Description

The large enemy is the enemy sprite in the game that can be particularly characterized as the enemy with no ranged attack. All its attack is up-close. Previously, the enemy was designed to be a Zombie-like character. Although a good representation of a daunting enemy, it didn't quite fit the game art style. The game had been previously populated with aliens that mostly resemble "creatures" of some sort (Slugs, Spiders, etc). It only would be more fitting if the Large Enemy had a similar theme style going on of "scary creatures". Also since it is a short-range enemy having the enemy equipped with a weapon of the sort would appear fitting.

Inspiration

A creature like an enemy drawn from the already created slug would be something that isn't without legs. Hence, it was initially brainstormed to be a snake-like alien creature. After further iterations of ideation and brainstorming, the large enemy was inspired by a popular video game series, Starcraft, in which a creature named Hydralisk exists (Image Below) Working on this design and using the color schemes used for the Spawner Enemy (the purple) and the Small Enemy and made it more suited for the game by adding organic bony structures to the arms instead of claws.

The Large Enemy

As mentioned in the Inspiration section above, using the color palette. the large enemy was created. The design was pretty complicated to translate into pixel art. But it was made possible by ignoring some details and adding a few of my own making it an interesting sprite to create. Another challenge that I faced was designing the sprite from a top-down perspective, I slowly began achieving this by using color shading and making the light brighter at the top and fade darker towards the bottom of the sprite.

Full health

At full health, the sprite was obviously designed to be in perfect shape and made moving (talked about in section 'Animation')

Hit

Each time the enemy takes to damage a red flash was created. This was to give the user the feeling that the hit was successful. This was achieved by using a red filter with a 60 percent opacity over the sprite. This was replicated over all the enemy sprites in the game for consistency.

Damaged/ Injured

Once the enemy takes sufficient hits it was also important to show further signs of defeat for the user. This was again achieved by making the large enemy lose one of its limbs. This is a common representation used in many popular games to give the user a feeling of "defeating the enemy". A further design element to notice in the injured/ damaged sprite was the spewing of purple blood as this was decided upon as the color of the blood of the alien-like shadow crawlers.

Animation

The animation for all 4 directions was an interesting one to design. It was achieved by using the Frame Animation tool in Photoshop. By creating a sequence of 3 frames and playing them consecutively in game. All the animations (all the directions) essentially had 3 frames played in a loop.

Dead

When the Large Enemy is finally killed it leaves behind a pool of purple blood.