Sprites needed

[Kijuna]

If this is the wrong forum, go ahead and move it, but I need some 8-bit FFTA sprites. I need a Nu Mou Morpher, Marche, Ritz, Remedi, and a Moogle Gunner, and Montblanc. And then a few more I haven't decided on yet. Thanks in advance. And sorry if I'm asking a little too much.

EDIT: And my origonal post back at the old forum just asked for a few tips. That would work, too.

[decaf]

hey, i'm a massive 8-bit theater fan, and i really want to learn how to draw my own sprites, or even just draw sum1 elses to look koohle for my friends, does ne1 know a good site or book that can teach me how?

FEAR THE CHEESE
(no remorse)

[transcend]

Step 1: Open MSPaint.
Step 2: Zoom in.
Step 3: Practice.

[MC43]

That's how I made all my sprites. I even made a Monk animation that I might post up later on.

[decaf]

lol, yeah, that's pretty much what i'm doin now *sigh*

feel free to, you know, actually give me a good site if you can find the kindness somewhere deep down in your hearts to help lil' ole me

why search on google when i can have you guys do it for me :D

now LINK ME, MANSLAVES!


well then, back to the clicky mspaint grind



----------------===========don't ever stop, don't ever quit

[MC43]

Now that was just completely uncalled for. I was actually going to help you out...

[Sky Warrior Bob]

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.

[Elite Shinobi]

I use MsPaint for my sprite editing needs, but only because its all I've got. I made the image in my avatar. Its a Final Fantasy Tactics Advance edit to look like Felicia from Darkstalkers. Still not quite the way I want it to look... but pretty good likeness so far. what ya think Sky Warrior Bob?

[Sky Warrior Bob]

Its pretty good from what I see thus far. You might want to try adding a tail. Nothing much, for example take a gander at my Beserker Dwarf's tail. It isn't anything much, but there you go.

Of course, the real challenge of sprite work isn't just to come up with the occasional one sprite, but to create an entire spritesheet, that at least copies all the poses of the game style you're trying to copy, if not create a few additional poses of your own.

Admittedly, you'll prolly only want to go through this effort if you have a purpose to these sprites.

As far as MS Paint goes, there's nothing wrong with it. I just find that it makes the process so much more complicated compared to Corel Photopaint 3.0. I mean, the decent Zoom feature alone runs circles around MS Paint.

Sky Warrior Bob

[Elite Shinobi]

yep i know what you mean... but i have made decent use of MsPaint. Yeah I have given up hope on making an entire sheet of Felicia... I have plans for her to be in my future sprite comic... though I was originally going to have a Viera Assassin be my character's partner, Catgirls are better and what catgirl is there better known than Felicia! (She is my favorite) I am going to make a sheet of the Assassin sprites with felicia's head, arms, and I DO need to add the tail.

[MC43]

Thanks for tips. As I was reading them, I noticed that I already was doing a few of the tips that you had said to use. Now since I have no use for these sprites, I just do them to have some fun. Whenever I get into a new game, I'll usually make a sprite for it. That, and sometimes, I like the challange of making a hard sprite. Have you tried to make a Nu Mou sprite. Some of those are hard to make. I have a small sampling in my avitar, but I also have two different files full of 8-bit sprites. I"m especially proud of my Monk animation. Any suggestions for a sprite creator in the making?

[Sky Warrior Bob]

Nu Mou? Not sure what that means, but I've pretty much limited myself to doing Final Fantasy 1 type sprites, and there's plenty of work for me there alone.

And those are some really nice sprites there. Too bad about the craptacular conversion to 256 color fuzz. The only real suggest I can make is that you use a one pixel black outline around your sprites.

From the looks of things, I really don't think I have much to teach you. The best things I can point out are some very challenging things I've done, to give yourself ideas for your own challenges. One, create a battle sprite for Kraken (the Water Fiend), who is about the standard size (maybe only a pixel taller than Fighter). Two, creating a battle sprite for the Bahamut dragon people, using the same standards as Kraken. Creating a V hand for Victory sprite.

Also, if you're interested in making an animated sprite (such as my Breakdancing BM that I've got a link too), look around for an animated GIF that you like, then make your sprite do the same poses. It may be considered cheap, but cool nonetheless.

And don't worry people, I will showcase at least some of these things soon enough. However, I just got the Rachet & Clank sequel in the mail, so I can't be bothered right now.

SWB :)

[Kieran Dineer]

The only 8-bit sprite I've made has been a Black Mage one for the emblem of my Armored Core. Needless to say, it kicks major ass.

[dee_red_mage]

Hey Sky Warrior Bob i made Your lil Dwarf into a Gif Animation.

[Hannibal_]

Hi Guys !

I'm fully new here. But hell i like 8-bit theater. I love rpgs and i'm the biggest fen of it. I play rpgs for 12 yers noew in real life and on pc too and hell i like this :) Did i manson i like this ? :) well i read throut your little "tutorial" Sky Warrior Bob and i like it. I will properly draw my own comic. I drew ZagZag here in hungary but i wanted to draw something that contains more magic :))) Is this comic drawed with Corel Photopaint V3.0 ? or MS paint ? And where can i get sime little games that have sprite graphic ?

See ya.

[MC43]

Yeah... I made an 8-bit comic. I loved it, maybe I'll post it up here so everyone can see it.

[Wolf99x]

I've dabbled in creating 8-bit sprites quite a lot. Here are two examples I am "proud" of. They are 8-bit sprites of the Master Chief and a Covenant Elite. Note that the sprites are not to scale, and the Elite is supposed to be holding a plasma rifle. Also the image is not a good looking as it should because I can't upload .bmp for some reason.