Posted by Kim on July 10, 2023, 9:00am
To walk around on a map, you'll first need an avatar. What do we know about avatars so far?What will they look like?
As I discussed in one of my last posts, I intend to take the Liberated Pixel Cup as my starting point, so that tells us a lot about the general style we can expect.
Check out this range of skin tones possible using the Liberated Pixel Cup palette:
Of course, we'll have full color support, so you can design and patch in whatever you want: but having a palette that we can use as our home bases will help us to have a cohesive look for officially provided items and assets. It will also give artists who want to create additional assets that blend directly into the base avatars (like ears, tails, wings, etc.) a clear guide to follow to achieve that seamless look. Especially since I hope to provide some automatic recoloring tools to allow artists to create an avatar asset once and then offer it in all of our base colors!
Can avatars be taller or shorter? What about different body types?The goal is to launch with 4-6 avatar bases, and then starting assets that are size to each of those bases. (Similar to what's already here: https://www.rprepository.com/avatarbuilder)
I'm expecting all of our starting bases to be humanoid body types. We'll have accessories that blend with all the supported skin tones that will allow you to add unique ears, tails, and other modifications that should allow for representing many different kinds of near-human body plans.
I'm certain we will expand into body plans like feral wolves, dragons, etc, over time!
If you want something very specific, you can always go full custom.
Of course, there will be a minimum and maximum number of pixels in height/width that an avatar can be, but within that you can draw an avatar as short/tall or skinny/wide as you like.
At least 1 avatar per character profileI can promise that each character profile will get its own avatar. There's also a chance that I will be able to provide more than one avatar slot per character profile - this could be so useful for shape changing characters, that have a human form and a werewolf or selkie or whatever type of creature form. Or maybe your character has a casual outfit and more formal wear. The possibilities for being able to create and save more than one fit for a character are endless.
What about our user profiles? Can we make a profile to represent ourselves?
Very likely. I don't see why not!
Customization -- Will we be able to design our own avatar assets?
Yes, absolutely! And share/sell them to others, too. This could be just adding a new hat for a particular avatar base, or drawing every part of an avatar from scratch to allow for more uncommon body plans.
How many poses will avatars have?I know artists are extremely interested in this answer, because it's going to dictate how fast they can create new assets for them. We had a bit of a discussion about it a few years back, which you can see here if you want even more detail about the decisions going into this.
At this point, we know for sure that avatars will stand, walk, sit, and lay down. They are also likely to have a few emotive poses.
I'm thinking we'll also have a few types of default avatar overlays that allow for showing further emotions or states of being (speech bubbles with "emojis" in them, floating Zs for a sleeping character, bubbling hearts, stink lines -- that sort of thing) that could be layered over most any other pose, to cut down on the number of poses that must be drawn for additional assets while still offering a lot of versatility for players.
I believe one of my first goals will be to finalize the avatar pose sheet and to create a guide for artists about how to make avatar assets, so that interested folks can get a head start creating assets or custom avatars.
Post tags: Lemonade Stand Fundraiser
Comments
Boy am I thirsty for some Lemonade!
@Atheist - I had a feeling you were going to like this post!
This! This is what I was harpin' about. I am beyond stoked. I cannot wait to kickstart the heckin' heck out of this! 🥳
I'm so excited for this aaaaaaaa
Imagine little avatars of my Beyond2000 characters! So cool!
Imagine little avatars of my Beyond2000 characters! So cool!
Auberon
July 11, 2023
3:42pm