[Sprites] Seeking a spriting mentor

I've looked up several online spriting tutorials, but I never quite know where to begin...anyone interested in helping me pick up the basics, up to and including making my own sprites from scratch? I am highly motivated to get into this, mainly because I have a sprite engine all coded and nothing to use it with...

Hey...you look familiar. Have I seen you on the forum before? o.o

Anywho, I could help you out! I enjoy spriting and people tell me I'm excellent at it. I also have a little experience in tutoring people (thought not a lot), so yeah. :]

Given that I've got 3400 posts and we're in the same clan, I don't doubt it. I used to hang around the roleplaying section. Anyway!

I briefly checked out your DA, and it looks impressive; if I'd asked for someone to sprite for me instead of learning myself, those results would have been perfect. I've done nothing sprite-related before, so if you're willing to put up with absolute newbiness then shoot me a PM or visitor message or whatever (posting here is fine too, I'll keep checking it). I've got GIMP and paint but no photoshop, I have used GIMP for things other than spriting so I can probably adapt any photoshop-based techniques to use GIMP instead. Finally, I've got an exam in a few days so if I could start off slowly so as not to eat up too much study time, that'd be great. (Only for the first few days though)

Thanks for the prompt response (I was expecting to have to wait ages :p) and I look forward to beginning tuition soon ^_^. Oh, and I'm at GMT +10 (Canberra), so if that causes any troubles...

EDIT: Nice pony, too!

Yeah, true.

And thanks! Also, don't worry, I've given pointers to novice spriters before, so it's no problem. And really, all you need to make great sprites is Paint. If you don't want them to have icky white backgrounds or anything though, you'll need another program that can delete the background for you. Simply because Paint can't do it.

Just two things before we start though:

One, I haven't quite done anything completely from scratch yet. The closest I've come to that would probably be the mugshot for one of my BA characters, Kiel. But I will be attempting it sometime in the near future, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Two, I can help you out for this week, but next week, I'm leaving for a two week vacation and I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have while I'm there. I hope you don't mind. >_<

Are you alright with all this? And honestly, I'm usually a quick poster, but if I wasn't on, you probably would be waiting awhile lol.

Canberra...I know I've heard of that city. Argh, I forget where it is though. XD But it shouldn't be too much trouble, seeing as we can communicate now, obviously. Still, just to make sure we're clear on it, I'll let you know I'm on the east coast of the US. Quite far behind you lol.

And thanks, I drew the Pony myself in Paint and then shrunk it in Photoshop after cutting away the background. :>

That's all perfectly fine, I'm quite happy to take things slowly. Canberra's the capital of Australia, it's in the ACT. Basically what I need is some direction: point me at something and I'll go at it and ask for advice when I need it. So I should be able to keep up some level of stuff while you're off, provided I've got enough of a start to practice something. So yeah, whenever you're ready!

Alright, I'm glad you're alright with things. :]

It's really late for me right now, so once I get up in the morning, I'll start giving you some tips, 'kay?

Works for me!

Just so you know, all you'll really ever need for spriting is paint. But GIMP and Photoshop can be helpful with anti-aliasing and recoloring, so they're nice to have as well.

^I believe I told him that already. xP

Anyway, the first thing I'll do is ask you what kind of sprites you'd like to learn to make (Zelda, Pokemon, what?). I specialize in GBA Fire Emblem-style sprites, but the basics remain the same for all styles.

With regards to background, I have that sorted. My sprite engine removes a certain color from the image when I load it in, so I just make the background 254/254/254 white and it zaps all pixels of that color out.

As for what kind...well ultimately I'm looking to come up with my own stuff, but I'll start with Pokemon ones I guess, just for familiarity reasons :p

EDIT: I can, however, start anywhere that is convenient. Might give me a good excuse to go play Fire Emblem :v

Heh. Pokemon, eh? Those can be tough depending on what you want to make a sprite of. Trainers and items are simple, but certain Pokemon can be pretty hard thanks to the details.

Do you want to make sprites of the Pokemon, specifically, or the trainers? Or something else?

Trainers to start with. I mean, I'm going to be doing mostly human sprites so that seems like the way to go. I'd like to cover everything eventually, but starting simple seems smart.

Ah, okay. I've done one trainer sprite myself, actually. Here it is. It's meant to be a Pokefied version of me.



Now, I had to recolor and redraw quite a bit here, but the best place to start with spriting, imo is simply recoloring. It's not hard to do and it's easy to get the hang of.

So, just grab a trainer sprite from somewhere and change the color scheme? Sounds like a good place to start. I've heard recolors being a good place to start before, but never quite gotten exactly what to do...

Yeah, basically. And what you do, really, is start with a base color. Then use darker variations of said color on darker areas and lighter variations of said color on the lighter areas. You can get any color you want in Paint if you go to Colors -> Edit Colors.

So I guess I should just grab a trainer sprite from google image or wherever, pick a color scheme, and see what I can come up with then post it here for tips?

EDIT: I looked at several trainer sprites and they all had pretty much every pixel a subtly different color, making it near impossible for me to produce a result that didn't look too color-blocky. I've been using GIMP's select by color option and custom color selection (which has a nice thing where you can shift the color easily without changing what shade it is), and I'll probably stick with GIMP for spriting. I noticed some of the pokemon sprites have big blocks of color, so I decided to try recoloring one of those (I had a red Gyarados sprite that I was going to use to color sample and change a D/P Cue Ball's jacket to red, but the jacket had more colors on it than the actual Gyarados did! So I did this instead):



I just selected identical color regions and color-shifted them, but unfortunately that doesn't give me any insight into how to produce the right shades in the first place (I tried several times to get good shades on one of the trainers and it just didn't work, even when they were really dark the colors looked too pronounced. How exactly do you produce more muted shades?)

After further experimentation I've figured out how to do that in Paint, so I guess I could color-shift other sprites at this point or at least give it a go. I still am not sure how to recolor trainer sprites with the number of subtly different shades in them though...

In short, GIMP did all the work for me so I don't know any of the theory behind shading colors on a sprite still. D=

I worked out I just need the right levels of saturation and whatever the hell "lum" stands for, other than the berry. 'course, what those actually ARE is something experience-based, I think. I don't know. I guess I'll find out soon :p

Ah, I see. But see, that Gyarados looks great. It's not hard at all to simply recolor. :]

I'm afraid I know very little about GIMP though, so if you want lessons on spriting in GIMP, I'm afraid you'll have to find a new teacher. >_<

I'LL DO IT IF YOU WANT! GIMP IS MY FORTE, IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF.

But seriously, I'd be happy to do it, over skype, if that's okay. We can start whenever.

Well, what I'm mainly after isn't specific software tips (I think I could do that in paint now, I found a thing that lets you recolor every part of a certain sprite that's a certain color which was all I actually used GIMP for) but rather stuff on how to get shading to work well, where to shade, where not to, making borders look effective, etc. Although I certainly wouldn't object to popping onto skype and getting some GIMP tips (would non-voice chat be okay?)

I can teach you everything about spriting, along with GIMP tips (for spriting) over Skype IM. It'll be easy, I promise.