I'm a 2D sprite designer and currently I am working on a game called Hero of Allacrost (http://www.allacrost.org) and I want to know if there is a way to perfect my technique, since I am supposed to be the battle artist. I can make anything other that monsters in 2D look good, it just takes time. What the founder of HoA wants is battle sprites similar to those of FF6, but I am not at that level yet--and it could just be my technique. Anyone out there know how they drew up such detailed monsters? I can shade very well, but to create the actual lines I'm not sure... I read so far that they put blobs of color in a general shape/size, and then refined the blobs of color into detailed colored areas, and kept refining them until they looked good enough. Is that true? Or do you think they drew the monsters, scanned them into the computer, and then refined them/colored them in? Also, are there any other techniques I should know about? Thanks for your help! Sylon

I'm just guessing, but wouldn't it be easiest to sketch, color, and scan the sprites rather than draw them on the computer?

I don't really know, but I highly doubt they sketched and scanned them. That's just not very effective when you're making such small sprites. I think your method is good, and it just takes practice to know what to outline, what to shade, etc. I think the other trick is to pick features that stand out. If I remember correctly, they gave Mario a mustache because it was easier than drawing a mouth (or something like that).

tj963

Quote:

Original post by tj963 I don't really know, but I highly doubt they sketched and scanned them. That's just not very effective when you're making such small sprites.

Well, they can scale them down...

Hmmm I guess it's a mystery. Yeah, smr, I figured they could scale them down like that after they scanned the drawings. Those Japanese masters!

Anonymous, thanks for replying--

Yeah there is a concept artist on the team and I look at his work first. I have tried I think 4/5 of your methods and you are correct: Time consuming!!

I think I will have to get my scanner working and maybe draw pics then scan it and shrink it, then add details. Problem is my scanner is like, broken. Hah...

The enemy sprites in FF6 were hand-pixeled, based on referenced illustrations by Hitoshi Sasaki, and some by Yoshitaka Amano. There's no "trick" to generating sprites like that, it just takes patience and practice.

Regardless of the method of creation you use, whether starting with colour blocking, or line art, the final sprite will only reflect your own personal skill and effort.

Scanning and rescaling hand-drawn art is more trouble than it's worth...the artifacting and possible anit-aliasing that may be introduced into the image will likely take more time to clean up than if you had started the sprite from scratch.

All right now we're talkin! Thanks guys.

(I'm the aforementioned founder [grin])


We had an artist in the past that had to leave us because he was moving who did a little bit of everything. He made an awesome sketch of the Goliath Scorpion (link to our artwork section here) , which is the first boss-type enemy in our game, and immediately after seeing it I thought "this is our battle sprite". We colored it in a few different shades and it ended up looking really nice.


Maybe for the boss enemy sprites (which will typically be large and the only sprite in the battle area) we can use this detailed sketch and color technique, and for the smaller, more common sprites we can do everything with pixel art? It might work out nicely.


The Goliath Scorpion sketch and colored finish in question are below.

You could try creating the art as a line drawing, colour/shade it, scan it, use it as a background layer and pixel over the top.