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Sprite pixelling
Neil Black
Member #7,867
October 2006
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I'm looking for a good tutorial on drawing 32x32 and 64x64 sprites. I've got one on 16x16 but they aren't big enough, and they're so deformed because of the small size that making bigger sprites like those would just look bad. Does anyone know where there are some good tutorials? I'm trying google, but haven't found anything so far.

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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Just practice. Take what you know and make it bigger.

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Archon
Member #4,195
January 2004
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You should invest time in drawing software like The GIMP so you can use its drawing tools to get the effects that you want.

I wouldn't suggest that you just draw pixels with the cursor. You can get nice sprites and effects when you mix blending and blurring and manipulating colour gradients (for example).

And to get good at doing it... a book wont make you good -- practice would.

Johan Peitz
Member #9
April 2000
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--
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Neil Black
Member #7,867
October 2006
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Al I have for software is Paint, and I'm not likely to be getting anything else anytime soon. But I need some sprites before I can do any more coding. I don't know, are there any good freeware programs I could use?

But even if I had the right software and knew how to use it, I don't know what a sprite of that size should look like. Are there any games I could look at that use those sizes?

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

The Gimp is free and so is Paint.NET

Rampage
Member #3,035
December 2002
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But you should never use The Gimp.

-R

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
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I second what X-G and Johan Peitz said.

The Gimp is overkill for pixel pushing. Paint or anything similar is good enough for small sprites.

Archon said:

I wouldn't suggest that you just draw pixels with the cursor.

I would suggest just that. Draw your basic shape and then refine each pixel individually. Push those squares around until you're satisfied with the result or until you're sick of pushing them.

Archon said:

You can get nice sprites and effects when you mix blending and blurring and manipulating colour gradients (for example).

Eeeww, blending, blurring and gradients are evil. All they will do is make your sprites look ugly, mushy and undefined, unidentifiable...I could go on forever. Stay away from any of those "effects" when doing your pixelling. Place each pixel by hand and always evaluate whether that particular pixel adds anything to the definition of the sprite, if not, remove it.

On the original question:
One possible way is to stretch the 16x16 sprite that you already have to 32x32 and then refine it. Add more definition to the shape, colors and details. Make it smooth, remove unpleasant pixels, add pixels until it looks like the thing you envisioned.

Possumdude0 said:

But I need some sprites before I can do any more coding. I don't know, are there any good freeware programs I could use?

There is nothing wrong about using (ugly) placeholders until you get better sprites. Check the links that Mr. Peitz gave to you. Be prepared to find out that no tool in the world will automatically make your sprites better though: Practice, practice, practice.

Possumdude0 said:

But even if I had the right software and knew how to use it, I don't know what a sprite of that size should look like.

It should look like the thing that you have in your mind for it. It helps to write down a detailed description of the item/person/whatever in textform before moving on to actually drawing/pixelling it. Also make a very rough sketched version first, check if it comes close to your imagination and add and remove detail appropriately. And as this can't be stressed enough: Practice, practice, practice.8-)

Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
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Quote:

Eeeww, blending, blurring and gradients are evil. All they will do is make you're sprites look ugly, mushy and undefined, unidentifiable...I could go on forever.

I disagree! they are powerful tools for artists, however they are not so powerful for untalented people.
You have basically two ways, the old-school(see Johan's link), and the new way, using basically Photoshop(or the Gimp or any other similar tool), if you use the latter you only need to downsize your graphics to 32x32(or whatever) and let the antialiasing do the hard work!, and if you are using color palletes you have options to limit the amount of colors.
What tools are you using?

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

OICW
Member #4,069
November 2003
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Paul: that antialising at the edges of sprites is nasty when blitting them without alpha channel.

[My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online]
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Trent Gamblin
Member #261
April 2000
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Dennis said:

The Gimp is overkill for pixel pushing. Paint or anything similar is good enough for small sprites.

I can't imagine drawing lots of sprites in Paint.. Something like The Gimp that has a large toolbox and lots of filters is what I recommend (although the filters aren't as important as the tools when it comes to pixel art). Using Paint gets very tedious very fast IMO.

[edit]

Then again, my pixeling sucks, and people have drawn the Mona Lisa in Paint, so forget everything I just said. ;)

kentl
Member #2,905
November 2002

For such small sprites as 32x32 and 64x64 what would the filters actually be useful for? Isn't those sizes about getting gritty and pixeling everything yourself if you want a good result?

TeamTerradactyl
Member #7,733
September 2006
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I would have to second (or third?) Paint.NET (not just "Microsoft Paint").

Others have suggested Gimp, which is alright if you're a bit heavier into graphics. However, for simple designs, I would go with PdN (Paint.NET) if you use Windows, since it is very simple, and all the plugins (for special effects or abilities to import/export to different file formats like PCX, etc.) are open-source and available from their forums.

My new favorite is using the layers ability. I don't think I ever really understood how to use them efficiently until I saw how the artist for Ctrl-Alt-Del was turning them on/off, moving them around, shading things with them, etc. He shows how he did a few holiday cartoons here.

So I would suggest that, taking your 16x16 pixel, stretching it to 32x32 or 64x64, and then tweaking it with blending, filters, and stuff (using layers, of course, so you don't mess up a bunch of stuff :) ).

Edward Sheets
Member #4,734
June 2004
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Don't forget Tile Studio: http://tilestudio.sourceforge.net/

It's really good for pixeling sprites and animation. And it's free...

---

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Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
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Quote:

that antialising at the edges of sprites is nasty when blitting them without alpha channel.

The originator of this thread did not specify if he/she/it was interested in a particularly aesthetic look.
Is there a powerful reason not to use alpha sprites?
However, for an old-school look, obviously we should avoid sprites with alpha channel.

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
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Paul whoknows said:

[quote I]
Eeeww, blending, blurring and gradients are evil. All they will do is make you're sprites look ugly, mushy and undefined, unidentifiable...I could go on forever.

I disagree! they are powerful tools for artists, however they are not so powerful for untalented people.
</quote>If we were not talking about pixelling here, I would agree to some extend. Well maybe I shouldn't have generalized that much. (..are evil(to me, from my experience just don't work for sprites)).

Paul whoknows said:

What tools are you using?

and

Trent Gamblin said:

I can't imagine drawing lots of sprites in Paint.. [..] Using Paint gets very tedious very fast IMO.

I'm using Cloanto's Personal Paint under Amiga Emulation(see attached screenshot) for all my pixelling/spriting work. Yes, for a lot of spriting, using just (ms)Paint gets indeed tedious but that's just because it lacks some of the convenience features, mainly palettes, a magnifying glass with more than 2x zoom and a 1x preview that stays on screen while in zoom mode, not because it lacks any of the basic functionality(placing pixels) needed for pixelling.

I said:

Practice, practice, practice.

Start listening to your own advice man!

Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
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Hey Dennis! I was looking to your art! really good works! it seems that you are very experimented pixel artist!
I have some old pixel works done, but now I find 3d modeling + sprites pre-renderization faster than doing pixel art, believe it or not.

____

"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

OICW
Member #4,069
November 2003
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Well I for one want to commit a suicide if I imagine what amount of work should it take till I done some bigger picture pixel per pixel. I just know how long it took me to do the graphics for my CH2005 entry.

[My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online]
"Final Fantasy XIV, I feel that anything I could say will be repeating myself, so I'm just gonna express my feelings with a strangled noise from the back of my throat. Graaarghhhh..." - Yahtzee
"Uhm... this is a.cc. Did you honestly think this thread WOULDN'T be derailed and ruined?" - BAF
"You can discuss it, you can dislike it, you can disagree with it, but that's all what you can do with it"

Trent Gamblin
Member #261
April 2000
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kentl said:

For such small sprites as 32x32 and 64x64 what would the filters actually be useful for? Isn't those sizes about getting gritty and pixeling everything yourself if you want a good result?

In most cases yes, but sometimes filters and effects can be useful. For example, say you wanted to change the tint of your sprite from green to red as a variation or you just didn't like the green. The only way to do it in MS Paint and some other programs is replacing every pixel.

Dennis said:

Yes, for a lot of spriting, using just (ms)Paint gets indeed tedious but that's just because it lacks some of the convenience features, mainly palettes, a magnifying glass with more than 2x zoom and a 1x preview that stays on screen while in zoom mode, not because it lacks any of the basic functionality(placing pixels) needed for pixelling.

Yes, those are the biggest features missing from MS Paint. I also like have quick and easy cut tools and flipping/rotating tools as well.

Zaphos
Member #1,468
August 2001

Er, not that I'd recommend it particularly, but mspaint does have an up-to-8x zoom and cut tools and flipping/rotating tools ...

edit:

Quote:

The only way to do it in MS Paint and some other programs is replacing every pixel.

If you did want to change color schemes in paint, it'd be useful to know that you can color swap by right clicking with the eraser tool. It'll replace anything under the cursor that's the foreground color with the background color ... or maybe vice versa (I forget which).

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
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Paul whoknows said:

Hey Dennis! I was looking to your art! really good works! it seems that you are very experimented pixel artist!

Thanks, I guess.
[grammar nazi mode]
"experimented"?(for the following I assume you meant experienced, but I'll continue using experimented, 'cause I think it's funny) Yes, I got experimented a bit but not very much, mainly because of a lack of time(yah, I know this excuse is getting more and more lame the more often it is given).
[/grammar nazi mode]
If I got a dollar everytime I heard someone say that my works are good, I'd already have accumulated about 20 dollars over the past few years(which actually is quite the hint that I'm really just an amateur and not as good as thousands of real artists out there).:P

Paul whoknows said:

I have some old pixel works done..

Do you still have them? May I see them? (maybe I could learn something from looking at them)

OICW said:

Well I for one want to commit a suicide if I imagine what amount of work should it take till I done some bigger picture pixel per pixel.

That's the spirit!;D

Trent Gamblin said:

Yes, those are the biggest features missing from MS Paint. I also like have quick and easy cut tools and flipping/rotating tools as well.

Hm, I just looked again and I was wrong, it does support a 1x preview window while in zoom mode and as Zaphos pointed out, it also has up to 800% zoom. The cut and paste features are poor though, as they don't support transparent cuts (which I (ab)use a lot for spriting).

OICW
Member #4,069
November 2003
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Dennis: well I admire pixel artists, I just know that I don't have patience and skill to do it. I can draw outline of the object but when it comes to shading it and giving it details I don't have the right feeling for it. Well when drawing with pencil I have some skill but when it comes to pixeling... So that's why I'd rather commit a suicide than drawing the picture your avatar is taken from.

[My website][CppReference][Pixelate][Allegators worldwide][Who's online]
"Final Fantasy XIV, I feel that anything I could say will be repeating myself, so I'm just gonna express my feelings with a strangled noise from the back of my throat. Graaarghhhh..." - Yahtzee
"Uhm... this is a.cc. Did you honestly think this thread WOULDN'T be derailed and ruined?" - BAF
"You can discuss it, you can dislike it, you can disagree with it, but that's all what you can do with it"

23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
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MSPaint is win at least for the rough stuff. Shading and gradients and such can be done in other programs. I use Photoshop Elements since it came with my tablet.

PS: Nice links Johan.

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Step 2. Pray.

aadfo824
Member #7,265
May 2006

IRT OICW:

Stick figures all the way!

FuriousOrange
Member #7,305
June 2006
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I find Paint Shop Pro 5 good for spriting as it doesn't go over kill on all the additional features. This link is pretty good for bigger sprites (64 x 64 being possibly the lower limit of how effective it might be). As everyone else has said the best way to get good at 32 x 32 sprites is to draw loads and loads of them, same with everything else I guess.

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