[SM] Custom door GFX (WIP)

[dewhi100]

I was screwing around with TLP over the weekend, trying to conjure forth a two-dimensional manifestation of the doors from Prime. My first effort went off the rails, but I definitely like the result:
[spoiler=It's so good that I suspect I committed subconscious plagiarism.][/spoiler]

After taking stock and a trip to the drawing pad, I managed to make this:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Not too shabby... but I feel there's room for improvement before they can be considered final.

Actually, I have a couple complaints, and I could use some feedback. Firstly, I'd just like to gripe about the color duplication needed in the palette to pull this off, as well as the resulting shenanigans from that change. Not much that can be done... it is what it is.

Here's where I'm looking for suggestions: how to tweak these GFX to better fit the SM art style. I'm an untrained artist and my eye is only so good. I think the concepts for both doors are solid, but they are just missing that little extra bit that will bring them to 100%

Any ideas?

[Shockwave_S08]

I see you're going for Prime-style doors with these GFX, and I can think of a few areas for improvement...

1) Normally I see all four animation frames of your average door in SM show the door opening, frame-by-frame. But I see the first three frames taken up by a palette fade (which I don't mind, since you are trying to emulate Prime in that regard), but the last frame lasts for all of a split-second in a jarring transition to fully-open status. Might I suggest having each frame progressively color-fade while opening at the same time?

2) There could be some gameplay glitches with the Grapple Beam if someone finds a way to latch on to those half-exposed Grapple Blocks on the top and bottom of the door. If you can find some free space in the ROM, you might be able to create some border-blocks from scratch.

3) In regards to the color palette, the grays are fine, though I see an bright-outwards-to-darkened-inwards gradient working best for this door-type. The way you have it set up now looks nice, but I can see how it can be a pain to recolor for Standard, Missile, and Power Bomb doors, too.

[dewhi100]

Thanks for the feedback!

1) You're right. It should be smoother.
2) The BTS on this half-grapple blocks is simply solid tile. No worries.
3) I can move the grays around and see what it looks like.