How I make Characters

[Trickityhouses]

This is a simple walk through on how I make my characters.



It is for anyone interested in my process and how I make sprites, I talked to PF about it and I think a few others were interested in how I make characters and sprites.



The process is I blow up a sprite sheet image at 400% then I work on it in photoshop. The key for me is not to over do stuff. keep things simple and clean looking. The colors shouldn't be more overpowering then how the original characters look, I like to keep to a 4-5 color theme with maybe 2 major colors working. Clide's colors were pretty simple, black and white with purple mixed in for attacks. After the character looks acceptable i will start making all of the other frames at 400%.



Each part is usually on a separate layer so I can move body parts around without having to redraw everything. I copy parts all of the time like the head and I have alot of varieties of heads and hands and all of that. Sometimes I even copy a whole sprite and only move an arm or a foot. some pages get kinda messy and take a long time to load so I have to flatten the image and save another sheet to work on.



when I finish I have a separate file where I shrink them down 25% and remove the black with the magic wand tool set at around 14-16 tolerance. Then I line everything up on the sprite sheet. compress the file to 8 bit indexed and save as bmp. I try to get the file size to be small.



For some of the more complicated actions like specials I might make a short animation with the character doing the moves. Photoshop have a pretty cool animation part located in the top bar as window animation.



I also draw the face at 400% the normal size. Im sure you can draw it at an even higher percent to get an even better looking face. Each part is separated into different layers and I work on the line drawing the longest. After that I just add a dash of color and compress it down to 120x120 pixels.



And you have to know that each sprites takes a long time and effort into making. they just don't happen in a few minutes. if you have any other question let me know.

I'll attach my photoshop file of my Clide sprite sheet, and a photoshop file of what I mean when I have all of my parts separate. I hope this helps in some way and that this may inspire people to do even more awesome characters and even more awesome artworks.

[Ariel]

woooooooooowwwwwwwwww
dude very very thanks i like ur sprites style and its very very help my with FacePic Skills/effects and spriting!!

[MnM]

Can i have a more clear explanation for the removing of black things? A detailed one pls. Cause i only know how to remove it with paint

EDIT: U draw sprites zoomed to 400% or the sprites will be 400% bigger than the normal one :P

EDIT 2: 2nd yel star Grats to me ^^

[Whaat]

I guess you don´t draw those with comp mouse?

[prince_freeza]

@firzenx: just hit ctrl+alt+i in photoshop and change the settings to this:


then starts spriting and when you finish the whole sheet re size it back to normal.

also thanx a lot trickity, i tried the method yesterday and it works just fine... the only thing i need to do is adjust my speed but meh this is a new method so i am still learning it. actually i might even try to do a full char like that... ya know for the fun of it. +1 man

btw, outcome:
darel

[Whaat]

Darel looks fat :o but still very good, simple.
E. @Trickity&PF, what you use to draw those? Table like betit says? Can you link picture or smthing?

[prince_freeza]

i use a mouse to do sprites, as far as i know trickity,betit,alec,luti,somin,HF,apoc,sieg,bamboori use a tablet.

tablet looks like this:


but still a mouse can do amazing things as well, i seen people do awesome stuff with just drawing on paper>scanning>mouse>photoshop.

[Whaat]

but still a mouse can do amazing things as well, i seen people do awesome stuff with just drawing on paper>scanning>mouse>photoshop.

So you too make like that? First draw on paper and then scan, or do you make it from scratch with mouse?
E. And did we have tablet topic somewhere? Where people told about what tablet is good and what´s not?

[prince_freeza]

but still a mouse can do amazing things as well, i seen people do awesome stuff with just drawing on paper>scanning>mouse>photoshop.

So you too make like that? First draw on paper and then scan, or do you make it from scratch with mouse?
E. And did we have tablet topic somewhere? Where people told about what tablet is good and what´s not?

sprites/79x79>> sometime totally from scratch on the pc with my mouse, and other times i just use a lf2 sprite.

sprites/the big ones>> totally from scratch with the mouse

drawings>> its wither from scratch with a mouse on photoshop, or draw it on paper and scan it then draw over it in photoshop.

[Whaat]

Really have to give rispect to you drawing most of things with just comp mouse, i don´t get it at all xp but i´m kinda good drawer so maybe i should think about tablet too :/