The NP member comic discussion thread!

[phil_]

I think he counted time spent recoloring the pirate sprites in that time. The ones I sent him had awful colors, based off of Buts and Co.'s pirate colors in FFV. Plus I see two significantly altered custom sprites in the main cast, and all the walking sprites for the pirates in the last panel (I only made front and side sprites). So, all that could take a couple hours. Add on text effects, focus blur, finding backgrounds, being out of practice, and the actual putting down lines and stuffing characters between them part, and it would take a while regardless of program.

Also, seems a bit odd for there to be pirates guarding the sword. Wouldn't they try to steal it? Or, are they just the illusion of pirates; a manifestation of the soul of the internet?

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by phil_

I think he counted time spent recoloring the pirate sprites in that time. The ones I sent him had awful colors, based off of Buts and Co.'s pirate colors in FFV. Plus I see two significantly altered custom sprites in the main cast, and all the walking sprites for the pirates in the last panel (I only made front and side sprites). So, all that could take a couple hours. Add on text effects, focus blur, finding backgrounds, being out of practice, and the actual putting down lines and stuffing characters between them part, and it would take a while regardless of program.

Also, seems a bit odd for there to be pirates guarding the sword. Wouldn't they try to steal it? Or, are they just the illusion of pirates; a manifestation of the soul of the internet.

No offense, but I'm not exactly new to spriting, myself. Most of my work is done from the ground up, pixel by pixel. That includes the 16-bit sprite of me in my latest comic and a back pose of the same (I'm working on it slowly).

Honestly, what I learned in my effort to start a 16-bit sheet of myself was that

1. It's easier to start in GraphicsGale just to get the palette colors.
2. Once you have your colors, it's easier to use a program with an eyedropper tool.
3. Said second program should be one you are comfortable with, with a low learning curve.

Honestly, sprites are small. It's not that hard to make them so long as you're working in 1x, and it's better to store them that way, anyway. With a decent program, recoloring can be as easy as magic-wanding a body part and playing with the HSL or as difficult as picking a color and replacing pixels. Admittedly, it's a lot of sprites, but just to make the pirates' legs in a walking stance should take no more than a few minutes to block out and fill in each.



Not to crap on anyone's ability or anything. I'm using Rick's work (the Mirai sheet) as my 16-bit style reference. You guys are amazing. I'm just saying it only takes 5 colors to make photo-realistic metal on a Gaia avatar edit. On something as small as a FF6-style sprite, if something looks wrong, it's relatively obvious and usually can be fixed by changing one pixel.




Edit: What I'm REALLY trying to say (as much as the above probably made me sound like an ass) is that based on my own experience spriting and my own experience with finding backgrounds and actually building comics, most of it is spent staring like a zombie at Google page after Google page looking for the perfect background, and barring that, one that I can settle for, and then using them to put together the actual comic. Doing sprites, especially largely pre-built ones with modifications, takes a lot less time.

[Loyal]

I don't think it's the sprites that did him in as much as the background and lighting/special effects.

Though for comparison, the pixel art that's been invading my comics/artwork lately took me 1 (background elements)-4 hours (Ropeswinging Loyal) apiece, whereas a sprite sheet takes 3-6. It's more than just recoloring, it's making sure that the pixels your placing are the right ones for the job.

Spriting isn't the art of making tiny graphics, it's the art of making compact ones. You need to do what you can to ensure all the important details (eyes, major clothing artifacts, body markings, etc) are still visible, while keeping the whole thing as small as possible. Also, it needs to flow together smoothly, from sprite A to sprite B, for the sake of animations and such. That means a lot of double-checking as you do your work to catch yourself thinking, "Say, this part of his jacket should be longer than that... I need to fix it."

Note that it has little to do with Rick's comic, as I doubt he scratched together a full sheet for every single pirate, but just sayin'.

Finally, GraphicsGale DOES have an eyedropper tool. Or rather, a function. It's the right-click. Very convenient.

[RickZarber]

Okay, so it seems there's some stuff to address. First let me pluck out the points I feel most pertinent.

Originally Posted by phil_

I think he counted time spent recoloring the pirate sprites in that time. The ones I sent him had awful colors, based off of Buts and Co.'s pirate colors in FFV. Plus I see two significantly altered custom sprites in the main cast, and all the walking sprites for the pirates in the last panel (I only made front and side sprites). So, all that could take a couple hours. Add on text effects, focus blur, finding backgrounds, being out of practice, and the actual putting down lines and stuffing characters between them part, and it would take a while regardless of program.

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

Not to crap on anyone's ability or anything. I'm using Rick's work (the Mirai sheet) as my 16-bit style reference. You guys are amazing. I'm just saying it only takes 5 colors to make photo-realistic metal on a Gaia avatar edit. On something as small as a FF6-style sprite, if something looks wrong, it's relatively obvious and usually can be fixed by changing one pixel.

Edit: What I'm REALLY trying to say (as much as the above probably made me sound like an ass) is that based on my own experience spriting and my own experience with finding backgrounds and actually building comics, most of it is spent staring like a zombie at Google page after Google page looking for the perfect background, and barring that, one that I can settle for, and then using them to put together the actual comic. Doing sprites, especially largely pre-built ones with modifications, takes a lot less time.

Originally Posted by Loyal2NES

I don't think it's the sprites that did him in as much as the background and lighting/special effects. [...] it's making sure that the pixels your placing are the right ones for the job. [...] Also, it needs to flow together smoothly, [...] That means a lot of double-checking as you do your work to catch yourself thinking, "Say, this part of his jacket should be longer than that... I need to fix it."

So yeah, it's really all those things. Let me lay out the work flow for this comic for you, just so you can get an idea. There's that "How I make JAQ" video I made, but it doesn't show any of the prep work involved, nor were there any background manipulations or FX in that episode. Basically, that was an easy one, which is rare.

I start working on the comic around noon. My script reads thus:
P1: Walking
P2: Faint "Yarr..." Worried looks
P3: FW: Did you hear that? Listen! Do you smell that?
P4: RZ: Uh-oh.
P5: Room full of pirates. "Yar?"
P6: Wide angle shot of all
P7: RZ eyes narrow
P8: Battle

So first I open up the following file that Phil sent me:


I spend the next two hours converting it into this:

Now maybe that would've taken you ten minutes tops, but I'm actually not a very good spriter. You cite my Mirai sprites, but those aren't all that far off from a recolor, really. Hell, I've got sprites for Fifthfiend that've been sitting on my desktop for something like a year now. I'm still not happy with them. There's a lot of trial and error involved for me when it comes to spriting. I dislike actually creating sprites so much that that's the whole reason I haven't done a JAQ in six months!

Then, like you mentioned, blue, I spend a very damn long time searching Google images for background plates. This involves testing lots of them to see if I can squeeze them into the right shapes or if they flow together. And not only that but I do a whole lot of background manipulation. Many of the backgrounds are from different photos, and that means color timing, and ratio and brightness/contrast adjustments, not to mention removing people from photographs, and other clone-tool manipulations (in this case extending the rock walls to cover the skyline). Also blending multiple images to create perspective (see panel 5). Quite apart from the actual work, I'm creating the layout of the comic in my head as I go. I have rough ideas in my notes (like Extreme wide angle shot on panel 6, Close-up on panel 7), but other than that the layout of the strip will be entirely dependent on the images I am able to find.

Once all the images are place I merge 'em down and place a lens blur on 'em. (Mostly out of habit at this point--it's become JAQ's "style" now, just like the Comic Sans and the six pixel borders, etc.)

Next I open a blank paint file and create all the sprite poses for the characters. As Phil noted, it's not just dropping pre-cut characters out of their sheets. I take pride in the fact that I do a whole lot of tiny manipulations, and I try to be sure everyone's expression is just right. Basically it's like I'm directing my actors here.

Now in some comics I do the sprites first. Comics like this one, the sprite sizes and positions are going to be entirely dependent on the backgrounds, so again it's all trial and error trying to see where they fit. I'm at about four and a half, five hours when I finish this stage.

I drop each sprite into Photoshop one at a time so that I can have complete control over everything. Comic's like this, where I have nearly twenty sprites in one panel alone, that's pretty important. Many of the sprites are cropped to fit the border, some (like panel 5) are blurred to create depth of field. All of this can take a very long time for comics like this one.

I should mention that at this point I had not created the walking sprites for the pirates. I waited to finish everything else first. Making the walking sprites took half an hour or so. Finding enough weapons for them all, that took much longer.

So finally all the sprites are in place, it's just a matter of adding the text and word balloons, which is another trial and error process, trying to get it to "look good" (to me). Then there's the FX, which is the biggest trial and error process of the whole strip. I just doodle around till I find something I like.

Somehow, all in all, this turns into a nine hour process. Granted, I was talking to people online for maybe two hours of it, and that slows things down, but the rest... yeah, really it's just I have to keep re-doing stuff 'till it looks right. I'm very much a perfectionist, and I hope and like to think that it shows somewhat in the final quality of the comic.

So hopefully you'll forgive me for going into rant mode, but after spending my whole day off working on this I'm just slightly defensive when you're essentially saying, "it shouldn't take that long." Yeah, it really shouldn't. But it does for me. Hopefully it's worth it in the end. I mean, I'll grant you this wasn't even that good of a comic. There's no joke, and it's basically just a set-up for the next one. But it's important to me that it looks good.

Originally Posted by phil_

Also, seems a bit odd for there to be pirates guarding the sword. Wouldn't they try to steal it? Or, are they just the illusion of pirates; a manifestation of the soul of the internet.

A little bit of the latter. They're more like how random pirates in FF would be--more like monsters than real characters.

[bluestarultor]

Wow. That's honestly a helluva lot more work than I put into most of my comic endeavors.

Granted, if you look at my layers, it's a mess. I'll usually have at least one layer per character, plus at least one other layer for every different effect on them in the comic. Sometimes I just keep duplicating for stronger alpha values on my blurs. After that, I have a black bottom layer and a panel layer above it. If I need to cut my panels off without moving them for more black space, I generally just use another layer for black rectangles. The real nightmare comes with my speech bubbles. I'll have a layer of text, a layer to draw the actual bubbles in, a layer to draw the bubble tail outlines, and a layer below that to fill the tails in with white. Then I'll just scribble away the line to open the bubble into the tail on the bubble layer with the pencil.

That's not including the marginal cleaning-up of objects I need. A lot of times, I'll have a background I like, or that will at least do, but it doesn't have the object I need. And since most pictures are on white backgrounds, my foreground objects might have white bits left over depending on how careful I am about cleaning it up. Magic wand tends to pick up too much of my metal, and I've noticed I make heavy use of silver and shiny things in my real objects, so I'll generally need to go in with the eraser.

[Thadius]

I hereby decree that Big Mac has won due to the sheer wrongness involved in his comic.

Now, for this plot point! How does one 'fix' a Skyshot? The prize is the same as last time: your comic will be put into continuity!

[Loyal]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

The real nightmare comes with my speech bubbles. I'll have a layer of text, a layer to draw the actual bubbles in, a layer to draw the bubble tail outlines, and a layer below that to fill the tails in with white. Then I'll just scribble away the line to open the bubble into the tail on the bubble layer with the pencil.

See, what I do is a hell of a lot simpler:

1) Create Layer titled "Text".
2) Put all text in there where I need it.
3) Create new layer titled "Bubbles".
4) Use the Circular Select tool to highlight the appropriate areas for all text bubbles simultaneously.
5) Go into the "Path" mode and edit in the tails for the bubbles with the Pencil tool.
6) Fill with White.
7) Stroke with Black.

That's not including the marginal cleaning-up of objects I need. A lot of times, I'll have a background I like, or that will at least do, but it doesn't have the object I need.

I'm too lazy to search through Google for a background, so I usually settle for making my own. The laziness would simply settle for a single line, but then I decide that doesn't look good... And I invariably end up spending more time creating a decent background from scratch than could possibly have been taken to just Google it. But since you can't edit picture frames of forum members/staff and things like that into a Google background, it's a worthy tradeoff.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Sorry to butt in, but can anyone repost a link to Skyshot's sprites? I need them for my comic

[phil_]

Link to Skyshot's sprites.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Thanks