5. Art
Art of fighting is a 32-bit art based game. His art represents the 90's style, this can be seen in all the characters in the game, mostly oriented to an Oriental style. First, we will explain how we managed to rip the sprites out of the game to then move on to talk about it's Characters design and Level art.
For ripping sprites, we used WinKawaks emulator, which is the best emulator to work with arcade games and to extract a lot of information from it.
First of all, we turned off the 8x8 layout and changed the background color to a pink one, just to make easier the post process of cutting each sprite and removing it's background.
One thing that was so helpful was the use of cheats, for example, god mode or unlimited time, which helped us to be able to do all the moves and rip them frame to frame.
The shot factory is the most powerful tool on that emulator, on this tool we are able to select which layer we want to show or hide, in this way we could extract images from the emulator where only appears our player. Then, just repeat this process to all the characters of the game.
Once we had all the sprites, we went to Adobe Photoshop, to make our sprite sheets, we needed to make them with transparency and an appropiate sprite size. As we had a bunch of sprites we decided to automatize that process, and we create a new Action in Photoshop.
And simply followed a few steps. 1. Select our background. 2. Invert selection. 3. Cut. 4. Open the SpriteSheet.psd. 5. Paste.
With this five-step, we were able to do a lot of sprites in a short time. Then we had to move each one correctly to avoid memory dumping and 'voila', sprite sheet done.
Let's talk about the art style, themes and ambiences applied to each stage of the game. The art stands out by the detail, colors and how it fix in every single stage. 1. Karuta, 2. Mac's Bar, 3. China Town, 4. L'amor, 5. Down Town, 6. The Guardian, 7. The Factory, 8. The Karate Gym
First stage is on a japanese style Temple's garden, a very common place to find even in urban hearts in Japan, something we can see too in the background of the stage. It's style ressembles to the tradtional feudal japan. The color is saturated and bright. In this stage you take your fight against Todoh.
This stage has a low saturation. The stage achieves the standards to seem like a biker bar with the color, light and composition. It takes place in a bikers and marauders drinks bar a, here you take your fight against the leader of a bikers band and an important member of Mr. Big's mafia: Jack.
This stage has plays with the symetry. It stands out by the neon lights. It's located in the middle of China Town this stage it's clearly inspired by the architecture and decoration patterns of chinese martial culture, it is here where you fight against Lee.
L'amor's stage has an amazing composition. There're a detailed shaders and reflections that makes the stage a masterpiece. is a romantic restaurant for couples dating where you can enjoy views to the city in the background, here you take your fight with the waitress King.
The stage has a well-made textures that makes the stage old and scary. This fight occurs in a conflictive area of the city, it's suburbs, dirty and neglected zone to find your next opponent, an ex-boxer called Mickey who's looking for someone to throw hands with.
This stage stands out by the animation of the soldiers. There're bright colors and few objects. Here, you arrive to an U.S.A marines aircraft carrier located on the port of the city, it clearly ressembles to some stage of Street Fighter II. We think that the incorporation of a stage with such american style is due to the crescent friendly relations between Japan and USA after WWII. Here you take a fight against John, a reputated military.
It predominates the black color and talking about composition is simple. Is located in the industrial area of the city, being so themed to be what it wants to be, a factory. Here you will take your fight against the mafia boss: Mr. Big.
This stage plays with the symetry. The front composition is simple but it fixs it with the back textures and the animation of the fire. The stage so, is inspired in the old and traditional japanese martial arts it's the last stage of the story mode, being the one with the most threatening appearence, here you will fight against Mr. Karate.