some amazing videogame sprites from blazblue

These are from Blazblue, a current-gen game available on PS3 and XBOX. I think you can buy it for your computer, too. Anyway, its main claim to fame is that its an HD descendant of 2d sprite-based fighters, most notably Street Fighter 3 and Guilty Gear (it's known as a "spiritual successor" to the latter).

These days the majority of fighting games (and big-budget videogames in general) tend to be rendered in 3D (makes sense to make use of the entirety of processing power and your disposal) which may label games such as Blazblue as something of a novelty. However, it's not like Braid or Super Meat Boy where the use of 2D mercifully limits the amount of art and tech that go into its creation, this is a big game designed by a big Japanese studio. And I mean, literally, BIG. Look at the sprites below - full sized they probably take up a sizeable portion of your computer screen (for contrast, have a look at the resolution on this sprite from the last popular 2d fighter, SF3 - pretty astonishing when you compare the two). The whole idea with sprite art is to be completely economic with the resolution you have, you never want to squander it needlessly. Blazblue takes the (huge) resolutions of modern TVs and monitors and uses every pixel it can to give you a crisp image of a character that might have come straight from your favourite anime (which is, of course, what this kind of game strives to emulate).

The ordinary character sprites and animations are already luscious enough, and you can search youtube for some very pretty fight videos with all the characters. However, being the stickler for details that I'd like to think I am, I was looking at some sprite sheets of the characters and noticed how beautiful the "electrified" frames are - these are frames of the character that will flash up intermittently for no more than a few fps when the character is struck by an attack that's designated "electric" in nature. The skeletons are knowingly cartoony and often include details that you maybe wouldn't notice in the ordinary pace of play - take a look at the weird little idol inside Colin's top hat, or the unhappy fish apparently secreted in Taokaka's claw-sleeves. Besides that, the poses are nice and the general design of them (outline, form, colour) I find really appealing. See what you think.