Topic: Need some technical advice on doing sprites....

[Vampire Killer]

I've been doing some sprite work lately, but thus far have been using Adobe Illustrator to do so (one vertor square at a time). Reason being because this way I can scale something to whatever size I want w/o it becoming a blurry mess. But, using AI takes a lot longer, so I want to shift over to using PS for sprites instead.

I know that you guys tend to use Photoshop (or some equivalent program), and am wondering what dimensions I should use. Also, how do I keep something from becoming a blurry mess when I enlarge it? Do I simply have to make the sprite bigger initially?

What if I wanted to make a game for XBLIG? Wouldn't I have to make the initial sprites HUGE, or could they simply be enlarged later on for use on a high-def TV?

Please help me out here, because I have a project I want to get started on, but want to make sure I technically do it right the first time, so that I don't have to redo anything.

[KaZudra]

All of my Sprite works come from Paint Xp, just use the selector, right click the area, strect and skew and put replace 100 with 200 for double size without blur.

[TheouAegis]

I don't know about Photoshop, but in Jasc's Paintshop Pro, you can scale with various options. Bilinear, Bicubic, and Weighted Average will all "blur" the sprite when enlarging, but you can do a Pixel Resize which simply scales each pixel. Of course, this only works really well when the scaling by whole values (200%, 300%, 400%, etc.) unless the sprite initially is double-scaled.

[Claimh Solais]

I used to use MSPaint, since it's stupidly easy to use, but ever since I lost that, I use Paint.NET (it's a program, not a website) to make/edit sprites. Has tons of more options, obviously. As far as I know with P.NET, resizing to make a sprite larger doesn't have any consequences, as in it stays good in quality, but as far as making them smaller, I have no idea.

I'll tell you now about MSPaint, though. Resizing on there is a bad idea, it generally makes it a blurry and pixelated mess.

[Inccubus]

I like a program called NeoPaint, but there is also GraphicsGale and a couple of others specifically geared towards sprite graphics. If you plan on having stuff on an HD screen I recommend making the images in HD proportions to begin with. I have never seen a game in HD that uses scaled graphics that doesn't blur everything into oblivion.

[Patraw]

I use GIMP when I do sprites (it's like Photoshop, except FREE).  It's not the easiest program to use if you're new to such things (I checked out a how-to book with inter-library loan when I first downloaded it), but it's a powerful and versatile program.

As someone else posted, if you're getting blurry sprites when you re-size, it's probably due to the filter you're using.  In GIMP, I select "none" for filter when I re-size and everything stays sharp like it's supposed to.  And, again, like was said, you want to re-size by whole values to keep the individual pixels from getting messed up.

[Corpsecrank]

Use photoshop to do the sprites any size you need them. Once you have a sheet ready open it with AI and then use live trace to trace the sheet and it can be scaled from there without distortion. I think you will find this method much easier.

EDIT: I should also have noted that live trace is going to convert the bitmap sprites to vectors and that you should search youtube for some videos on tracing sprites in AI since it's not going to make much sense if your not familiar with live trace or with tracing bitmaps to vectors.

[Inccubus]

That seems overly complicated when you can just resize in MSPaint with no distortion at all in one step.

[darkmanx_429]

I've been doing some sprite work lately, but thus far have been using Adobe Illustrator to do so (one vertor square at a time). Reason being because this way I can scale something to whatever size I want w/o it becoming a blurry mess. But, using AI takes a lot longer, so I want to shift over to using PS for sprites instead.

I know that you guys tend to use Photoshop (or some equivalent program), and am wondering what dimensions I should use. Also, how do I keep something from becoming a blurry mess when I enlarge it? Do I simply have to make the sprite bigger initially?

What if I wanted to make a game for XBLIG? Wouldn't I have to make the initial sprites HUGE, or could they simply be enlarged later on for use on a high-def TV?

Please help me out here, because I have a project I want to get started on, but want to make sure I technically do it right the first time, so that I don't have to redo anything.

http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,3776.105.html
The video that I posted will solve your blurry problem when you enlarge your sprites.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro.  You can find a trial version (usually around 7.00) on oldversion.com to test out... and the Interwebz can probably find you a cracked version...

If you were doing a high-res game you will need large sprites, that the engine would shrink.  Shrinking makes them lose detail but you can be clever and only use that feature for dramatic effects such as to show how massively large something else is.  Zooming in is also good for dramatics.

If you're spriting a Belmont, they are usually 45 pixels tall, and are usually taking about 24 pixels in width  You can use that as your frame window.  Later on when you do animations, if the animations take up a lot of wide space you might have to take more width pixels.  I usually use a squared frame, about 64x64.  That's good for most animations unless they get ridiculously complicated.

If you're doing High-Res, you might be better off with a larger frame size, like how they do with fighting game sprites.

Lastly, you can use CAD or AI to make vector art.  A good way to use vector art is to set up a marionette-style animation, where the joints are cleverly overlapped.  This will generate a game that resembles Odin Sphere or Muramasa.

As you probably know, if you use CAD or AI for Vector Art, you don't need a pixel size, just a relative frame window that stays consistent.