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!

It's likely time-consuming, but you could try a few different things.

* Draw concept art first. Then, you can use a simple base-sprite (has a shape, but no details), and add details to it until it resembles your concept art.

* Use a simple base-sprite, and add details until it looks good.

* Ignore the base-sprite, and just create on the fly, adding and removing pixels until it looks good.

* Imagine creatures in 3D, then imagine them shrinking until they're sprite-sized and sprite-textured. Then, draw until you're pleased with it.

That's the best I can come up with. Sorry I couldn't offer anything more creative than that.

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.

If you do scan images, just remember this: the larger and more detailed the image is, the more ugly it will appear when it is shrunk. Heh, and increasing the size of the newly shrunk image (not using undo) isn't very pretty either. You might be lucky to get 1 eye in the sprite-sized image.

I just looked more closely to your post though, and noticed you're going for battle sprites. I was thinking worldmap/town sprites, so if you're going for ff6-style battle sprites, then it would be best to draw the battle sprites, refine them where necessary, then scan them (and probably still make adjustments to make them look right).

All right now we're talkin! Thanks guys.