Sprite Editing
 

Hey, thanks for visiting this thread. Look, I'm new to sprite comics, and get the basic concept of sprites, but i'm stumped on editing sprites:sweatdrop Y'see all I can figure out how to do is chnge the color. Not too much, but its a start. Anyone think they can help (by the way, considering my extremely new position, I'll take any advice at all).

Gladly!

I, personally, use the tutorial made by one Arlia Janet.

It has a lot of what you need for FF6 style sprites.

Now, if you wanna do sprites of the MegaMan persuasion, I strongly recommend this guide. Also, here are some links to other guides from the same site.

The best advice I can personally give is to simply expirement. It all comes with practice. Search for more tutorials and work with some of the greater sprite artists we have here (personally, I reccomend Inbred Chocobo, Phil_, Arlia Janet, RickZarber, mammothtank, and Skyshot). They, in my mind, make the best sprites. However, they may be busy with other things, so they're not a sure shot at spritery guidance.

Also, I do a little bit of spriting here and there, but I'm certainly not a master.

EDIT: Also, Sky Warrior Bob is good at 8bit sprites, but he's busy all the damn time.

http://www.nuklearforums.com/showpo...59&postcount=3

There's a link to a guide I did a while back... As for spriting, I was really good, but right now I'm kinda a trouble spot.

See, the program I had been using for spriting for years, doesn't exactly work for Windows XP. I did discover a work-around, by installing Windows 3.1 under Dosbox, but I'm still trying to tweak the mouse sensitivity & running speed. Unfortuantly, for the moment, things aren't exactly perfect.

I'm hopeful that I can get Corel Photopaint 3.0 (the program in question) running perfectly, as it was the best program I've found so far (even more current versions of Corel Photopaint suck in comparison). Otherwise, I'm going to be on the lookout for a program that works just as well for me.

SWB

Awesome. Thanks for recommending my tutorial.

In all honesty, I think MSPaint is the best program for the sprite editing that I do. Using photoshop is like using watchmaker's tools to build a house. It can be done, but it takes a lot longer than it should. You are painting with pixels; you shouldn't need blurs and transparencies.

Sometimes, I have had people take pictures of me doing a specific pose. I would ignore my head and kind of trace the outline of my body in Illustrator. Then I would move this to MSPaint and sprite around the outline (usually I would keep the limbs and replace everything else). Then I would fiddle with that until I got a good sprite.

I hope you noticed that I said Photopaint, and the early 3.0 version I had been using was basically Windows paint with just the right amount of extra features to make spriting a breeze. (Way better zoom controls than MS Paint, 2nd mouse button did a color pick-up instead of an alternative color, precise resizing controls...)

It just sucks that it doesn't exactly work for XP, and the best I can do is run it through Dosbox, but unfortuantly I'm finding that route to be a tad buggy.

SWB

I wasn't writing in response to anything you wrote, Bob. I was just offering my personal preferences.

I converted to Mac OS a while ago, so I've been developing new methods for the new OS. Sometimes, I still miss MSPaint though, but its sacrifice was worth all the other benefits I now enjoy.

You included me in there but not Loyal? I'm not on par with the rest of those guys; all I can do is tweak FFV sprites. Hell, my own sheet is just a wimpy recolor... *sniffle*

That tutorial is cool, though. Perhaps once my computer is working correctly again I could try FFVI-ing myself.

I must say while the tutorial is kewl, I have never done a sprite that way. Mostly I just strip different sprites parts, paste em together, and then tweak to make the rest of the sprite look like it needs to be.

But yeah I could give a few pointers and such for spriting.

You make a lot of FF5 sprites for just about everybody, dude.

Also, I forgot about Loyal. I didn't remember everybody who does awesome jobs with their art.

Thabks guys, this is really helpful. I'm going try it again, but I can definitely look for a better outcome!