Dr. Frankenspritings not so secret and not so scary lab - Character Edits

[Avery]

"Hello! My name is Avery, and even though I maybe kinda look like I was , I am not frankensprited. Nonetheless, this is a very useful skill, I'm gonna teach you in my lab today!"

So, what is Frankenspriting?
Literally what you would think when you read it - Frankenspriting is the creation of new sprites by using parts of other characters. With the very versatile Generator a lot of people stopped using that skill, because a lot can already be done with that. But especially for NPCs you can still need that skill for sure, so, let's have a deeper look!

Tip: you can still use the generator parts when frankenspriting, for example to combine different clothing elements!

You will need a graphic program of your choice, I recommend:
Gimp - mostly for recoloring and stuff that includes drawing and transparancy
Graphicsgale - for straight pixel work

You can take any program you want as long as it supports transparency and layers, I won't use my graphic tablet for anything I do here and no stuff that requires any actual drawing skills - this tutorial is as beginner friendly as I can make it. You will just need some time to work yourself into the graphic programs, but there are already a lot of different tutorials out there for that and learning by doing worked for me pretty fine as well ;3

Step 1: Selection
Before I can do any actual work I need to know what do I want to do? and what do I have to get it?

So, we make a quick character sketch in our head:

Lillian Smithsdaughter is our heroes childhood friend. She is a charming young lady who is - surprise - the smith's daughter and likes baking and working in the garden. She has brown hair and prefers green clothing.

So, we take a look at our given graphics - important is here that the parts we need are good to select - if hair cover too much of the clothing it can be quite difficult to reconstruct it, and here we don't want to do actual pixel work ;3
Sf_Actor 2 has a hairstyle that I like a lot, doesn't she look like a nice girl from the countryside with that ponytail?
In People 1 I found that neat dress that has the huge advantage, that its hair does not cover any of the back and that also looks like it would suit a young lady pretty well
Also in People 1 is that nice lady, that has a good looking apron, that could also help to have Lillian look less like she's just one of all the other NPC girls wearing the same dress ;3

Step 2: Get rid of everything you don't need

After I picked the chars I will need in total, I inserted them all in seperate layers in the same image file.

As you can see, I use a visual grid and named the layers to help myself realizing what I wanted to do with that layer. This one is done in Gimp, but I know that similar programs have the same features ;3

Now, I'm gonna do the easiest thing first, I'm gonna replace the head. To get this done, I remove everything but the head from the head-layer (what a surprise, huh?). Since it is a very linear border, I'm gonna use combined box selections to get the right part

Then I will either delete that part or I'm gonna use a layer mask to cover it - whatever you prefer.
I'll do the same with the dress layer, just that I'l remove the opposite area here.

+ =
If I was only going for some quick variation, I now would already have a new NPC, but I want her to wear the apron as well!

To select the apron, I selected all included colors in the color selection first and deleted the rest - It will make it easier to get the apron only.

Now you can get rid of the rest by box selection or an eraser tool - be careful to only use an eraser with hard edges!

As a result I have 3 Layers with parts I want, but somehow she still does not look right... I wanted her to wear green and maybe she could have brown eyes...?
Sure she can have both!
Search the default graphics again, not for shapes this time, but for colors you like!

Step 3: Recoloring

For the eyes, I just replaced the darkest color of her eyes with the darkest of the hair (color select -> fill all) and so on.


You simply replace your color ramp with another one you like better. Keeping my layers sepearted helps in case several items on several layers share the same color!

Tip: You can also shift hue, saturation and brightness in the graphic programm, but here it is more difficult to get a fitting ramp. Especially when you are not very experienced color swapping will lead to much better results!

Step 4: Export Char as picture

After just some more color swapping, say hi to Lillian (or Lilli, as she prefers to be called!)


Well then, that was it! In case you want to see Lilli return for more tutorials, let me know ;3 Maybe she could get a face next?

 

[ct_bolt]

View attachment 131365"Hello! My name is Avery, and even though I maybe kinda look like I was , I am not frankensprited. Nonetheless, this is a very useful skill, I'm gonna teach you in my lab today!"

So, what is Frankenspriting?
Literally what you would think when you read it - Frankenspriting is the creation of new sprites by using parts of other characters. With the very versatile Generator a lot of people stopped using that skill, because a lot can already be done with that. But especially for NPCs you can still need that skill for sure, so, let's have a deeper look!

Tip: you can still use the generator parts when frankenspriting, for example to combine different clothing elements!

You will need a graphic program of your choice, I recommend:
Gimp - mostly for recoloring and stuff that includes drawing and transparancy
Graphicsgale - for straight pixel work

You can take any program you want as long as it supports transparency and layers, I won't use my graphic tablet for anything I do here and no stuff that requires any actual drawing skills - this tutorial is as beginner friendly as I can make it. You will just need some time to work yourself into the graphic programs, but there are already a lot of different tutorials out there for that and learning by doing worked for me pretty fine as well ;3

Step 1: Selection
Before I can do any actual work I need to know what do I want to do? and what do I have to get it?

So, we make a quick character sketch in our head:


So, we take a look at our given graphics - important is here that the parts we need are good to select - if hair cover too much of the clothing it can be quite difficult to reconstruct it, and here we don't want to do actual pixel work ;3
View attachment 131368Sf_Actor 2 has a hairstyle that I like a lot, doesn't she look like a nice girl from the countryside with that ponytail?
View attachment 131369In People 1 I found that neat dress that has the huge advantage, that its hair does not cover any of the back and that also looks like it would suit a young lady pretty well
View attachment 131370Also in People 1 is that nice lady, that has a good looking apron, that could also help to have Lillian look less like she's just one of all the other NPC girls wearing the same dress ;3

Step 2: Get rid of everything you don't need

After I picked the chars I will need in total, I inserted them all in seperate layers in the same image file.
View attachment 131371
As you can see, I use a visual grid and named the layers to help myself realizing what I wanted to do with that layer. This one is done in Gimp, but I know that similar programs have the same features ;3

Now, I'm gonna do the easiest thing first, I'm gonna replace the head. To get this done, I remove everything but the head from the head-layer (what a surprise, huh?). Since it is a very linear border, I'm gonna use combined box selections to get the right part
View attachment 131376
Then I will either delete that part or I'm gonna use a layer mask to cover it - whatever you prefer.
I'll do the same with the dress layer, just that I'l remove the opposite area here.

View attachment 131377 + View attachment 131378 = View attachment 131379
If I was only going for some quick variation, I now would already have a new NPC, but I want her to wear the apron as well!
View attachment 131380
To select the apron, I selected all included colors in the color selection first and deleted the rest - It will make it easier to get the apron only.
View attachment 131381
Now you can get rid of the rest by box selection or an eraser tool - be careful to only use an eraser with hard edges!
View attachment 131382
As a result I have 3 Layers with parts I want, but somehow she still does not look right... I wanted her to wear green and maybe she could have brown eyes...?
Sure she can have both!
Search the default graphics again, not for shapes this time, but for colors you like!

Step 3: Recoloring

For the eyes, I just replaced the darkest color of her eyes with the darkest of the hair (color select -> fill all) and so on.

View attachment 131383
You simply replace your color ramp with another one you like better. Keeping my layers sepearted helps in case several items on several layers share the same color!

Tip: You can also shift hue, saturation and brightness in the graphic programm, but here it is more difficult to get a fitting ramp. Especially when you are not very experienced color swapping will lead to much better results!

Step 4: Export Char as picture

After just some more color swapping, say hi to Lillian (or Lilli, as she prefers to be called!)
View attachment 131386

View attachment 131387Well then, that was it! In case you want to see Lilli return for more tutorials, let me know ;3 Maybe she could get a face next?

Nice tutorial Thanks for all the great work you do for us