Newbie spriterguy here.

[Roobertoober]

So I'm quite interested in this whole spriting nonsense. Is there a specific way to go about doing it, or do I just slap some sprites in Photoshop and liberally apply eraser/move tool? Any advice?

The only thing I've done was a quick MS Paint to shop Charmander's head and tail onto Blastoise as a joke. It was using regular art though, not sprites.

 

[Thanatos]

actually almost all spriters use paint.
heres a nice guide to help get you started:
Dragonfly cave

 

[Roobertoober]

Yeah, I've been messing around in Photoshop and I'm starting to see what you mean. Thanks for the info.

 

[Thanatos]

hey no pob we have heaps of great spriters around here so dont be arfraid to ask for any help.

 

[Shiay]

If you've got PhotoShop, the best tips and tricks I have to offer are these:

Getting into those nooks and crannies of certain sprites isn't going to be that great if you're using a brush tool. Thanks to the soft edges that it gives you, you'd be stuck erasing a lot when you can just avoid that all by right-clicking the Brush Tool and turning it into the Pencil Tool. It gives you those nice, blocky results that you want for spriting.
For the best results in splicing, I suggest taking the Pokémon pieces you want and putting them on perhaps a 250x250 px palette and then zooming in by 500% or whatever makes you comfortable (different resolutions, different zoom in rates).
In recolouring, you should avoid just filling in every same-colour spot with the colour fill-tool. There should be options at the top that say 'Contagious', 'Sample All Layers' and... something else. Though, I would suggest checking the Contagious box (or is it unchecking...?) so that when you click to fill a certain area, it gets all of those spots, not just the blocked off spot you're filling in.

For some of these, I would need PhotoShop back in front of me to confirm this... but unfortunately, I have my mother's computer since my fiance's and my computers are back home. (we didn't expect to stay up here with my mother for this long. BI)

 

[Roobertoober]

Well, Paint on Windows 7 is NEW AND CONFUSING, so I stuck with Photoshop and got it working. Already developing a few tricks, thank you both for the tips, and that site was immensely useful. I've (hopefully) successfully recolored something, gonna post it here in a sec. ALSO, really wish I had read about that Contiguous option BEFORE I finished. Would have saved a lot of hand crampage. XD Ah well, I'll know next time.



Yay, Scizor-colored Garchomp. Kinda wish I had chosen something darker, but Scizor was the first thing that popped into my head. Kinda odd, Scizor's red is the exact same as the red on Garchomp's chest, as are their respective yellows.

 

[Thanatos]

Nice!

 

[Roobertoober]

Okay, so just did a Gardevoir/Darkrai recolor, but some weird things happened.

Trying to do the eye, the blue from most of Darkrai's eye was the exact same green as a green section next to Gardevoir's eye, the closest I could get was the light section of his eye. No matter how much I tried to get a different blue, I just couldn't. :| So confused. Also was interesting, had to lighten and darken the reds, since Gardevoir's hair has four shades and Darkrai's collar thing only has two. And, again, the red thing on her chest was the same color as the collar, and it would have looked awkward black or white, so I left it.

Also, going to bed. Thank you two again for the assistance! Back later.

 

[Caitlin]

I prefer using MSPaint for spriting, as I find the advanced tools and options present Photoshop (or GIMP) tend to get in the way more often than not. Use what you're comfortable with, though. In the end I use a wide range of tools; MSPaint for the main work, Photoshop/Gimp for resizing, gradients and transparency, and even Game Maker's sprite editing tool for quick and painless colour swapping.

As far as colour problems like the one you described above, the selection and fill tools aren't the answer to everything. Sometimes you'll have to manually edit each pixel. If you're in a situation where your source colours only have two shades and you need four, setting up a gradient between the brightest and darkest shades is typically a good idea.

 

[Roobertoober]

Actually, I entirely forget I can use the fill tool, both the ones I posted I did pixel by pixel, and the one I'm doing (instead of going to bed like I said I would) is having the same problem. I'm doing a trainer this time, and I just want blue pants, but every time I try to color the pants blue, it just makes more grey. ._.

Edit: Hm. I'm using the Guitarist trainer class icon from FR/LG, and I just noticed that when I try colors like red or yellow, which are already in the picture, they work fine. But there isn't any blue in the picture, the same as Gardevoir. Is that normal or something?

Edit 2: Out of curiosity, I tried copy/pasting a Metagross leg into the picture, and it showed up the same color as the pants. So is there some way around this?

Edit 3: MS Paint saves the day! No idea what was going wrong, but I got all the colors I needed when I switched to Paint. Woo~

It's meee~

Final Edit: Going to bed for realz now. Gonna force myself to sleep. Go time. >:|

 

[Shiay]

The colour problem may be because of the .gif format. Images that are .gifs usually have a colour palette that's limited (usually called Indexed colour) than what you could have on a .jpg or .png (though please don't save sprites as .jpgs -- you'll learn to regret it). What you'd have to do when you have it up in PhotoShop is to go to the Image drop down menu and go to Mode and set it to RGB Colour.

 

[Roobertoober]

Hm. The guide said to avoid .jpgs, so I've been using .pngs. I'll try doing the RGB thing so I don't have to use Paint, thanks. I can't find a way to turn off Anti-aliasing(?) there and there's no Pencil option, sadly. It works, but it's not as neat and tidy.

Out of curiosity, what makes .jpg a bad format?

Edit: Awesome, RGB mode fixed it, thanks a ton.

Edit 2: Just did my first splices, figured I'd do something simple.

Think they turned out okay.

 

[Caitlin]

.jpg images use compression to store the data of a file. I believe the data cells are 8x8 pixels and the compression isn't really uniform throughout the picture, so it starts looking blurry and splotchy. .jpg is wonderful for photos, but not digital artwork with crisp, clean lines like pixel art is.

The one on the left is a png, the one on the right is a jpg. If you try using a fill bucket tool on the jpg, you're not gonna get very far with it since it's splotchy around the edges where the sprite and background meet.

 

[Roobertoober]

Oh wow, I can see the difference. Can see why that would be a pain.

 

[Shiay]

Hm. The guide said to avoid .jpgs, so I've been using .pngs. I'll try doing the RGB thing so I don't have to use Paint, thanks. I can't find a way to turn off Anti-aliasing(?) there and there's no Pencil option, sadly. It works, but it's not as neat and tidy.

If you're talking about with the select tool, then the Anti-Aliasing should be at the very top, underneath the File, Edit, Image dropdown menus as a check box selection. I believe you have to have it unchecked for it to not make fuzzy edges as Anti-Aliasing does. While it can sometimes be handy for signature making and getting a decently cut image from time to time without any real effort, it's not great for spriting at all. :C