Sprite Guides by JustMe

[Kashif]

wow cool i will try your way

[JustMe]

@Whaat no, actually i choosed it because it has a good pose. the whiteline should show: his backbone is good positioned. and it wasnt one of the bad example, it only mean that you can draw good pose without regarding physics.

[Reaper]

Great tutorial. Good to see someone covering the real basics for once (as in, anatomy before starting with spriting).
One thing bothering me is the example for balanced walking. For the best balance, arm and leg should move against each other (but whom am I telling that? :P)
If you're talking about balance, maybe you'd like to throw in a quick note about center of gravity?

[JustMe]

For the best balance, arm and leg should move against each other (but whom am I telling that? )

i know, but it was only a example so i didnt redo it.

If you're talking about balance, maybe you'd like to throw in a quick note about center of gravity?

hm...i dont know. what use should it have? i even not sure if people do unterstand it, to know the point of gravity you need a very good imaginative power.

[Reaper]

hm...i dont know. what use should it have? i even not sure if people do unterstand it, to know the point of gravity you need a very good imaginative power.

Well, I personally found it to be quite useful and not that compilcated, though for other people it might be different. Admittedly, it's more useful for less dynamic poses where you need to keep the balance for a little while, at least that's my impression. For example, if you have someone standing on one leg(might be used for battle stances), some people will just lift one leg from the ground, resulting in the char falling over.
Either way, it was just a suggestion. If you think it won't help much, there's no need to include it.

[JustMe]

i think about it, its not that easy to teach somebody about this.

new guide

Shading (Click to View)

pants (Click to View)

a short shading guide for pants-fans


these 2 are most common shading, they´re ok, but not good.

NOTE: in order to draw many details as possible never draw big and clumsy shades, instead small but long.


this´s my way to shade pants:

first you shade the dark side with dark blue, but not as big as normal.
next we draw a Z in the middle of the pants.
-> now we concentrate on the red area, in this area we only use horizontal lines and try to match that Z. while shading pants try to draw curves, no straight lines.
->-> in green area we use diagonal lines from down to up till knee and match it to the other shading line.
in following we take spray with very dark blue and about 50-60% opacy to trace the lines, do it many times.
-> the same progress again, but with black from left to right on the same line and with white from right to left. be carefull not to color the shading lines with white.
redo the last prgresses as many times as you like.

if you did it correctly your result should like this.

[Silverthorn]

Fantastic tutorial about the pose! Even though some things might seem obvious, it's great that somebody took the time to point them out. Really helpful, thanks a lot

Although, there is something in that tut that bugs me

not to learn physics.

Aww...


Regarding the pants-shading, it looks a bit overdone for my tastes (coming from me is a bit hypocritic, I guess ). As in: too many details to squeeze into a single part of a "sprite"; in a bigger picture it'd certainly work fine.


By the way, nice sig

[JustMe]

Although, there is something in that tut that bugs me

not to learn physics.

Aww...

maybe you are the only one who miss it

Regarding the pants-shading, it looks a bit overdone for my tastes

i mentioned that the reader can redo the spraying as much as he like, so its up to him if its overdone or not.

too many details to squeeze into a single part of a "sprite"; in a bigger picture it'd certainly work fine.

it is a style to shade HQ sprites which are 158pixel or more. since i only do 100x100 (after resize) sprites it works fine for me.

By the way, nice sig

thanks but still it is not perfect.

[betitngoan]

so right
tell every how to improve their gif in the smart way !!
you !!
will be the really good spriter !!
p/s : your walking is so badly wrong

[JustMe]

tell every how to improve their gif in the smart way !!

what gif? you mean doing an animation?

p/s : your walking is so badly wrong

not again...its fixed now.

Anatomy (Click to View)

backbone (Click to View)

2 things we need to know:

1: drawing a dummy
a dummy is made up of circles and lines, circles do the moving part while lines only connect. but in this tut i use dots instead of circles to make it clearer.
red points are joints. the angle which is made of backbone and shoulder/hip should always be 90°!

2: backbone
a backbone can only have curved forms and no edges. as i said: the backbone define the posture of the body.



with this basic we start drawing:

lets do an upperattack. without any reference we know that one fist goes up while one leg goes down
to let the fist goes up we have to use a diagonal as shoulder. normaly you should start with backbone first.
the backbone will be a diagonal as well because of the 90° angle
we draw head and arms. right arms goes up to attack while left arm is only hanging. quite understandable
next´s hip, we have to consider that 90° angle again
alongside the backbone we draw the jumping leg, just like a normal jump

note: anything that is not moving should go alongside the backbone


now lets see how regular chars doing this:


that was easy, but now we try to curve the backbone even more by drawing gymnastic.
no more then a U form, otherwise body will break.
drawing shoulder and hip while considering the agle
we draw upperbody and legs alongside the backbone, like noted
and draw arms by lengthen the shoulder
after adding details we´re done