[Open Assets] Knuckles

[MotorRoach]

The character itself stays the same in terms of gameplay, the point of this WAD was to not only make Knuckles' main color look more of red instead of pink, but to also update and improve it's animations. The sprites were also edited so he could have his color separate from his shoes colors, and have his red to look decent when changing into other skin colors. His skin name was also named K.T.E. to not mix up with SRB2's Knuckles skin name.

Also, some animations has been updated since SRB2 Riders.

 

[Sparkxster]

The animations and the look of the wad look much better than the original, and also due to the fact that this now looks like the Knuckles from Sonic Adventure 1/DX, only more towards his S3&K design.

So basically, now you've got a Knuckles WAD that has some of his Adventure animations, but with his original Sonic 3 & Knuckles design.

Nice job with the animations, Gensu.

 

[VelocitOni]

This is hilariously better than the vanilla sprites in every way. It fixes all the problems I noticed initially playing 2.0, and to not use these in some form for 2.1 would be a terrible descision.

Although, I strongly disagree with the color change of red. Now he just contrasts with the other characters, as they still have the really bright shade that stands out as well and adds volume to them. Now he looks flat and out of place. I'd say you should just recolor them back.

 

[I'll Begin]

Ah yes, I forgot about the Sonic Riders Knuckles. Good job!

 

[Liliam]

At first glance the poses look unanimously better than the ones in vanilla SRB2, but you screwed it all up by removing the highlight color on the sprites, making the character look flat and unappealing. In the end it's a pretty big disappointment.

I hope you kept backups from before you ruined it!

 

[sonicfreak94]

While I agree with Neo Chaotikal about the highlights to an extent (although personally I think they looked odd in some frames), I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to see this when I decided to come browsing around out of boredom. Kind of.

I really like the way the animations look over the old ones... Except for the fact that the new animations look awkward at every angle except sometimes the side, and the back. For instance, the running frames. Particularly, Q2Q8 and Q4Q6, and the same angles in the running frames to follow. Same goes for U2U8 and U4U6, with the addition of the side (U3U7 hurr durr) in this case. They look to me as if they're quite inconsistent with what's portrayed by the *5 frames (back).

And those climbing frames... All but the one frame you showed in the post seem to be really awkward looking to me. One thing all the frames, the one above inclusive, is that the dreadlocks look too long in relation to the rest of the frames, which is more obviously visible in the arguably more awkward looking frames.

I'm not sure what to say on the balancing frames, to be honest. But overall, it appears that all the frames (EDIT: Well, maybe not the climbing, in my opinion...) look pretty nice from the back, so there's that!

 

[MotorRoach]

@Neo Chaotikal: I politely ask that you try to be less destructive with your criticism by not claiming I ruined it.

@sonicfreak94: I felt really unsure when it came to make the Q2Q8 and Q4Q6 angles, due to the lack of reference I kind of had, and not exactly being a Knuckles expert yet. Same goes for U2U8, U3U7, and U4U6, I didn't know how I should make his dreads go like in those, so I'd be glad if you had any suggestions or tips that could help me on those, as I personally also want to change those as well. I also see what you mean about the climbing frames, I'll get to edit those when I get the chance to do so. On the balancing frames, I tried to make the angle animations to look close to be the same as the original back one, but not sure if I was successful in doing that, so I'd be glad for criticism on that one as well.

On the highlights, they could be easily brought back as they were simply just recolored over with colors that weren't really being used on the vanilla sprites before, and I also agree that the contrast on it does seems quite weak. I'd make his head highlights slightly brighter (just not as bright as before), though it would kind of ruin one of my intentions with his colors. The vanilla Knuckles, when changing his color skin, his head did look highly bright in comparison to Sonic and Tails in the game, and in some occasions, his head was even close to being white.

While changing his head highlights to some more red did do better to that occasion as seen in here, it does looks a bit flat in the red palette (I swear it looked much better in the blue colors when I was editing it), so it makes me unsure of what I should do about this. Suggestions for that are welcome.

 

[Jeck Jims]

Ok, first off I wanna say this does look amazing, but I have an issue with the running frames. In classical sonic games, characters kept their heads held straight up, not tilted. Knuckles was no exception. It looks to me that either his head is tilted, or his dreads are going way to far up. In sonic 3(&k) his dreads barely lifted when running... Just a little nitpicky, but my only issue with this.

 

[MotorRoach]

Sorry, but I don't find it a good enough reason to change his head tilting only because it wasn't like that in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, as it doesn't shows anything wrong or unnatural, just different. I'm looking for criticism and suggestions for this character that could be related to how any sprites are looking either unnatural or wrongly done, or just look better, and faithful enough to the Knuckles SRB2 design, so I'm not aiming to make this one be inspired on the S3K animations. Maybe whenever I actually intend to do a character WAD based on his classic design, but I honestly don't see that happening.

Also, his dreads did lift when running in Sonic 3, and it wasn't just a little.

 

[VelocitOni]

So...
How much would I have to pay you to do that classic Knuckles? :V

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Do any of the rest of us really care if they're not detail-perfect to the Sonic 3&K Knuckles sprites? After all, this is a character for SRB2, and I'm pretty sure SRB2 Sonic runs in the exact same way anyway!

On that note though, perhaps I'll give my own opinions on this here:

Frankly, the side climbing animation you've used as an example is pretty much one of the best (if not *the* best) of the new sprites you've added there. Most of the rest of the new sprites don't seem as fantastic as some others are making out to be.

The fact you now see the back of Knux's head while running and gliding is an interesting idea, though I'm not quite fond of how it's done - makes the dreadlocks a bit fat/3D-ish. For that matter, most of the gliding animations's angles look weird too, though I see its already been addressed why this is the case. The back of the climbing looks really off, with that big dreadlock-carrying head of his taking up most of the sprite - those dreadlocks really are too long!

On another note, I think you've fallen into the trap of assuming all of frames W to Z are part of the climbing movement animation - this is not the case; frame W is for the climbing idle frame, and frames X to Z are the actual climbing animation (which actually goes back and forth to loop rather than from last->first). I can understand it if you didn't know this before, given only recently did I actually put any if that info on the SRB2 Wiki at all. =S

The teetering/on-edge/whateveryoucallit animation looks fine though, aside from the fact Knux's eyes look too angry-ish to me. =x

 

[MotorRoach]

I was pretty much aware of how the climbing order works, though I was unsure in which order I should leave it like. You can suggest a different order for it, in case you got any idea. I would honestly prefer if the climbing animation in SRB2 worked with 4 frames rather than using 3, having the first frame of the animation to be the one he is sticking to the wall, as it feels unnecessary to have a frame just for sticking to the wall.

The balancing animations there, yeah, I wanted to make it a bit angry-ish because I thought it would look odd to keep his same usual eye expression, otherwise it wouldn't seem as much he would be caring that he is about to fall off. Kinda got that inspired on how Sonic has his on edge animation in Sonic 1, thought it would fit for Knuckles here.

@Iceman404: Oh wow, now you got me interested about making this one.

 

[VelocitOni]

I like the angry eyes on the balancing animation.
It's as if he's focusing on trying NOT to fall off. It's also the first and only character with all frames for it, bravo. Not even the vanilla sprites have more than one frame done for that, disappointing.

 

[TeamLava]

It's about time someone created an actual Knuckles wad. The animations look ALLOT better than the original animations. *downloads*

 

[akb778]

Man, this is WAY better than the vanilla Knuckles in SRB2 in almost every way, though I will admit the back climbing sprites do look a bit weird, with most of it being hair/dreadlocks. Shading's kinda weird too; it actually looks better in colors other than red. =\

 

[I'm Not Here]

This is kind of a bump, but I highly suggest that Sonic Team Junior considers adding this into SRB2 itself. Seriously, common this Knuckles had better animations, better shading, 3D balancing sprites unlike SRB2's Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. If this was put in 2.1 I'd be pretty glad.

 

[Vivian]

While it does have better qualities then the original knuckles, I doubt they would put it in as it doesnt give many changes except for the running, gliding and etc, sprites.
Either way, it would make the game look better if they did put it in.

[Also: Im not really liking the edge sprites, they feel very weird to me.]

 

[MotorRoach]

Prepare your asses, everyone.

 

[VelocitOni]

Full protection is now on.

 

[Inazuma]

Prepare your asses, everyone.

My body is ready.