Who Do the Voodoo

Hey guys n gals, how's the summer turnin out for you all? Good I'm hoping I couldn't be better finally grabbed a graphics tablet, nothing big just something  practice on ...



... It's proving to be hm ... Different XD but like everything else I shouldn't have a problem getting used to this. It's  a Turcom TS-6580 8x5" (That draw area is perfect for the paper size I draw my sprites on.)

 Okay as promised I'll give a short method of my madness when it comes to spriting. I'm sure there are better ways to do this, this is the way that works for me. Originally I was gonna try and squeeze some pad work in but as I'm still learning how to use it .

Step 1 Planning

 Before anything, everything starts somewhere. I usually have piles of paper dedicated to nothing but doodles of character concepts and as you can see there's a lot O_o.

 Okay so gen 1 sprites  (sooo long ago) were

all done freehand in paintshop pro back

then I really didn't draw my refs down

I kinda went on ahead and did whatever.

 I guess you can say I started thinking

when I started the Mob. I went the

extra mile and started drawing the 

sprites on paper first then scanning

them in. Te color method was good 

but the way I was going about it 

was ...a hassle. But I got used to it

and things were rolling ...

crawling along.

... which brings us to method 3

which was the same as 2 but 

all in all wasn't as good in fact

things moved slower along because

all the clean up that I was doing.

Step 2 The nitty~gritty

 This, this is one of my favorite parts, with pencil and paper in hand I'm a happy cat, I could go on drawing forever, this step can be tedious some times but the end result is it's own reward.

 Once the drawings are done it's time to get scanning. I usually scan in at 100px for characters though the Mob was/is scanned in at 75px.

Step 3 The Color Machine

 With the drawings scanned in and set up it's time toe get it's time to get to it. I'll use Ringo for this example as he's one of the character's I'm currently working oo.

An extra step I forgot to mention, after

scanning it in I reduce the image  by 50% 

of the original size before I start drawing.

The pencil, line and pen tools are 

your best friends.

Cleaning up any jaggies is simple just use 

white or whatever and smooth things out

and be sure to use the color selector

to grab the "erase color"  hit delete

and ta~da a cleaned up character sprite.

Coloring from here on out

should be pretty simple.

I use the paintbucket to get all the

base colors in  then from there

draw in the shading where needed.

Keep track of colors.

Extra JOY!!!

 .

For some animations like this one here, I'll usually do a composite ...

 ... where others I'll just go all in, it depends on what I'm going for at the time.

 And there ya have it a bit of a rundown of the things that keep me up at night ... well other then the circling black unmarked helicopters =O.O= I'm hoping to get some vids made  at some point next week so I'll see ya then take care for now everyone, be cool and be positive.

                                                                                                                     ~Noodles