Draw my own sprites

[Voracious]

Hello,

I'm a senior in high school...

For my entire summer when I wasn't wasting time, I was working on my senior project. For my senior project I wanted to make a short game, about 2 hours of game play or so. I gave myself until Mid-September to release the demo. I have some major problems though. I want to have custom sprites and tiles. Tiles as a matter of fact are no problem at all. My problem is making the sprites. I have a very unique art style that I like to use for everything I draw. All the tutorials I find just tell me to go to some website and take it from there. I don't want those sprites, they're too anime like. For me, it would be very awkward to have a very artistic and unique looking cut scene to be ruined by a very bare-bones and anime looking sprite. While I'm a guys who likes contrast, I don't want the styles to conflict.  

So, I'm asking for help getting through this. Does anybody have any tutorials/tips for drawing custom sprites? 

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS6 to create the tiles and sprites. 

I'm also using VX ACE to make the game itself. 

 

[kerbonklin]

Some random tips I can think of.

• Make sure you don't mess up the perspectives when doing custom tiles.
• Don't forget about setting up a 32x32 grid when doing spritesheet work. (unless doing other sheet types)
• Make sure you do A1-5 tilesets properly. (Auto-wall tiles / animation tiles, etc.)

Yeah I can't suggest much, i'm terrible at art lol.

 

[Shaz]

If you have Ace, you could look at the files that come with the character generator. You get a basic body shape in 2 genders and 3-4 colours, then different articles of clothing or body pieces (like hair) that you can combine together in the generator to create your character.


If you have a lot of sprites to make, it might be an easier option for you to create your own generator pieces instead, to replace the ones that come with the maker (after backing them up, of course), then use the generator to combine them all. I imagine this would give you a much larger number of sprites, but not take the same amount of time as creating each one individually.

 

[cosmickitty]

do you have any examples of your style? if you're wanting tips for a specific style it'd help to see what you're talking about.  Besides that, look up tutorials on color theory, banding, lighting, etc.  I'd also suggest, if you're going full custom start from a custom template.  I like to post my WIPs in the resource WIP thread for feedback, helps quite a bit. http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/48-the-resource-wip-thread/

 

[HeavyWolf]

I first want to start by saying, I'm no expert at this and I'm not a professional artist by any means, but I do think I have some good insight on this.

Sprites are small pictures and can not fit a lot of detail into them. Anime is an art form revered for its simplicity but beauty, which may be why the sprites look like anime. I think if you want more detail into your sprites, the first thing to do is raise the scale and I mean on everything. A character shouldn't fit in a single square, but large enough to take up multiple. The larger your character, the more detail you can add (Though you may want to keep it small enough to fit in the screen). RPG Maker VX Ace allows you to make sprites larger than one square ( don't know the limit for size), you only need to have 9 pictures (3 by 3) with their spaces evenly divided.

Other than that, maybe try taking a normal size picture and shrinking it down to sprite size and use what it shows as a reference for the sprite your making?

 

[cosmickitty]

no, RM does have a very anime style.  Big eyes, no other real features.  There are tons of other styles out there in every size, it just takes a lot of skill to get detail on such a small scale.  Thats why I asked what style you were wanting, what styles appeal to you, etc, so it'll be easier to answer your question.

 

[Celianna]

I've moved this thread to program and utility discussion. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[Sharm]

The "So you want to be a pixel artist" tutorials are really good for this sort of thing.  Specifically the pages about sprites starting here.

 

[Voracious]

The "So you want to be a pixel artist" tutorials are really good for this sort of thing.  Specifically the pages about sprites starting here.

You.

You are a big help.

<3