As I have much more experience playing 2D games than Paula does, I decided to help her out with certain aspects of her art – because the games art will be governed by the gameplay.
Depending on the style and genre of the game, the size of the character will differ. In fighting games, where the visual feedback of character input is more important than the environment, characters will take up 40%+ of the height of the screen. Whereas platforming games, like Celeste, the character’s height is 10% of the screen – this is because the player needs to be able to see more of the map itself to plan their movement ahead of time.
I also gave her examples of 2D hand-drawn characters in other games. Focusing on simpler character designs, as those will be the easiest to create animations for. But for NPCs, who have limited animations, it will be much easier to and more viable to give the more eccentric designs.
The characters on the right are from: Hollow Knight, Silksong, Nine Sols and Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus
I also found a sprite sheet for Hollow Knight that have some of the Knight’s animations:
Note that the Knight’s nail swing animation (Attack animation) have the Knight and his nail (Weapon) separate of one another.
References:
“The Importance of Character Scale”
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Pixel Art Class – The Importance of Character Scale. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwrpw1YtuGo
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