Flying enemies

The most annoying kind. 

PlataGO! gives you the choice between 3 different flying disturbances.
I named them A, B and C following the image below.

Flying enemy A - Ghost

For enemy A, I hade several candidates, and I finally settled with the one that would contribute to have the more diversity in enemies.
It was pretty straightforward. I chose to rework a littlethis ghost sprite from artist Balmer. I added a bit of shadows and highlights and cut short the animation from 10 frames to 6. But PlataGO! only uses 5 frames for enemy A, so I had to cut the last frame. As the movement of the ghost is ethereal and wobbly, it's not that much of a big deal.

I also took the extra time to generate 11 color variations using the Dawnbringer 32 palette and released the full spritesheet under CC0 licence, for everyone to enjoy without restrictions.

The original sprite was 32 x 32 so it was very nice to just have to upscale x2 and replace the original spritesheet in the atlas.
First enemy, done!

Flying enemy B - Blood Butterfly

This one was a little more tricky than the last one.

I wanted to make a traditional bat at first, and I even went so far as to align the sprite sheet, and recoloring the sprites.

However, when I tested in the engine, I noticed two things:

Firstly, the animation is not super great when aligned in a 32 x 32 grid: the bat moves up and down a little too much to my taste. I am not criticizing the original animation here, I think it's really good. But it's just that the bat wobbles too much up and down when constrained into a 32 grid.
I would prefer using this sprite on a larger canvas,  so it's a bit more steady:

Secondly, the enemy B is drawn as if it is facing the camera, and there is a reason why. The animation actually doesn't flip exactly at the same moment that the monster changes direction, but as the sprite is perfectly symmetric, it cannot be noticed. However, with an enemy visible from the side, I realized that Enemy B is sometimes flying backwards:


The resulting movement seems erratic and is difficult to read for the player. I didn't want this to happen as there are many small annoying things already, so I abandoned the bat and went back to searching another monster.
I finally found something else interesting, that matches the symmetric view of the original monster:
A butterfly from Ivan Voirol submissions that I would adapt, and animate to match PlataGO! 's 4 frames animation restriction.

I made an unique wings shape, changed the pattern and recolored it with the DB32 palette. I also thickened the body a litle to make it more visible.
I never really animated a butterfly from the top before, so let's say I did my best ^^':

It's not that bad I think and at least I won't have the flying backwards problem anymore :D

Flying enemy C - The Occuleye

I already knew this assets as I used it almost as it is in Midnight Pumpkins Rising, one of my previous gamejam games. This Rotating Eye Ball by codeinfernogames has been released under CC0 licence, so it was a perfect match for this project. The original sprite has 16 animation frames and I had to drastically cut it to reduce the animation to 6.
For the PlataGO! asset pack, Rotating Eyeball will only look to one side and  won't make a complete turn. However, as it is a flying enemy it will frequently change direction as it passes over the player, so I think it should be ok.

I did the same thing I did with the previous sprites; I added some more subtle shading and a little light reflection. I also changed the iris' color to obtain something more contrasted, and boom there we go! Our third and final flying enemy is ready!

And one last good news, I added all the other frames to match the original work's animations, and released it under CC0 licence here :D