Topic: Spritework Request & Showcase Thread

[BMC_War Machine]

One question; how do you guys do this shit??? Lol im a good artist but can't do sprites for shit lol. Do you guys draw these first then resize and add color from there? My sis hooked me up with a Wacom tablet so drawing wouldnt be a problem.

[Donvermicelli]

One question; how do you guys do this shit??? Lol im a good artist but can't do sprites for shit lol. Do you guys draw these first then resize and add color from there? My sis hooked me up with a Wacom tablet so drawing wouldnt be a problem.

drawing or spriting?

To be honest most of it is practice, practice and practice.
A good starting point would be to take a simple sprite and study it, try to reproduce it and then alter it a bit.
In pixel art it's all about trying to give every single pixel meaning. Some stuff like dithering (that I still suck at) serve as illusions to make the viewer think there are more colors in there.

A fun thing you could do is to go back a couple pages (like 10 or so) where I posted much earlier versions of the sprite I am working on now, you can see me gradually picking up tricks and improving not only the spriting but also the animation skills. Sprite don't have to start out perfect, it's like a painting where you keep making iteration upon iteration until you call it quits I suppose.

Here it is. I did nothing much. Just edited the leg and the cape's lining. The darkest color was indeed not useful.

Thanks for the help, I ended up with a pretty similar result. Your shading is still more subtle than mine, I guess I still have to work on improving that.

[Aridale]

I dunno how they do it either! Its always baffled me. Im good with color and putting things together but Im no artist by any stretch. Ive been tryin to improve my spriting for my own games I work on but its a constant struggle. Im limiting mself to 8x8 with the db32 palette. Sometimes I get a halfway decent result lol

[Jop]

One question; how do you guys do this shit??? Lol im a good artist but can't do sprites for shit lol. Do you guys draw these first then resize and add color from there? My sis hooked me up with a Wacom tablet so drawing wouldnt be a problem.

Well when i started the 1st thing i do was edit sprites that exist, this help me i think to understend how it works, for the animations i have problems but most of the time i use 2 methods, the 1st its doing and watching a video or gif of something similar of what im trying to do and the 2nd that sometimes is more easy its to transform a gif in images and grab frame by frame and with that i can make a "good" animation.

 Like Donvermicelli say its practice, i dont know how to do a lot of things but you can see how my art changed and are better and thats because i try to do something when i can.

[theplottwist]

One question; how do you guys do this shit??? Lol im a good artist but can't do sprites for shit lol. Do you guys draw these first then resize and add color from there? My sis hooked me up with a Wacom tablet so drawing wouldnt be a problem.

Everything I do is on the old fashioned way: Pixel per pixel on MS Paint. I use my laptop's touchpad to do pixel art. I don't have a mouse, but it's much easier with a mouse, I can say that much.

I never used a (reduced) drawing as a base. And, like Jop, I started editing sprites from old video games directly on the game's memory. This helped me understand a lot of things at the same time: The value of a single pixel, the value of a low color count, how to make most of such a tiny space, implying things that aren't really there etc etc.

One of the things that I dropped that vastly improved my technique are outlines. I don't draw using outlines anymore. I do color clusters and then I detail each cluster independently (just like you do on a painting).

[Donvermicelli]

One of the things that I dropped that vastly improved my technique are outlines. I don't draw using outlines anymore. I do color clusters and then I detail each cluster independently (just like you do on a painting).

This seems like something I would like to try doing but would you still at least draw stick figures when making animations?

Everything I do is on the old fashioned way: Pixel per pixel on MS Paint. I use my laptop's touchpad to do pixel art. I don't have a mouse, but it's much easier with a mouse, I can say that much.

Also I use GIMP, I like it because it's simpler than photoshop and all that I really use are the layers anyways. (drawing limb by limb and then assembling sprites can be a timesaver when making animations)

[theplottwist]

This seems like something I would like to try doing but would you still at least draw stick figures when making animations?

Most times I don't. I do one big silhouette of the character already on the poses and fix it as I go along.

[Donvermicelli]

So I was planning for three different attacks for Alucard; First one is based on his SOTN teleport attack sans the teleport:



It's mostly done I think might edit some shading here and there as I work on the others.

Attack 2: (quick attack executed while running)

Attack 3: (crouch attack like in CV3)

[darkmanx_429]

So I was planning for three different attacks for Alucard; First one is based on his SOTN teleport attack sans the teleport:



It's mostly done I think might edit some shading here and there as I work on the others.

Attack 2: (quick attack executed while running)

Attack 3: (crouch attack like in CV3)

I like alll this. The only issue I have is when he turns his head doesn't move.

[piscesdreams]

I like alll this. The only issue I have is when he turns his head doesn't move.

Nor does the front-most leg.

[theplottwist]

I like alll this. The only issue I have is when he turns his head doesn't move.

Nor does the front-most leg.

I personally don't find that to be an issue. His head doesn't turn because he's still looking in the same direction (the enemy) to attack. The leg doesn't turn because he's leaning on it to keep his posture.

However it does look a tiny bit strange he turns one leg and not the other. But the animation is good, nonetheless.

[darkmanx_429]

I personally don't find that to be an issue. His head doesn't turn because he's still looking in the same direction (the enemy) to attack. The leg doesn't turn because he's leaning on it to keep his posture.

However it does look a tiny bit strange he turns one leg and not the other. But the animation is good, nonetheless.

My suggestion is for you to act out the actual movement. You head would naturally turn with the direction your torso is turning. Maybe that's why it looks out to me.

Either way, I think acting out the movement yourself before you sprite will help you in a long ways on animating.

What parentage are you at finishing Alucard?

[theplottwist]

Here, have some more monster doodles:

(click to show/hide)

Morlock:
Creature evolved from humans that grew pale and sensitive to sunlight due to spending its entire life underground. Its hatred for time travellers in top hats knows no bounds.

Krampus:
Demons also like festivities, and for a wage of two bad children per month, this grim entertainer will keep the morale of the castle's demons high.

[VladCT]

(click to show/hide)

Its hatred for time travellers in top hats knows no bounds.

(click to show/hide)

:V

[Donvermicelli]

I like alll this. The only issue I have is when he turns his head doesn't move.

Nor does the front-most leg.

Any trained fighter would never turn his eyes from his opponent, as theplottwist correctly pointed out this is why he doesn't move his head.
This entire attack is a pivot, he rotates around his standing leg slightly to make way for his consequent attack while still aiming with his eyesight.

My suggestion is for you to act out the actual movement. You head would naturally turn with the direction your torso is turning. Maybe that's why it looks out to me.

Either way, I think acting out the movement yourself before you sprite will help you in a long ways on animating.

Naturally you would move yes, attack moves executed by trained fighters are far from natural though. More often than not active training is to suppress natural urges in favor of better movement.
Also I do actually act out almost any move I draw, I film myself and use the footage as a basis to determine key frames in the animation.

What parentage are you at finishing Alucard?

It's hard to give a percentage since different animations require different amounts of work.
Here's an overview though:

Walking anim: done (requires reshading)
Crouch anim: done (requires reshading)
Attack anim1: done
Attack anim2: Not started yet
Attack anim3(crouch): About 30%
Fireball attack: done
Jump: Not started yet
Stairs: Not started yet
Injure: About 30%
Transform: About 90% (requires reshading and some fixes)