Scratch

WELCOME to the Spriting Workshop! This thread is dedicated to sharing spriting knowledge, hosting fun spriting competitions, and helping people with their spriting needs.
To start off with, I will run a competition involving several spriting disciplines (Recolouring, revamping, etc.) with tutorials included. Anyone, no matter their ability can have a go. The top 3 sprites for each entry will receive points, and their sprites will be hosted in the front page for prosperity. At the end, the person with the most points will win some kind of internet prize (Ideas gladly welcomed). I will rate evryones sprite as soon as possible, and each competition has a weekly deadline.
Also, here is an extremely useful colour palette compiled for us by Technoguyx 

WEEK 1 - RECOLOURING
Recolouring is one of the most basic yet most important skills of spriting. A lot of people find sprites on the internet which are the right sort of shape but not the right colour (e.g. finding a Mario sprite, but wanting to change it to a different mario costume, like Fire mario). This will show you how to recolour effectively.

Most good sprites have different shades of colour on them. When replacing the colour (In this instance, from blue to green) you need to get different shades of the colour you want it to be, so it looks good, and not a block of colour. NEVER use the preset colours in a program like Paint for this, they are BAD. Go into the custom colours, and get your shades of colour. You may find it effective to do a palette, like in the example above.
A very easy way to recolour is by using the Eraser Trick on MS paint.To do it, use the eyedropper tool and left click on the colour you want to replace, then, still using the eyedropper, right click the colour you want to replace it with. Then, select the eraser tool. Holding down the right click, run it over your sprite. All of the 1st colour will be replaced by the second colour, with the rest of the image being untouched. This is a quick and easy way to do it, and is much better than just selecting the bucket and filling every colour as you go along. So this week, enter in a recolour you've done. I'm not fussed about the image type, though .bmp or .png is preferred. It would also be helpful if you could link to the sprite you've recoloured 
WINNER: Floatingmagictree

WEEK 2: FUSIONS/SPLICING (Tutorial thanks to FMT)

The second week of the spriting workshop: Fusions/Splicing*.  Although this may seem like a very daunting task at first, it is extremely easy to get the hang of and completely worth it after you finish it. 
The skills you learned from the first week, recoloring, will also be used for splicing.
The basics are simple too.  Two or more sprites (I recommend two) that go together, a palette and an image editing program are some.  You also need to figure out which sprite should be the base and which sprite should be the component, and then put component parts on the base sprite.
Here’s what’s not to do: Simply copy+pasting a head from one sprite to another isn’t splicing. You need to take specific parts that define the component sprite and fit those onto the base, as well as recoloring and maybe even fitting them in by making them by scratch.
The base sprite must be recolored to that of the component sprite’s palette. You might also need to remake some pattern or design, like how I made a Shiftry and Ludicolo fusion and I had to copy Ludicolo’s stripes.

STEP 1: Get your sprites.
I recommend that you start learning how to splice pokemon sprites, because there are many of them to choose from and they have many unique and distinguishable parts, such as the pearl on Spoink’s head or the ring on Ursaring’s belly.  There are some sprites that CAN’T go together though.  For example, you can’t mix an Arbok with something like a Pelipper, can you? Well, you might be able to but it’ll take a lot of experience.  For this example I’ll be using two pokemon, Teddiursa and Pichu because, well, they go well with each other!

STEP 2: Get the sprite’s palette.
Before you start, you have to get all the colors of the sprite.  Put both of the sprites on your image editing program (I use paint), and take EVERY color that is on your component sprite.
Draw all of those colors in boxes, and then you can start!

STEP 3: ITS TEH FUZIN’ TIEM!
Time to start!  Once you finish your palette, click on the select tool.  Under the tool box there will be another box that has another two smaller boxes (O_o).  The first one is probably selected.  Click on the second one.
By doing this, you have enabled your selections to be transparent, in other words everything that is white will disappear. After this, go to the color box and double click on white.  Click on “more custom colors” and an extension to the window will appear. Move the bar ever so slightly so it still look like white but it isn’t.
Take the palette of your component sprite and recolor the base sprite with it.  Some sprites may have more or less shades, kind of like how Scizor has twice as much shades as Latios.



Once you are done recoloring the base sprite, it’s time to take things from the component to the base. Once again, you need to put things that define the component sprite, in this case pichu's ears and cheeks.


Don't be afraid to take off chunks from your component sprite.

After you've finished that, add your finishing touches and you're done!
Here's the result, Pichursa:

Impressive, right? You can do the same! Start now!

*Fusions and splicing mean the same thing
Questions? Comments?  Feedback? Just post 4 help.

Points so far:
Floatingmagictree: 3
Mozaz: 2
SugarfreeJello: 1



This is where all the best spriting work from various members go. Try hard and your work may be put here too.

Mozaz - Gold Mario -
Floatingmagictree - Wolf Ninetales

Last edited by djm111 (2009-08-22 15:07:13)