 | | Title: | Cliff, Sarge and Terry | | Pixel Artist: | Lurdiak (Level 1 Depressed :: 84 points) | | Posted: | 11/10/2007 16:20 | | Statistics: | 1 comments 0 faves 0 avatars |
Even more sprites for my game project. These are the sorta big fellas. They're not as big as some others, like the Andores or Abobos of this world, but they still carry quite a smack. Not all games have such mid-heavyweights, some of them opting for colorful characters like ninjas or robots instead, but they're still a part of how it all works together. These guys almost certainly have a throw or lunging smack attack. They look like bullies, don't they?
Yes, more variations! This might seem unoriginal to some of you viewing this, but I'm not trying to use these variations as a way to avoid making an extra character design. It's more like I'm trying to diversify the one character. I tried to mix things up for the designs here. Cliff(left) is a drunk biker who's got an obvious mean streak (and resembles 2 famous cartoon sailors). Sarge is obviously a military or ex-military man with an attitude problem. I really like how his bandolier looks on him, it's obviously inspired by Rambo. More 80s influence for you guys. Terry's inspired by a very popular sports entertainer from that very decade. He might even look a little too much like him.
My friend described the design philosophy behind these characters as "the american in a kung fu film: big and strong, able to power out of most problems, but in the end very sloppy and no match for anyone with real skill" Kung Fu movies, as they're known, were action filled martial-arts heavy silly movies popularized by chinese cinema in the 70s and 80s, spearheaded by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, amongst others.
The original chinese ones usually featured a variation of the hero's journey, with a quest to avenge this or that indignity, focusing on the hero learning to better himself through discipline and finally kicking the crap out of a ton of henchmen before fighting his nemesis. Sometimes later there emerged kung fu films about high stakes martial arts tournaments, usually featuring exotic fighters from around the world, including the aforementionned American. This sub-genre became a very obvious influence on Fighting Games, Beat-em-ups' spiritual brother. When these movies became popular in the US, they adopted the formular, often replacing martial arts expert protagonists with super-manly brutes or pretty boys, neither of which could throw much of a kick. This ruined the fight sequences to an extent, so several of these movies had the unbeatable and perfect american hero(or alternately, rash and impolite slob of an amerian hero, my inspiration) have a martial-arts savvy sidekick.
Nevertheless, a few american martial arts stars emerged from these B-movies, amongst them Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Needless to say, Kung Fu movies have been quite the influence on Beat-em-up, what with the few skilled fighters taking down hordes of bad guys using little but their bare hands and some melee weapons, often dismantling some drug or terrorist ring in the process.
Again, thanks to FrankieSmileShow for his help with these guys. The bandolier' on Sarge is 80% his doing! |
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