AWKWARD ZOMBIE

How long does something like that take?

I draw at a snails pace so something around 4+ hours?
I didn't really keep track of time.

That's depressingly fast compared to my own standards.

I spend way longer than that on far less remarkable pieces.

Anyone here proficient (or at least knowledgeable) with pixel art/sprite art? I'm looking to get into spriting so I'd like some assistance in that regard.

Sol Reaper wrote:Anyone here proficient (or at least knowledgeable) with pixel art/sprite art? I'm looking to get into spriting so I'd like some assistance in that regard.

Uhhhh I know a little bit about how spriting works. I don't do much of it myself, but I know the process fairly well.

Cori wrote:

Sol Reaper wrote:Anyone here proficient (or at least knowledgeable) with pixel art/sprite art? I'm looking to get into spriting so I'd like some assistance in that regard.

Uhhhh I know a little bit about how spriting works. I don't do much of it myself, but I know the process fairly well.

Teach me you ways, Cori-sensei

Ah, I love how even though there's a large amount of detail put into the shading and color, it still looks painted. I just like that sort of thing.

Wwwwwell

You start with a sketch of your subject, and it's usually much bigger than the sprite you want to make (doing it digitally is best so that you can use a magic wand tool or a paint bucket to erase the sketch color later). You can also sketch with pencil and paper and scan it onto the computer. You save your sketch and open it up as a background on the program you're using, usually either Photoshop or MSPaint. If your sketch was on paper then photoshop is your best bet since it lets you work on layers, but Paint works surprisingly well for spriting, too.
Then you shrink the whole sketch to the size you want the sprite to be, zoom in as much as you can, select the pencil tool (and set it to size 1), and trace your sketch. You can keep a larger copy of the original sketch handy to use as a reference since your sketch will be kinf of blurry after it shrinks. The pixel lines can be done in any color as long as they're a different color from your sketch, and you'll go over them again when you color the sprite. Black is usually the best color for the main sprite lines until it's time to color it.

Also, if the subject you're sketching has patterns like spots or stripes or wings or whatever, it's good to sprite those in a different color from the outline.

Then you need to pick your colors and put them together in a palette. This makes switching between colors later really easy. A good rule of thumb is to have about six shades for every color you want to use. You can use the darkest color on your palette to go over your black sketch lines and re-do them, since pure black is something you should stay away from in your final sprite. Avoid pure white, too. It really makes the sprite look two-dimensional and flat. Then you fill in the main part of the subject with the neutral tone of the color you want to use.

Then you can start shading your sprite--after you figure out where you want your light source to be. If you want to you can put a mark to show where the light source is supposed to be, so you don't forget. Then you shade the sprite. To make colors blend, like, say I wanted to blend dark blue with sky blue, then I cell-shade the dark blue area first (basically laying out the shape of where I want the dark blue to be), and fill in the sky blue area next to it. Then I start 'leaking' pixels of sky blue into the dark blue, and vice-versa. Near the border of the two colors, I put sky blue there more densely, and have it gradually thin out into the dark blue. It all depends on what color you want to be more prominent, so you could do the same with the dark blue and have it thinning out into the sky blue area.

You do this for every color in your sprite, barring ones that you don't want to blend together.

One of the BIGGEST THINGS TO AVOID is called 'pillow shading'. That's where you have the dark colors blending around the entire outline of the sprite, as if the light was coming at the subject head-on. That's a common beginner's mistake.

That's.....uh, pretty much it, really! Naturally you delete the sketch under the sprite, either deleting the layer in Photoshop or using the fill bucket in Paint. You can make the white area outside the sprite transparent to make it look better. Some people have even had areas IN their sprite partially transparent when they've sprited in Photoshop. You'll have to work on a different layer for the semi-transparent areas.

I hope this helped.

Edit: WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT SAVE THE SPRITE AS A JPEG. It will artifact and your whole sprite will be ruined! Save it as a PNG!

Guild Wars 2 Asura Elementalist
One of my GW2 characters, Asura Elementalist Mougg.

A little doodle I made whilst waiting upon a download

And another.

You shouldn't just use the paint bucket tool for coloring. It isn't very visually appealing. I would at least paint in the white space with a brush.

Your line work is decent, though. A tad scribbly, but decent.

I was only scribbling while I was waiting for a download. ;-;

I know, I'm just saying.

I don't use the fill handle during "real art" time though. :3 So that's good.