The Warring States of NPF - Sprites needed

First of all here's a good site for sprites:

http://tsgk.captainn.net/

Also, for advice concerning sprites, I'll pass on a few tips that I've learned. For those of you who don't know me from the last board, I'm the resident spritemaster for 8-bit theater. Garland's caped & horned form is my early handy work, as is almost every original pose & sprite that appears in 8-bit. It isn't so much that Brian can't create a new pose on occasion, its just I come up with generic spritesheet poses that are so much easier for him to snag & grab.

I will likely be re-releasing my occasional spriteshee releases, but right now this guide of mine will have to satisfy you.

Sky Warrior Bob aka Kevin

Kevinator's Guide to Spriting
By Kevin C. Sigmund

(Note: If any of you call me either Kevinator, or KC, I will hunt you down and Kill you on the Spot. That's a promise, a promise I intend to keep. Consider yourself warned.)

Alright, since I've been spriting for at least a while now, I think it is far past time where I share a few secrets that I've picked up.

Part 1: Get yourself a decent program!

Okay, now this is basically something that all comes down to preference. However, I have some suggestions of what to look for in a decent program:

- Good Zoom In/Zoom Out feature: Having this is a must, as its always a good to be able to zoom in for close up work, and then zoom out to see how it looks. My own program offers a Zoom In/Out that works on the Right/Left clicks of the mouse (Zoom In = Left Button, Zoom Out = Right).

- Nice Pen Tool: What I mean by this, is that your pen can easily & quickly be resized from 1 pixel point, to 40 (or more), and will *STAY* that way even after you close the program (You really don't want the program you're in to reset to a 10 pixel width each time that you start up to do spriting.) Remember, what your looking for is a pen tool, not a paintbrush. In addition, if you can find a program that has a pen tool that also works as an eyedropper to pick up colors, all the better (something my program offers with the use of the Right Click).

- Good Re-Sizing Features: Find out how your program re-sizes images. By percentages is the best, but you might be able to make do with the manual method in a pinch. (My own program offers both methods). I'll explain this more when I get to Tip & Tricks.

- Color Replacer tool: This is always good when you steal sprite parts from other sprites, or locations. Another item I'll cover in Tips & Tricks.

- Ability to have Multiple Projects Open: Not an absolute must, but I always like to look at as many sprites as possible. In not only gives you a good idea of what various movements can look like, but its always good when scrounging for body parts.

- Color Mixing Tool: My own program calls it a paintbrush, but I've seen it called other things. At any rate, this tool allows you to mix two colors until you end up with something you like. A great resource for finding the perfect color.

Part 2: Get your act together.

I don't know how many examples of sprites I've seen that are just plain *WRONG*! To make an actual sprite, and not just some sort of blocky mishmash, there are certain things you need to do.

- Always make sure your ends up at the right pixel size: What I mean by that, is that you can't have sprites that have unusual 2 pixel blotches. Its just wrong, and if you do it your sprites will look wrong and not done right.

- Try to work at the actual sprite level: Eg - the way a sprite would appear if you got if from a screen grab from an emulator. Most people don't understand that most sprites are really small, and need to be enlarged for use in web comics. To give you a good example, I just printed out the FF1 Thief sprite at his actual size, and he's about as tall as the end of my pencil (but it is a dull pencil).

- Keep your Color Count Down: (Note: This mostly applies to 8-bit sprites) Personally, I'm not a strict spriter, who limits himself to four/five colors (Mega Man has 5, but I think somebody once told me one of them doesn't exactly count), but I still try to keep the color count down. I say that if you keep it to 6, it'll look okay, and that's fine by me.

As for the bigger bitty games, I suggest you use your own judgement, but try to keep the colors low all the same, as none of those games tend to go too much overboard.

Part 3: Tips & Tricks

I've found a number of things that work for getting some quality sprites, and now I'll share...

Tip 1: Master the Shrink & Grow:
For me, this is a biggie. Sometimes I'll take sprites form higher bit games (or even 8-bit games), and re-size them to fit my character size. They will need some re-tooling & re-coloring to get them to look right, but it is worth it.

But the re-size isn't just limited to sprites. You can take actual pictures, and sometimes (with lots of work), even get them to work as your sprite's new body parts. I prefer quick cartoonish sketch's myself, as they tend to be easier to work with, but I have used real photos (with mixed results).

There's also one other neat thing you can do with re-size, and that is fix any blotch errors you might have. This is really only to be considered if you tried working with a sprite at 2x/3x/4x its normal size. Just resize it, and most of the blotchy stuff will be fixed, and what's left should be easy enough to take care of.

Tip 2: Steal, steal, steal!:
I kinda glazed over this in Tip 1, but taking sprites, pictures, and whatnot from other resources, is a GREAT way to get new sprites. Yes, you'll need to rework them to make them look like your intended sprite, but that's a lot easier than working from scratch.

Tip 3: Keep it all together:
Have lots of sprites to look at. The funny thing is, the more sprites you have to look at, the easier it is to think of new sprites to make. Especially ones from the same/similar games. With Final Fantasy, I have the luxury of having sprites from FF1, FF2j, & FF3j, plus all the Game Boy games for good examples of sprites. Not something many games can boast.

Tip 4: Copy, copy, copy:
When I try making a new sprite, I end up doing it in stages, with little changes along the way. But instead of altering the same sprite, I keep making copies of each stage. That way, I can always go back a step if I mess up.

Well, that's it. Or at least that's all I can think of right now. And just in case you're wondering, I personally use Corel Photopaint V3.0 (Made in 1992 for Windows 3.0/3.1). Its great, but I can't comment on its current incarnation, as I don't have it. But as long as the later version of the program retain its cool Right-Clicking features, it should be great. I also have a scroll mouse, which is not only a nice thing to have for web browsing, but help out in the whole spriting process.