Character Base Making Tutorial: 1) Start off with a grid of 79 x 79 pixels. This is used because it is the standard Little Fighter character size. Make sure that the grid is completely black by using the fill tool on whichever program you choose to use. 2) Copy the bar guide which I have uploaded and put it in the very left or right hand corner of the grid, making sure the bottom of the bar is on the very bottom pixel in the corner. This bar guide is 60 pixels tall, leaving a 19 pixel gap from the top of the grid. The colour codes are as follows: White Section: Head Purple Section: Neck Dark Blue Section: Upper Torso and Upper Arm White Spot Section: Chin Green Section: Abdominal Region and Lower Arm Red Section: Waistline Pale Blue Section: Hands Pink Section: Upper Leg Browny Green Section: Lower Leg Blue Section: Foot 3) Using the pencil tool, set at 15px put down two brush strokes, vertically in line with each other, the top of the first being in line with the top of the bar guide and the bottom of the other being in line with the white dot section. This produces the main part of the head. 4) Now switch to a 1px pencil. You can then craft the head. This is probably the hardest part of Little Fighter characters and so I made a rough guideline to it. - On the characters right hand cheek (your left) you go 1 up 2 along, 1 up 2 along, 1 up 1 along, 1 up 1 along from the bottom line or chin. This should give you the right shape for jawline. - On the front and left hand side of the character (your right) you go 1 up 1 along, 1 up 1 along, 2 up 1 along and 2 up 1 along from the bottom line or chin. - For the ear, from the last part of the jawline which you had made (see 1st -) go 1 up 4 along, 1 up 1 along, 1 up 1 along, 1 up, 1 up 1 back. You can then fill out the shape for the top of the head, making sure it peaks in line with the top of the bar guide and it should go all the way round to connect with the front of the face of the character. This will give you the finished shape for your character base's head. Next we move on to shading it. 5) Moving away from the white head seems to be a good idea now, as it will help with your character base's shading later on. So pick the SHADED colour for your characters skin and then using the fill tool or going over with the 1px brush as I did (bit more time consuming and doesn't produce the irritating 'dirty pixels' around the outside of the head) get rid of all the white of your character's head. 6) Now he seems quite shady, we should bring a little light to his life. So I drew a sun with a few rays in the top right hand corner of the grid, nothing too large but it's still there. This acts so that you can imagine or understand where the light hits the head, causing the shadows to be cast. So we grab our actual skin colour or tone, and we apply that to the face. Generall the whole chin should be left shaded, I normally leave about 6 pixels of shading around the back of the head towards the middle, leaving the ear completely shaded. The shading lines should then be drawn back out from the middle of the head to the bottom and the top, giving the head it's more rounded and spherical appearance. 7) This may seem slightly pointless now, it does to me most of the time but I gave it a go anyway, purely because it seems to happen with other people's work to 'highlight' the areas that get hit by the most light. So, for the shaded region I took a sample of the colour using the eyedropper or pipette tool and then increased the brightness by 1% and reduced the saturation by 6%. I highlighted around the ear using this, as the ear is slightly stuck out and will obviously be hit by sunlight. I applied the same style of technique on the very front edge of the face, making it slightly lighter as the sun hits it most. 8) Okay neck time. As much as people say 'you haven't given your character a neck' I never really noticed it until recently. Most characters have a 2 pixel seperation between the head and the trapezius muscle which then moves down to the shoulder. That is your bases neck. Seems really silly doesn't it? Well it isn't, without it, the character looks like its just got a floating egg with a massive great lump sticking out of it rammed on it's shoulders. So using the purple you add the neck. From where the ear attaches to the head, you go 2 down and then another 1 along towards the chin (This is provided you followed my instructions for the shape of your base's head). There, your character now has a neck. 9) Right, now we're going to give your base a mock skeleton, piece by piece. We're going to give your base a spine like element. This is the bone running down your back that connects the lower body to the upper body, it is also used to support your head, as your neck is part of it. It is normally slightly curved to form an S-shape, however, thanks to some people in the previous attempt at a tutorial I made, I have decided that it is much easier to use a straight line. Also, the spine would usually run down from the neck, but I'm giving you a special tip to help your spriting and speeding the process up. From the your character bases right hand side of his chin (your left) draw a dark blue (torso coloured) line down from the jaw right down into the end of the green section or 'abdominal region' (touching the waistline). This will make your character look, if you've done it right, like a balancing egg on a stick. 10) Your character cannot shake those hips, kick or move without specific crossing points known as 'joints'. So, lets give him some hips to shake that booty. This is where I will start talking about camera angles and what is known as the 3/4 view. Your character, I'm assuming is not standing head on towards to the camera, he is instead facing slightly to the side aswell. Now, you'd expect a diagonal line to be drawn here, but that would not be correct. A horizontal line still suffices, but will be different distances from the centre line, which I called the 'spine' for you. On the characters left (your right) there is a dot, somewhere in the infinite distance. This will be the base for your 'point perspective'. As you move from the point in the distance towards the camera, the size of the object increases. Certain sides become more apparent then others. The side closest to the point (the character's left) will therefore be shorter than the side away from the point (the character's right), albeit not by much. I've drawn the waist to come out 8 pixels from the characters left and 9 from the characters right. For thinner characters this could be 7 and 8 or even 6 and 7, for larger it could be 9 and 10 or even 11 and 10. You will draw the waist in red and it should be in line with the red markings on the bar guide, 2 thick. Funnily enough, it is 1 pixel wider on both sides of the head. You're going to ask, why 2 pixels thick? When you look at the human body, where your hips and waist are, your body seems to go straight down before it reaches your legs, and this isn't a small point where it suddenly goes in and back out. 11) Alright, we've got the hips, but what about the shoulders, what on earth should we do about those? The male figure is more triangular, it's shoulders are wider than it's waist. So, refering back to point perspective, the characters left (your right) is going off into the distance, and so appears smaller to you. The characters right on the other hand is coming towards you and so should appear larger. I drew the shoulders on the line just under the chin, they are 2 pixels wider on the characters left than the waist, and 3 or 4 pixels wider on the characters right than the waist. With thinner characters, the difference between shoulder width and waist or hip width is less apparent. With female characters, they have a more hourglass figure, they do not taper down towards the hips but is more tapered towards the middle of the waist (slightly higher up than your hips drawn on your character) and then comes back out or female characters I would recommend using a shoulder width exactly the same size as the hip width, and they should be much less wide than the mans. 12) The character needs something to stand on, so lets give it some legs. Using the pink or upper leg colour, start the first leg, on the characters right (your left) and start it from 4 pixels from the edge of the hip (providing you used my original hip set up, if you used a thinner version, then use 3/2 pixels from the edge) and draw a diagonal line down to the bottom of the grid either at shoulder width or just below, although it should be wider than the hip. What I did was do a rough 4 down by 1 along each time. You then repeat the process with the other leg, 4 pixels from the edge, going down to shoulder width at the bottom. Why shoulder width? Look at how people stand, naturally their feet fall to shoulder width or just under, but why? It's to do with balance. Having your legs closer together makes you easier to knock over or trip as you're a less wide object, and so your centre of gravity is higher. Whereas when your legs are more spread, your centre of gravity is lower, thus making you harder to knock over. I'll explain more about this when I eventually release the 'stances' tutorial I am working on. 13) Okay, now we're moving onto arms. Let your arm be free at your side when you stand up, now look at it. It does not go straight down without bending does it? I have incorperated this into the pose for which this tutorial has done, although it is considered more straight armed for the Little Fighter characters such as Dennis and Davis in their poses. My pose is a bit more 'ready' for combat. We shall do the upper arm first, in the dark blue colour that is the upper arm and torso. I start at the shoulder end (characters left or your right) and go 2 pixels down to start off. I then go 1 along and 4 down (in my diagram this may look confusing, as I have skipped the points at '1 along'). With the character's right or your left, I go 1 along and 3 down after the initial step. The upper arm shall stop at the bottom of the dark blue section on the bar guide. 14) The lower arm is just bending the arm back in slightly in most cases. In the Little Fighter original characters, it would be a continued line down from the upper arm. The lower arm goes from the top of the green section or abdominal and lower arm region and goes down to the bottom of the hips (last red point on your bar guide). See wasn't that easy? You'll note that the lower arm is slightly longer than the upper arm, this I have taken from looking at human beings ordinarily. In Little Fighter characters it is normally the same, as you can tell from the punch sprites. 15) Hands now. Continue them down from the lower arm until the bottom of the light blue or hands section on your bar guide. Simple really, this is because characters do not tend to bend their hands round in odd directions, and ofcourse Little Fighter character's hands are generally round blobs. 16) I then segmented the legs using colours corresponding to the bar guide's colours and heights. This will become important later on when the legs become thickened and the feet need to be done. 17) Trapezoid muscles time. These are your upper back region and help the shoulders and back with most lifting and arm raising movements. On the characters left (your right) the trapezoid is only one pixel higher than the shoulder line and is 1 or 2 pixels closed to the head than the shoulders end point. On the characters right (your left) the trapezoid starts 3 pixels higher than the shoulder line, just under the neck. You bring this out from the jawline to 3 or 4 pixels further than the neck. You then go 1 down and 1 along and then 1 down and 1 along again, this will give you the height and thickness of your trapezoid muscles and how they join to the shoulder. The reason for the differences in height for the trapezoid muscles is once again, point perspective. The closer it is to the camera, the higher and larger it is, the further away from the camera, the lower and smaller it is. 18) Thicken the arms out slightly by adding 1 pixel thickness to the outside of the arms and the shoulder. You can also round the shoulder a bit through whilst you do so. This will give you the general shape of the body and the arm, bringing it more to life. 19) We do the outline of the torso now, just for help on getting a rough estimate on size. You start at the edge of the hips, on the characters left (your right) the torso should either go straight up or about 3/4 pixels up it should go out towards the arm ONLY 1 pixel. It will then continue up from there. On the characters right (your left) I would suggest starting by going 2 up from the hip, 1 along 4/5 up, 1 along 4/5 up and finally 1 along 5/6 up, brining it to the shoulder line. This will give you a rough estimate of the body, useful later. 20) In line with the 'spine' or centre line, under the hips draw a pink line going down 5/6 pixels. This will be the point at which the character's legs will 'meet' from the eyes perspective. 21) Colour coding the drawing correctly, draw the characters right leg (the one on your left) by going 1 along and 6 down from the centre line below the hips, 1 along 6 down, 1 along 5 down. Then draw a line across to the leg line you drew before. On the outside of the leg, you should go 2 down from the hip, 1 along 3 down, 1 along 4 down, 1 along 5 down, 1 along 5 down 1 along 5 down. If not, something similar to this should suffice. Then it should be in line with the line you drew on the other side of the leg (or the bar guide's lower leg bottom). Connect them up. 22) For the inside of the other leg, you go one along 8 down from the centre line below the hip, 1 along 8 down. Then connect it up to the leg line you had drawn for that leg. You should do for the outside of the leg, 4/5 down from the edge of the hip, 1 along 5/4 down, 1 along 5 down, 1 along 7 down. You can then connect this to the other part of the leg. 23) I then recoloured the legs pink and filled them in using the fill tool. 24) Fill in the torso using fill tool. 25) Time to pad out the arms properly. Fill them out by 1/2 pixels on the outside of the arm first, then fill them out on the inside by 3/4 pixels. This should make it fairly close to the body, and in the terms of upper arm and the top of the lower arm, mainly on the characters right (your left) it should come in contact with the body. The characters left arm (your right) should be slightly less thin than the other arm by 1 or 2 pixels. The average thickness for Little Fighter arms is around 6/7/8 pixels. Now would be another good time to round off the shoulders and make them smoothly run with the arms. 26) The hands are generally light blue squares at first going down from the lower arm until the lowest part of the light blue or hands section on your bar guide. Then 1 pixel from the top and bottom of the hand, I would draw 1 pixel outwards either side on each hand. This will give it the Little Fighter characteristic round hand shape. 27) Round off the bottoms of the leg by using a 1px black pencil tool, exactly the same black as the background. This should give it a slightly more natural finish on the legs. 28) The feet are actually more difficult than some people make out. They try to do the same thing with the feet as they do the hands, or atleast some of us used to. For the characters right foot (your left) on the outside of the leg, using the blue or foot colour on the bar guide, go 1 down and 2 along from the leg, 1 down 1 along, 4 down, 1 back 1 down, all the distance to match the width of the bottom of the lower leg (should be across bottom of grid), 1 up 1 along, 4 up, 1 back 2 up. On the other foot, starting from the inside, you should follow this guideline roughly: 4 down from the leg, 1 along 4 down, 1 back 1 down, roughly 10 along, 1 up 1 along, 3 up, 1 back 1 up, 1 back 1 up, 1 back 1 up. This should, if you've done it exactly how I have, produce the same results of good looking feet. If you've done different proportions slightly for the rest of the body, then the proportions may be slightly different for your feet. 29) Using the fill tool, fill in the feet. 30) The area under the characters jaw and around the neck is always slightly darker than the shading on the face. Why? Because it's better hidden from sunlight as the jaw hides it. So take a shading colour slightly darker than that you used on the face and colour around the jawline with a 2 pixel radius from it. Also don't forgot to add this to the neck aswell. 31) I then went across the outline of the figure in the shade colour that you used on the face originally, being careful not to go over the edges or over the previously shaded region. After finishing the complete outline using the 1/2px pencil tool, use the fill tool to fill in the body. 32) Then using the skin colour you used on the face, go around the body to produce the highlights and shadows that the light from the sun would cause. Shadows are normally rounded and are not straight lines, experiment to get the most accurate effect. I will go through shading in a 'shading' tutorial to be released at a later date. 33) Finally you are allowed to use a 1px brush! No longer will you have to face this pencil of doom. Use the 1px brush to fortify the edges, add a bit more shape and some lightly colouring round the edges of your characters body and neck, I found this helped most at the tops of trapezoid muscles and near the neck and hands. Especially around the hands and feet, it gives them a bit more shape. 34) Using the magic wand tool, highlight the entire body. This is mainly for GIMP and Photoshop users, but go into filter and select blur - go to blur. This should give the shading a bit more blend. 35) Your character base should now be done, you can adjust his shape slightly using a black 1px brush and then you can begin working on him. Hurrah!