Hey, I''m doing hand drawn sprites for a game I''m working on and I''m running into a big problem. When I scan them in I scan them in as low DPI as I can get (75) but the pics are still way too big. When I resize them in photoshop no matter how I seem to resize them I always get a pic that needs EXCESSIVE clean up. It would save alot of time if I could scan these sprites in smaller or if someone knows of a more efficient way to do it? --Ravenshadow

I had the same problem.. never solved it though, the obvious hack would be to draw (MUCH) smaller pictures My scanner software goes as low as 75.. and as high as 9600 DPI(this size being useless).. Any big picture you scan then downsize to a small sprite size(i''m assuming 32x32) will need re-adjusting, more so with larger ratios. Might end up with the most efficient way being drawing them using photoshop

doesn´t matter if you draw small, at that size you´ll have to clean up anyway. my suggestion would be to use the scan only as a sketch, then simply draw the sprite over that.

Yeah, thats what I''m doing now.

I was hoping someone knew an easier way.

But I guess I''ll just have to do it the hard way

--Ravenshadow

yeah, i draw sketches and scan them in.
after i''ve got them resized, i trace over
them with adobe illustrator.. you can get some
really good shading and exact coloration with
that method.

-eldee
;another space monkey;
[ Forced Evolution Studios ]

yep, the smaller the sprite, the more touch is needed because there are less pixels to work with, and your eye is better at figuring out the required ones. because at low resolutions (ie 32x32) you cant outline everything using black and need to just use colors. look at some art from console games. make sure to have as little detail as possible in the image being scanned, this helps reduce the work tremondously.

also, make sure you do ALL editing at the file size and dont resize the work at all after completion (though some ppl work at double size then downsize). furthermore use layers. they help tremondously.

welcome to the world of small sprite 2d art.

[edited by - a person on May 28, 2002 11:52:07 PM]

Have you considered drawing them, scanning them, and tracing them (manually) in a vector graphics program? I have had good results with outputing vector graphics to small sizes, and it is easier to modify the graphics later.

--TheMuuj

I''m not familiar with vector graphics programs.

How do they work?

--Ravenshadow

why would you want to use vector line art for sprites? how big are these bloody things?
I gave the though to vector, but it would only work for sprites that are like... 200x150 at least. better to just draw them from scratch in paint or somthing. I do all mine in paint.

the main character is 32 x 96

they are small sprites.

I''ve been getting decent results using
the hand drawns as a guide.

Thanks for all the info guys.

--Ravenshadow