In Reply To #31
Ah, I think I get what he means. He's referring (I think) to how when you look at the sprite sheet in, say, a ROM, sometimes the sprites are all chopped away and in order to not have to make yet another 8x8 'tile' for those extra pixels, they just choose not to put them.
This was the way of the older ROM formats. In SotN though, ANTRAXX, I believe they had plenty of room in the spritesheet since it wasn't chopped away too much.
They've gotten sloppier over time. If you look at the DoS Spritesheet from the ROM, I believe they left out all of the space (basically having the entire frame, even though it's got lots of empty 'air' mask space, it's still accounted for.
I do somewhat agree that the shading (or lack thereof) was done probably to give a sense of perspective, as since one of the arms is facing 'away' from the Camera, and it's supposed to be moving kinda realistically, it would appear 'smaller' to give it the sense that it's actually folded away or pointing away from the camera...
The frame where the leg disappears is because of the 15-color sprite limit. They did not have a dark enough gray/black to compensate for the shading of the leg under the little tunic-bottom, so they went with Black and that almost turquoise-like color.
The 'spike' on the knee I think is supposed to be a knee-pad that his boots have, though I agree that it's inconsistent with the way that same area looks in other frames. I'm guessing the new spriters misconceptualized that part of the boot (whether it's the top of a high boot, or a kneepad/kneeguard attached to the top of a boot), so they went with their gut on it.
That still doesn't explain the pixel holes though, or the missing tunic-bottom missing in some frames, or the tunic-bottom sometimes looking longer/shorter... etc.