it so that the 10px tile occurs in different places rather than always in pairs at the bottom of the big tile.

I think having the dark outlines around each big tile looks bad, and undoes some of the perspective by visually prioritizing the large squares.

I think the original sprite with the mouth visible reads better. With just the neck visible, it suggests a more extreme perspective than what the tiles suggest. However, I support Jal's suggestion of making the body overall a bit longer.

The new fallen bodies look good, except for the chin line being lower. I think it worked better being just a straight line connecting the shoulders; now it looks like the person's trying to raise their head to look at their feet.

The nipples seem rather random xP So zoomed out, we shouldn't be able to make them out. However, their presence has alerted me to a minor problem in the female lying-down sprite: her breasts are ignoring gravity. Gravity should pull them apart, there should be no cleavage. If anything, the cleavage in the armpits might be deeper because that's basically where the breast-mass would be concentrated. Really though, with sprites this small, I don't think there's going to be any real difference between the male and female sprites.
The breasts in the standing sprites also look weird, very "heavy-handed" somehow. Probably because again there's cleavage where there shouldn't be any, and misplaced nipples. Even large breasts don't tend to form cleavage without something pushing them together. On people with average-ish breasts and smaller, even most bras don't make cleavage! It takes either very large breasts or a lot of effort (bras with carefully positioned padding, for example) to make cleavage. The beasts naturally tend to stay apart, since that's the path of least resistance.

Oh man, I've been craving an SS13 resprite for a long time. I planned to try and do one in 64x64 myself when I get better.
This looks great, though! Looks a lot nicer than the current. I really, really hope that one day these can be used.

I love it. BEST of luck, man. I think you'll need it for this project.