These graphics are for you. I have been a pixel artist for over a decade, and I created the Time Fantasy style to evoke the feeling of classic SNES RPGs. Game developers, you can use these graphics to bring your worlds to life!
Time Fantasy RPG Maker DLC
The first pack includes a variety of characters and tiles that feel like the classics of the SNES era.
Master of the Wind is an RPG Maker classic. It’s an absolutely massive game, with top-notch dungeon design (with puzzles more like a Zelda game than a typical RPG) and wonderfully-written characters. It’s moral stance is a bit heavy, and one that I disagree with, but I love it anyway. Imo that says a lot about the strength of the writing.
I couldn’t resist making some Time Fantasy style sprites based on the characters from the game. I talked to one of the creators of the game, and I’ve got permission to share them with you. I think that the sprites are versatile enough to use them in your own projects, or maybe include cameos from MotW*.
Click to download
Enjoy. See you next time.
* Since these are based on characters from a game, I’m afraid that they can’t be used in commercial projects. However, if you edit/recolor them or use them in a generic way (for example as nobody NPCs or a generic enemy) or something like that, then I doubt anybody is gonna stop you.
You might be interested in making your own sprites in the Time Fantasy style.
You can go about creating sprites however works best for you. But I thought that some people might find it interesting and/or useful to see the process that I used to create the characters in the TF set.
(If you haven’t made a sprite or don’t know how to, you can check out my pixel art tutorials. This article isn’t about the details of pixel work.)
Since all the Time Fantasy character sprites are aligned in a particular way, I use a “feet sheet” that I’ve previously made. This is an what I use (it’s arranged for use in RPGMaker VX/Ace):
Click to download
Since I make large packs with lots of characters, I’ll typically work with eight characters at a time (a regular RPGMaker sprite sheet has eight characters). I create all of their basic directions before I move on to animating them. This method has proven to be pretty efficient when making large amounts of sprites like this.
This is what a piece of my working file might look like before I begin animating the sprite sheets:
WIP sheet
So let’s start with a sprite. Using the base, I’ve made his basic pose in all four directions:
Four directions
I’ll line up the four standing poses onto the “feet sheet”.
Unfinished sprite sheet
You can see that it has the stepping-frame feet from the animated base, but not the top halves of the sprites. Instead of using the entire base, I’ll use the feet/legs from the base, but redraw the torsos for the different frames. For me, this method is faster when creating a lot of sprites.
Easiest way to start is by copying the head. I move it down one pixel for the stepping frames. This image illustrates what I mean:
Heads and feet
Depending on the sprite, I might also copy the middle of the torso onto the other frames. Then draw arms to indicate the correct swinging motion. Then it’s easy to edit/color the legs to match the body.
Do it for all four directions (with some sprites, you only need to do it in three directions, and flip the side views), and then the sprite is finished and ready for use in games:
