| Revision as of 17:51, 23 November 2006 edit69.231.174.186 (talk) →Editing← Previous edit | Revision as of 08:10, 24 November 2006 edit undoSatarel NumberTrail (talk | contribs)4 edits Someone asked for a professional to rewrite the article, I have done so. I've also released an example image of mine under a free license.Next edit → | ||
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| ⚫ | '''Spriting''' is usually defined as the act of creating ] ] ] for use in ], commonly referred to as ]; by extension, it is also used to refer to the act of creating ], though not all sprites are necessarily done in that style. Pixel art comprises a large part of "sprite art" as a whole; though technological advances since the mid-nineties allowed pre-rendered raytraced imagery, or essentially any 2-dimensional image style to be used as a sprite. In some communities, "pixel art" is considered a synonym of "sprite art", and classification of artwork as "sprite art" is held to the same standards. | ||
| {{Expert}} | |||
| ⚫ | ] | ||
| ⚫ | '''Spriting''' is usually defined as the act of creating ] ] ] for use in ], commonly referred to as ]; |
||
| Though sprites have been a major component of many early video games, the modern, "mainstream" activity called "Spriting" arose with the advent of widely-available computer graphics programs capable of editing and saving raster images. Such programs include "MacPaint," and the later "Microsoft Paint". | |||
| The most commonly used program is ] because it is included in most versions of ] and has the least steep learning curve. Other programs such as ] or ] can prove to be more powerful tools of greater complexity for spriting, in particular as a result of their ability to separate graphics into layers and their color modifying functions. | |||
| The distinctive style of imagery used in many early computer and arcade games inspired people to create similar works of their own. Having the tools available to do this allowed many people to experiment with what was previously a prohibitively difficult-to-enter craft. With the advent of the internet, practitioners of spriting were able to collaborate and share their creations, which established spriting as a proper hobby, and also exposed these artists to prospective employers, and vice-versa. | |||
| A distinction is sometimes made between sprites and ]. An image is often called a sprite once it has been integrated into a larger image, such as a ]. However, the image as it exists independently from the larger context falls into the category of pixel art. There are also restrictions that a sprite has to follow due the limits of memory in older video game consoles. Pixel art is often used as backgrounds and intros in video games and thus can have a bigger size and degree of detail. | |||
| == Beginner styles of Spriting == | |||
| ===Recoloring=== | |||
| ] | |||
| '''Recolors''' or '''palette swaps''' involve only changing the color-scheme of a sprite or set of sprites. | |||
| Doing this is simple; doing it well takes a good deal of skill and finetuning. | |||
| To make things easier, it is often wise to prearrange the order of the colors in your sprite palette, so it is easy to apply one palette-swap to all related sprites. | |||
| Spriting is primarily done, especially by the more professional artists, for the direct purpose of creating video game artwork. By hobbyists, though, it is often done to create stand-alone artwork, or as part of a larger piece of art, such as a ]. The use of sprites as cookie-cutter elements of comic strips has led to a genre called ]. | |||
| MS Paint can be used to instantly recolor sprites, but using a spriting-oriented tool such as ] makes it a lot easier and quicker to control the process. | |||
| Recoloring is also a term used in relation to the editing of non-original sprites. This article is concerned primarily with the creation of original sprites, so more detail will not be given here. | |||
| == Spriting as a Hobby == | |||
| ⚫ | === |
||
| === Modified commercial sprites === | |||
| ] | ] | ||
| Despite copyright concerns, many hobbyists new to spriting begin their work by editing sprite imagery made for commercial video games; often games seen on console platforms like the ] or ]. Fans of these images collect transcribed copies of them in common image formats, and post them on websites for others to see. This process of extracting the imagery is called "ripping" or "dumping". In "ripping" a person collects the imagery via screen captures of an emulator running the source game - this practice is in enough demand that some emulators, like ], have a feature to optionally display only desired layers of the game's imagery, making it easier to copy.<ref>http://darkut.free.fr/Tutorials/sprite_ripping.htm</ref> "Dumping" involves a more sophisticated way of directly extracting the images from the game; this is often rather difficult, since on systems like the ], the larger images seen on-screen are stored in several smaller parts. These images are collected into compilations known as sprite sheets, large raster images which each hold all of the frames associated with a single character, or a single terrain environment. These are the de facto standard for trading ripped commercial sprites online. | |||
| Those who edit these images, which generally depict characters in the game, often begin by simply shifting the color palette; thus turning all of a characters primary costume color into a different color. Later, they will redraw small parts of the image, making slight changes to the costuming, etc. This is generally much less intimidating than creating a full, original work, and allows them practice in imitating and matching the styles used by professional artists. This progresses to modifications which are sufficiently extensive as to make the source work they were derived from, unrecognizable. | |||
| '''Editing''' (probably the most general term and common term) is, quite simply, the art of changing a sprite into a new one. This may be as simple as fixing an outline, or as complex as an objective edit, as opposed to mixing (where the parts are already made). The latter, a very popular style of editing, involves changing characteristics of a sprite so that they clearly represent an edit. Edits are easily accepted if an object or character are similar, and thus don't require to be recreated. Sometimes very simple editing will still fall under the category of "recoloring". | |||
| ''Mixing'' (also splicing, mutating, editing, frankenspriting etc.) is the technique of combining two or more characters to create a new one with obvious traces of both. Fire Emblem, Pokémon, and Megaman are common subjects of mixing. Although mixing can be rather simple, it requires originality. Since not all sprites are similar, somewhat complex principles are involved, such as proportions, light and shading, and how well the sprite blends . | |||
| Due to the legal risks of openly talking about this practice, statistics concerning what portion of professional sprite artists first learned to sprite by editing other commercial works may never be known. | |||
| == Advanced styles of Spriting == | |||
| === Custom spriting === | |||
| ⚫ | ] | ||
| '''Custom Spriting''' differs from editing and ripping in that the sprites are wholly the creation of the artist. Sprites made from scratch (without using parts from any existing sprite) are generally called "Custom". Often, these sprites are in the form of actual video game characters, whether from 3D games with no sprites, or merely new versions of a 2D character. Sometimes however, the spriters make their own characters, which may be anything from their own made up character to pixellated self portraits. | |||
| === Original Sprites === | |||
| Spriters may make their own style, or attempt to follow a particular style of sprites, using a "base sprite", an unedited video game sprite. When a spriter uses a base sprite, he or she modifies the original sprites to fit their character(s)' appearance. Some popular base sprites include the characters from ] games, ] games, ] games, and ] games. Perhaps the most popular base sprites for human characters are ] and ] from the ]. Differences between styles include border style, size, shading, proportion, and types of colors used. | |||
| ⚫ | ] | ||
| With sufficient skill, often drawing from many general aspects of illustration (shading, color theory, foreshortening, and often comic art), an artist can create professional-quality sprite images and pixel art from scratch. | |||
| In younger, pre-professional (and typically teenage) years, these artists will make sprites-to-order as a hobby, for either themselves, or friends. These sprites, created completely from scratch, but generally imitating sprites from a commercial game, are called "Custom" sprites, and are often seen as avatars, buddy icons, small animations, and elements of web comics. They will also often be used for small-scale video game projects. | |||
| === Aesthetic Spriting === | |||
| In common spriting, the authors usually attempt to imitate the appearance of the sprites on a specific game, by such methods as using the same number of colors, same light source, etc. | |||
| == Spriting as a Profession == | |||
| In '''aesthetic spriting''', however, the authors are more concerned with how much the sprite please the viewers' eyes. For such, they make use of various resources. | |||
| With the advent of dedicated 3d hardware, sprites lost their near-monopoly on video-game imagery. However, sprite art remains a popular medium for video-game imagery, and has witnessed a comeback in the commercial markets for handheld consoles (like the ]) or mobile phone games. The companies that create these games hire many of the best sprite artists who maintain online portfolios of their work, and who openly seek such employment. | |||
| Professional sprite artists often delve into other areas of illustration, including animation, comics, and computer-generated art, often doing those on a professional basis as well. | |||
| ==Tools== | |||
| Spriting needs only a computer and a graphic editing program, although other tools can help. Depending on the target use of the sprite, it may be necessary to have a program capable of adding transparency information (e.g. an "alpha channel") to sprites. For handheld/mobile games, it is also necessary to post-process the imagery, converting it to a format native to the hardware the game will run on. When editing pixel images, a professional artist will typically use either a program designed for sprite-editing and animation, and/or will modify the workspace of a major image-editor like Photoshop to accommodate sprite editing. The following programs are prevalent: | |||
| ⚫ | ===Software=== | ||
| * ] is free and included on all Windows PCs. It allows basic graphic editing, but lacks many advanced features. Because of it's availability, it is often used in spite of these limitations; however it tends not to be used by professional artists. | |||
| ====Programs designed for sprite editing:==== | |||
| * is available for Windows, and costs $78. It is often used by professionals, and offers many animation features, and features tailored to producing art for the Gameboy Advance, or Mobile Phones. | |||
| * is free, open-source, and available for Mac OS X. It offers many tools tailored to sprite creation and animation. | |||
| * , for windows, has both freeware and 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware versions, and has features designed for animation and cursor creation. | |||
| ====Major image editors:==== | |||
| * The ] is a free, open-source image editor, available for all major platforms. | |||
| * ] is a commercial image editor available for Windows and Mac OS X. | |||
| ===Hardware=== | |||
| A scanner can be useful for transferring penciled sketches/designs of a sprite into a computer. Advanced sprite artists often create their sprites directly on a computer, and a graphics tablet can greatly ease the majority of the work, especially the sketching and blocking stages, although the finer, details will inevitably need to get tweaked with the mouse. | |||
| ==Methodology== | |||
| ⚫ | ] | ||
| There are several ways to create a sprite. Virtually all of these involve some way of "planning out" the form of the final sprite image. By laying out simple, and quick to draw suggestions of the final form, an artist can evaluate and correct the general direction that the construction of an image is moving towards, eliminating errors in perspective, anatomy, and foreshortening before the major work of drawing begins. These methods are very similar to other forms of illustration. | |||
| "Blocking" is a term used to describe what painters do - a spriter will lay out large regions of color/shade, trying to lay them in what he will be their final position, but starting with the biggest regions first. The artist will then sculpt these regions into the correct shape, and add in additional highlights and shadows to form the image, sometimes finishing the image by adding cartoon-like outlines to frame parts of the image. | |||
| For example, a difference can be found in the shading of the sprite. Although it is not as widely used as most outline effects, a method known as overshading may be used to smoothen the shading of a sprite and even make it look more three-dimensional. Overshading consists in increasing the number of shades used on a sprite (usually double the original), such as by mixing two existing shades of a color to create the center shade or by manually creating extreme light and dark shades. Overshading usually goes hand-in-hand with shaded all-color outlines (no black), and it requires good shading skills to be effective. A poorly done overshade may cause the sprite to look flat or even pressed down. A spriter use dithering (mixing two shades in a checkerboard pattern) to smooth out a sprite's shading. This is used more in larger sprites. | |||
| "Line Art" is the black outlining used to draw many styles of illustration. It can stand on its own without coloration, and many spriters will draw black and white outlines of their final images before filling them in with color, and then shading those filled regions. Master sprite artists will color most of this line art; often giving it a darker hue of the region it surrounds. | |||
| There are also some other minor yet still well-known styles of spriting. These, however, are currently not very popular. In addition, as mentioned above, spriters are constantly creating their own styles, and therefore a complete list is virtually impossible to compile. | |||
| After any of these methods is followed, the sprite artist will clean the image of any extraneous pixels unrelated to their illustration, apply proper transparency, especially to the blank canvas surrounding their illustration, and then export the image to a format suitable for sending to their client or friends. The ] and to a lesser degree, ] formats are suitable, and ] is notable for not being so - the Lossy nature of ] compression often mars some of the finer details of sprites, but more importantly, can shift the colors of a sprite's pixels. Many videogames that use sprites require the sprites to use an exact, predefined palette of colors, and often create graphical effects by shifting these colors; any colors outside of this scheme will cause this to fail. Specific projects may convert the images to a proprietary format used internally by their game. | |||
| == Sprite Ripping and Compiling == | |||
| === Sprite ripping === | |||
| '''Sprite ripping''' is the term used for copying certain sprites from a game and then pasting groups of sprites into a single file, called a '''sprite sheet'''. A spriter will use ] and images of the original game data (usually called ]) to play the games, from which they try to copy every ] of a sprite's animations, be it an object, character, or effect. They then paste the individual poses onto a large ] file (the "sheet") in a program such as MS Paint. This process, commonly referred to as ripping, is usually accomplished by running the game image in a computer emulator, playing the game until the desired sprites show up on screen and taking successive snapshots to obtain bitmap images containing the sprite. Some emulators, like ] have an option to disable background layers, making sprite ripping easier, as one doesn't have to separate each sprite from the background in an image editor.<ref>http://darkut.free.fr/Tutorials/sprite_ripping.htm</ref> | |||
| Once all the sprites have been pasted and organized on the sheet, tags, messages or titles may be added to make the sprite sheet look good and pose restrictions on its usage. It's very frequent for the person who ripped a sprite sheet to ask for credit or permission (usually by ]) before its usage on ], for example. For ripped sprites, these claims are not legitimate, because the sprite ripper did not create the sprites, and as such, its ] belongs to the company that created the video game. While most people use ripped sprites in ] without giving credit to the sprite ripper, taking a whole sheet, removing existent tags and messages and claiming to be its ripper is extremely frowned upon.<ref>http://spriters-resource.com/resources/rules.php</ref> | |||
| === Sprite dumping === | |||
| Another form of sprite ripping is '''sprite dumping''', which is the same as the actual sprite ripping process, except for the fact that the ripping is fully automated, e.g. one does not need to play through the game with an emulator. In ] games this is called ] dumping, since it involves textures being dumped. | |||
| Sprite sheets are often first saved as ] files for MS Paint and other personal uses. They can then be saved into compressed formats, such as the ] or ] formats to show to other users on the Internet or send into ], although PNG images are sometimes hard to open on older versions of ]. A common mistake made by novice spriters is saving sprites in the ] format, a format that relies on ]. As such, it's better suited better for photo-oriented images, not for images with very few colors. Saving sprites in the JPEG format causes those to acquire ]s, rendering it useless for most uses, such as recoloring and inserting them in sprite comics. The GIF and PNG formats use ], making them better suited for storing sprites. Use of the JPEG format is usually looked down upon, but occasionally spriters will intentionally present their sprites as a distorted JPEG, in order to prevent unwanted use by others. | |||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
Revision as of 08:10, 24 November 2006
Spriting is usually defined as the act of creating partially transparent 2d raster graphics for use in video games, commonly referred to as sprites; by extension, it is also used to refer to the act of creating pixel art, though not all sprites are necessarily done in that style. Pixel art comprises a large part of "sprite art" as a whole; though technological advances since the mid-nineties allowed pre-rendered raytraced imagery, or essentially any 2-dimensional image style to be used as a sprite. In some communities, "pixel art" is considered a synonym of "sprite art", and classification of artwork as "sprite art" is held to the same standards.
Though sprites have been a major component of many early video games, the modern, "mainstream" activity called "Spriting" arose with the advent of widely-available computer graphics programs capable of editing and saving raster images. Such programs include "MacPaint," and the later "Microsoft Paint".
The distinctive style of imagery used in many early computer and arcade games inspired people to create similar works of their own. Having the tools available to do this allowed many people to experiment with what was previously a prohibitively difficult-to-enter craft. With the advent of the internet, practitioners of spriting were able to collaborate and share their creations, which established spriting as a proper hobby, and also exposed these artists to prospective employers, and vice-versa.
Spriting is primarily done, especially by the more professional artists, for the direct purpose of creating video game artwork. By hobbyists, though, it is often done to create stand-alone artwork, or as part of a larger piece of art, such as a web comic. The use of sprites as cookie-cutter elements of comic strips has led to a genre called sprite comics.
Spriting as a Hobby
Modified commercial sprites
Despite copyright concerns, many hobbyists new to spriting begin their work by editing sprite imagery made for commercial video games; often games seen on console platforms like the SNES or Sega Genesis. Fans of these images collect transcribed copies of them in common image formats, and post them on websites for others to see. This process of extracting the imagery is called "ripping" or "dumping". In "ripping" a person collects the imagery via screen captures of an emulator running the source game - this practice is in enough demand that some emulators, like ZSNES, have a feature to optionally display only desired layers of the game's imagery, making it easier to copy. "Dumping" involves a more sophisticated way of directly extracting the images from the game; this is often rather difficult, since on systems like the SNES, the larger images seen on-screen are stored in several smaller parts. These images are collected into compilations known as sprite sheets, large raster images which each hold all of the frames associated with a single character, or a single terrain environment. These are the de facto standard for trading ripped commercial sprites online.
Those who edit these images, which generally depict characters in the game, often begin by simply shifting the color palette; thus turning all of a characters primary costume color into a different color. Later, they will redraw small parts of the image, making slight changes to the costuming, etc. This is generally much less intimidating than creating a full, original work, and allows them practice in imitating and matching the styles used by professional artists. This progresses to modifications which are sufficiently extensive as to make the source work they were derived from, unrecognizable.
Due to the legal risks of openly talking about this practice, statistics concerning what portion of professional sprite artists first learned to sprite by editing other commercial works may never be known.
Original Sprites
With sufficient skill, often drawing from many general aspects of illustration (shading, color theory, foreshortening, and often comic art), an artist can create professional-quality sprite images and pixel art from scratch.
In younger, pre-professional (and typically teenage) years, these artists will make sprites-to-order as a hobby, for either themselves, or friends. These sprites, created completely from scratch, but generally imitating sprites from a commercial game, are called "Custom" sprites, and are often seen as avatars, buddy icons, small animations, and elements of web comics. They will also often be used for small-scale video game projects.
Spriting as a Profession
With the advent of dedicated 3d hardware, sprites lost their near-monopoly on video-game imagery. However, sprite art remains a popular medium for video-game imagery, and has witnessed a comeback in the commercial markets for handheld consoles (like the GameBoy Advance) or mobile phone games. The companies that create these games hire many of the best sprite artists who maintain online portfolios of their work, and who openly seek such employment.
Professional sprite artists often delve into other areas of illustration, including animation, comics, and computer-generated art, often doing those on a professional basis as well.
Tools
Spriting needs only a computer and a graphic editing program, although other tools can help. Depending on the target use of the sprite, it may be necessary to have a program capable of adding transparency information (e.g. an "alpha channel") to sprites. For handheld/mobile games, it is also necessary to post-process the imagery, converting it to a format native to the hardware the game will run on. When editing pixel images, a professional artist will typically use either a program designed for sprite-editing and animation, and/or will modify the workspace of a major image-editor like Photoshop to accommodate sprite editing. The following programs are prevalent:
Software
- Microsoft Paint is free and included on all Windows PCs. It allows basic graphic editing, but lacks many advanced features. Because of it's availability, it is often used in spite of these limitations; however it tends not to be used by professional artists.
Programs designed for sprite editing:
- Pro Motion is available for Windows, and costs $78. It is often used by professionals, and offers many animation features, and features tailored to producing art for the Gameboy Advance, or Mobile Phones.
- Pixen is free, open-source, and available for Mac OS X. It offers many tools tailored to sprite creation and animation.
- GraphicsGale, for windows, has both freeware and 1995¥ (roughly $20) shareware versions, and has features designed for animation and cursor creation.
Major image editors:
- The GIMP is a free, open-source image editor, available for all major platforms.
- Adobe Photoshop is a commercial image editor available for Windows and Mac OS X.
Hardware
A scanner can be useful for transferring penciled sketches/designs of a sprite into a computer. Advanced sprite artists often create their sprites directly on a computer, and a graphics tablet can greatly ease the majority of the work, especially the sketching and blocking stages, although the finer, details will inevitably need to get tweaked with the mouse.
Methodology
There are several ways to create a sprite. Virtually all of these involve some way of "planning out" the form of the final sprite image. By laying out simple, and quick to draw suggestions of the final form, an artist can evaluate and correct the general direction that the construction of an image is moving towards, eliminating errors in perspective, anatomy, and foreshortening before the major work of drawing begins. These methods are very similar to other forms of illustration.
"Blocking" is a term used to describe what painters do - a spriter will lay out large regions of color/shade, trying to lay them in what he will be their final position, but starting with the biggest regions first. The artist will then sculpt these regions into the correct shape, and add in additional highlights and shadows to form the image, sometimes finishing the image by adding cartoon-like outlines to frame parts of the image.
"Line Art" is the black outlining used to draw many styles of illustration. It can stand on its own without coloration, and many spriters will draw black and white outlines of their final images before filling them in with color, and then shading those filled regions. Master sprite artists will color most of this line art; often giving it a darker hue of the region it surrounds.
After any of these methods is followed, the sprite artist will clean the image of any extraneous pixels unrelated to their illustration, apply proper transparency, especially to the blank canvas surrounding their illustration, and then export the image to a format suitable for sending to their client or friends. The PNG and to a lesser degree, GIF formats are suitable, and JPEG is notable for not being so - the Lossy nature of JPEG compression often mars some of the finer details of sprites, but more importantly, can shift the colors of a sprite's pixels. Many videogames that use sprites require the sprites to use an exact, predefined palette of colors, and often create graphical effects by shifting these colors; any colors outside of this scheme will cause this to fail. Specific projects may convert the images to a proprietary format used internally by their game.
See also
References
External links
- A sprite relolouring script on FE Planet
- The Spriters Resource
- Sprite Database
- The Mystical Forest Zone
- Spriting Zone