Well, it turns out that one is a praying mantis - not a cricket. But I was right - it is giving me trouble.

The hardest thing about making these sprites (so far) is that if I were just making vertical versions (as the sprite rips shown in my previous post below are), then I could make pretty decent-looking conversions. There's enough vertical resolution (14 pixels) in the sprites to be able to make neat looking legs, spots, stripes and other stuff.

And there is a lot of that kind of stuff.

The problem is - when I rotate the bug 90°, I lose that resolution. So I can't make thin legs, spots or stripes, since I have to redraw the same details for the horizontal versions using only 8 pixels.

I found that out pretty much on the second bug I did (the purple one, second from the top). I had made a really nice vertical version of all three frames, then tried to make the horizontal version. Yikes! I couldn't reproduce any of the really fine detail - so there went the eight spots and the thin pincers I was so proud of. I managed to keep four spots though, and I'm learning to use the differences in horizontal and vertical resolution to "cheat" part of each version a little, so each orientation will have some aspects that look better than the other, but they'll still look like the same sprite. I do this by fudging things like leg widths or pincer thicknesses, or adding more negative space for better detail, depending on what's needed to make something read correctly. The key is to keep the basic features the same (number of spots or legs, relative proportions, primary shapes), and make the differences subtle, and only for the sake of clarity. The human brain does a very good job at associating different shapes, and filling in the gaps between them. As long as the differences are minor, then the brain says, "Okay, that's the same thing, but just in a different position." That's the principle behind animation (and in fact - film itself), and it's based on persistence of vision.

Also, I'm using the animation to fudge things a little bit, too. Not every frame looks "right" by itself - all that really matters is that when it's in motion, the right parts seem to be moving the right way. So if on one frame the legs don't look like legs, it doesn't matter - as long as they look like legs when played in sequence with the other frames. The brain wants to put things together like that, so it's really important (especially on the 2600) to take advantage of that wherever possible. Detail isn't as important as the overall effect.

I did this on the Santa sprite for Reindeer Rescue. On some of the frames, his legs just look weird. But on the whole, he seems to be running.

My approach with LadyBug now - instead of making one great-looking vertical bug, then having to destroy it in order to make a horizontal version - is to make one frame of each orientation at the same time and flip back and forth between them, to be sure they have the same overall details and look the same. Then I do the same for the other frames (making sure the overall animation for each version is working, too).

So it's a lot of going back-and forth, but what I'm ending up with are sprites that work in both directions, and look very similar to each other, despite their "relative vertical resolutions"* being completely different.

* That is, the bugs' heights get drawn with either 14 or 8 pixels, depending on their orientation. It doesn't refer to the sprites' heights.

And of course, they need to capture the look of the arcade sprites, as much as possible. Perhaps that's not quite the right term though... maybe "reflect the essence" is more correct. Maybe that sounds a bit silly (or pretentious), but they are essentially abstractions of the originals. The trick is to make them recognizable, or better yet - familiar.

Anyway, enough bugs for now. I have to go blow up Colony 7.