How (or where should I go) to make ghost sprites?

[Strategery]

I'm hoping this is the right place for this post, but I'm working on a game project that has a couple of NPCs that are ghosts. In my mind, I'm picturing a sprite that is either a white outline of a character with no fill in, or a bluish outline with a white fill-in. In either case, the outline of the sprites would have a little bit of fuzziness on it to indicate that the NPC is ethereal.

I'm using the RPG Maker MV, and the character generator doesn't really let me create a sprite that has these characteristics? Any ideas on how to do this? Anyone else ever make a ghost sprite? Thoughts?

 

[Poryg]

Gimp or photoshop perhaps?

 

[MushroomCake28]

Gimp/Photoshop. If you don't have photoshop I would suggest GIMP because it is free and open source. Those software might be a bit intimidating, but it's really not that hard to learn if you simply want to do simple things in it.

 

[ShadowDragon]

you can go 2 ways, find ghost sprites or make them around 50% transparant fully.

you might need through is ON and yanfly event restriction if that can hold through ON, so you can walk through
them but it cant go through buildings etc

 

[bgillisp]

I've moved this thread to Resource Support. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

GIMP I've heard works, though I didn't manage to use it to make a ghost sprite myself as I couldn't figure out how to change the transparency in it. Finally got lucky with a visual effect which looked the same in the end. Maybe someone who knows GIMP can post more on how to do it?

 

[MushroomCake28]

@bgillisp Pretty sure that you change the transparency in the layer window (usually on the right). So you separate your image into multiple layers and play with transparency with different layers. There might be another way to do it, maybe one that gives you more control, but I'm not good enough with GIMP for that lol. I simply use the software for simple edits.

 

[Soulrender]

You can check my tutorial how to make a ghost for RMMV

 

[MadRamDesigns]

Yeah, there's a few ways in Gimp to achieve either look.
Start off similar to Soulrender's tutorial about using the character generator to export a png of the desired sprite sheet.

From there in gimp:
To do the white outline method, you desaturate the color. Increase the contrast between light and dark with Brightness and Contrast.
Use the Select-By-Color tool to grab all the pixels that aren't black, delete them, and then invert the remaining black lines to white or use bucket fill all.
Duplicate that layer, place that below existing layer, use Gaussian blur...there's more setps for finishing but that gives you a rough instruction that it's possible.

For the blue line/white fill, there's a few ways; similar to the above steps only instead of deleting the Selected-by-color pixels, you use bucket fill with "fill whole selection" clicked to white. Repeat by selecting all black lines and fill with desired blue.
Alternatively if you want to keep some of the color blending and shadows, there's using the Colorize option or Gradient Maps.
Really it's a matter of familiarizing yourself with the available tools and such.

 

[xoferew]

If you are talking about a sprite that's wandering around on the map, you could just have a custom movement route for it and then set opacity at whatever you like as part of the movement route. That's what I've done.

 

[Strategery]

Wow! Thanks, everybody, for the awesome suggestions! @Soulrender, your video is really helpful! I think I'll give it a try, though I'll have to adapt it to GIMP...don't think that would be too hard, though. @xoferew and @MadRamDesigns, I like those ideas, too. Looks like I have several solutions to choose from. You all just saved me countless hours of head-banging frustration!

 

[Strategery]

Hey, @Soulrender and @MadRamDesigns -- you guys rock! In just a few minutes I was able to create a character image tileset that looked exactly the way I imagined...now the story can go on! Thanks again, everybody!

 

[Soulrender]

Wow!!! That ghost of yours looks impossibly amazaing!!
@xoferew - Your ghost is also beatiful

 

[xoferew]

@Soulrender Ha ha, @Strategery's look ten times prettier than mine. Good job, @Strategery! Mine are uh... supposed to look scuffy and um... be hard to see. ^_~ Well, mine might not be ethereally stunning but they are at least flammable. ^_^