Spriting the RIGHT way!

A

Aqua Smeargle

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I've noticed that spriting has increased in popularity greatly on this forum in the last few months; however, unfortunately, there has been an increase in poor sprites along with it. Hopefully this guide can get you on your way to spriting the right way.​

ALWAYS follow these basic rules of spriting:
  • Save your sprites in .png format. NOT JPEG! It ruins solid lines, and other formats don't allow for as many colors.
  • Don't mix sprites and other styles of artwork, they look bad together. That means not using sprites on banners (unless the whole thing is pixel-ey) and/or with ken sugimori images.
  • Never resize sprites, but always magnify when you're working with them.
  • Sprites have shading for a reason. Make sure you keep it when you're editing the sprite.
  • Use colors that complement each other and look natural, unless you want people's eyes to bleed.
  • When you edit outlines make sure you have the right color, and that it isn't just a solid 1 pixel line around the object or it will look aliased. Think of steps.
  • Having MS Paint rather than a higher-end program is no excuse for poor sprites! Many of the best spriters actually prefer paint.
Not following these rules makes you a poor spriter, but the opposite isn't necessarily true. Becoming a truly good spriter requires patience, creativity, and attention to detail.

Take a look at these tutorials for more in-depth guides:
http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31745 -Shows you what tools to use based on what program you're using to edit images.
http://www.dragonflycave.com/recoloring.aspx -A very good tutorial on several major types of spriting.
http://gottasprite.pokemonchibi.com/ -Site with a large collection of tutorials on many different types of spriting.

Good resources:
http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/sprites.html -The best place to go to get your pokemon sprites. Right click -> save picture as and begin editing.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/nintendo/pokemon/ -Has anything else you could ever want.

That's all; if you've taken the time to read everything here your next sprite should at least be decent. If you'd like more tutorials and resources on other areas of pokemon fan art follow the link to artisan cave in my sig.
 
Well, I think you should mention why it should be saved in .png format. Just say it's because they are pixel art, and .jpeg and .bmp will make it lose colours and can make the image lose details to a certain extent.
 
Thank you. I was waiting for someone to post something like this. Pokebeach is the forum that makes me feel like a good spriter, simply because few people know how to sprite well. At the other forums, I am one of the worst spriters, not one of the best.
 
Hey well this guide is great, i don't think you'll have much luck encouraging better spriting, my guide just made people think they could sprite and then introduced loads of horribly wrong sprites people thouhgt they had done right.
 
The huge amount of horrible artwork is seriously annoying me, so many shops think they have something great to offer, but all I see is, ... there's no nice of saying it.

This seems important enough, because the pictures used in avatars and signatures are important for the way the forums look, so I'll sticky this, but you'll have to keep this up-to-date and try to add some more stuff.

*stickification*
 
You may want to edit your post saying that MSPaint is no excuse for crappy sprites. Many really good spriters only have MSPaint. Also, Photoshop doesn't mean they are great.

I don't want any noobs going around saying:

"O, sry zey is so baad. all I gotz is paint! they iz really good fr paint."
"HAHAHA!!! BOW DOWN BEFORE THE AWESOME SPRITES!!!! You know they are awesome because they were made with Photoshop!"
 
Achmetha said:
You may want to edit your post saying that MSPaint is no excuse for crappy sprites. Many really good spriters only have MSPaint. Also, Photoshop doesn't mean they are great.

I don't want any noobs going around saying:

"O, sry zey is so baad. all I gotz is paint! they iz really good fr paint."
"HAHAHA!!! BOW DOWN BEFORE THE AWESOME SPRITES!!!! You know they are awesome because they were made with Photoshop!"
Click to expand...

^ Same Here. (although I am still kind of a noob too -_- But I know how to sprite)

I have Photoshop, but I use MS Paint for Spriting. Because I can't work with sprites in Photoshop.
But I Do use it for Banners.
 
Fire_Pokemon_Master said:
Hey well this guide is great, i don't think you'll have much luck encouraging better spriting, my guide just made people think they could sprite and then introduced loads of horribly wrong sprites people thouhgt they had done right.
Click to expand...
I don't really see how this guide could possibly make people worse spriters, therefore they'll either be the same or better.

cute-mew :F said:
The huge amount of horrible artwork is seriously annoying me, so many shops think they have something great to offer, but all I see is, ... there's no nice of saying it.

This seems important enough, because the pictures used in avatars and signatures are important for the way the forums look, so I'll sticky this, but you'll have to keep this up-to-date and try to add some more stuff.

*stickification*
Click to expand...
Yay! Would you like me to try and expand this beyond spriting or not?

Achmetha said:
You may want to edit your post saying that MSPaint is no excuse for crappy sprites. Many really good spriters only have MSPaint. Also, Photoshop doesn't mean they are great.

I don't want any noobs going around saying:

"O, sry zey is so baad. all I gotz is paint! they iz really good fr paint."
"HAHAHA!!! BOW DOWN BEFORE THE AWESOME SPRITES!!!! You know they are awesome because they were made with Photoshop!"
Click to expand...

I'll add this as well.
 
I'd like to inquire: am I a good spriter? You can find some of my work by going into my profile and clicking on posts that I've made. :)
 
That's not really the purpose of this thread. It's really only to teach begining spriters the very basics of spriting and make sure they have the right resources.

You're somewhat on your own for getting and evaluating true talent.
 
Lol, the worst kind of spriters are those who don't colour a sprite according to the shading. Yeah, MS Paint isn't that bad. I do all my Trainer Cards, fusions and recolours with it. It's the spriter that counts IMO.
 
ArmaldoEX said:
Lol, the worst kind of spriters are those who don't colour a sprite according to the shading. Yeah, MS Paint isn't that bad. I do all my Trainer Cards, fusions and recolours with it. It's the spriter that counts IMO.
Click to expand...

So very true, so very true.

Great thread, Aqua Smeargle! It really helps for new spriters (and even old ones) to learn or critique their spriting skills!
 
Ah I was waiting somebody to do a thread like this because I have seen very bad sprites currently like ones with no shading and in jpg format I hope newbie spriters read this but don,t you think we should add some tutorials here like surfboards that were my idea and you can,t find a tutorial for them anywhere or glacial pokemon if you agree I might do some I would like to help people to become better spriters
 
^Whoa, get some periods in there buddy. Anyway, I'm not goin to have tutorials here, but one of the links goes to a site with quite a few.
 
Also, I thought of another thing that must be added.
You never need to ask for the link anymore! *Cheering* O.K., to remedy the need for a link:
Take your cursor, now move it. It works, right? Yeah, now put in on the sprite, picture, etc. Right click and go down to the bottom of the menu that opens up. It should say Properties. Now click on it and a screen appears. About halfway through, there is a line that says Address (URL). On the right side of the screen, opposite from that there is a link, highlight it. Yay! Now you have the link and you didn't even have to ask!

I post this because I see many people ask for links so they can put it in their sigs, etc. They are perfectly capable of getting it themselves, but don't know how. It should be easy, that is one of the most basic things you can do on the internet.
 
Disagreed. Any n00b can do that with instructon, but they won't. They'll ask, and ask....The answer is the
Code: 
box
Don't be lazy, use it in your shop if you have a problem with people asking that question.

I like this AS. Mabye it could also have a section for shop owners. Like those who have more than 1 shop (which is reidiculous) or those who have a shop with only 1 or 2 items to be made...which is also ridiculous. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: Those who are always trying to claim methods. That annoys me the most.

As for the tutorial thng, I agree with you, but you could have a link with all the different kinds. Like a single example of each. I see that as being very helpful for a few people...
 
I don't really see that as a spriting issue Achmetha... Although maybe this could just be expanded to pokemon-forum art in general. Meh, I'll do it soon enough.

SZ, same thing, I'll probably add something to that extent when I generalize a bit. And I don't really understand wht you mean in that last paragraph. The one link there does have tutorials for all the major forms of spriting...
 
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