How do you create spritesheets?

[Silverthorn]

I don't want to know how you create single sprites or any tutorial, I just want to know if you have any kind of organization when making spritesheets. For example: do you put each element on a different layer? Do you just draw one sprite on each layer? Do you have a clothes-layer, a skin-layer, etc? Or maybe a totally different strategy? Tell me how you manage your sprites!

[Alectric]

okey dokey :P
for my char steve, what i did was have the bottom layer recoloured dennis(or any base you want), and then on top of that layer, i have the steve look layer, which has all the completed sprites, and then on top of that, i have which ever present single sprite i am working on, just so its easier to manage, and when i complete that sprite, i merge it down to the steve look layer, then make a new layer when i start on a new sprite.

btw, whats this for?

[Zazz1]

I just use Paint, I first make the base sprite before fixing up the pallete, then do each sprite in the spritesheet individually, I can usually keep proportions the same. No fancy layers or anything since its not really needed... ._.

[Silverthorn]

btw, whats this for?

Imagine if you want to alter the sprites later on. For example, if you want the shoes to be red instead of gray (yes, stupid example but it serves its purpose). You could either edit the shoe color in every single sprite or just change the color of a layer. Something like that.

[Siegvar]

btw, whats this for?

Imagine if you want to alter the sprites later on. For example, if you want the shoes to be red instead of gray (yes, stupid example but it serves its purpose). You could either edit the shoe color in every single sprite or just change the color of a layer. Something like that.

Well usually the typical trick for that is that a character's outfit's colours is carefully predetermined beforehand to aid such edits later using colour editing options like the Hue Saturation Brightness modifier in photoshop.
These effects can be applied to specific ranges in the full spectrum of colour. Say, turn anything that's red in the image to blue.

Now, so costume design for a character will start of as colourful as possible(without being a darn pain to look at. lol.), with specific colour ranges assigned to certain elements of the costume. This allows for a decent level of colour adjustment later.

[no one]

I import a sprite sheet into flash CS3, make a couple frames depend on how many add-on the char may have, use the onion option to see all and then in each frame I start drawing.

When I'm need to see how well thing work, I made each of them to another layer and see if it suit the char.

When I'm done, I export it as bmp or png.

[snorsorbet]

Uhm, lol...

I have a simple (yet time-exhausting) method.

1. Select a brush.
2. Select a color.
3. Brush.

It takes extremely long time. That's probably why I never can finnish any char I try to start...