Sprite Question(s)

[Duton]

Heya Newgrounds,

I've known about you guys for a while from various animators and game makers, but didn't think to make an account 'till now. I'm currently diddling around with The Games Factory 2, and something that occurred to me whilst doing so, I have no freakin' idea how to create my own proper sprites! Google comes up with unrelated topics in most cases, (Thinking I'm talking about the soda or something like that.), and the Newgrounds tutorials that I've been sifting through on the topic of sprites, don't mention anything about creating sprites, simply "Get X Sprite Sheet from X website so you can use it in X Flash program.", and while I have Flash CS5, that's not what I'm looking for.

So I'm asking for a bit of help so I can get more involved in this fun little world of game making and animation making. Any tips, website referrals, or tutorials would be great help. I hope to have fun here at NG, and I appreciate the help.

Regards,
Duton

[Atlas]

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/29 3635 How To Make Sprites Newgrounds

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
qid=20070613000812AAbIxxR Yahoo Answers & Link To Compilers

Videos On How To Make A Sprite Animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5qfsV-ga ZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6bePmYix aw

Hope that helps.

[Duton]

Thanks!

[Duton]

At 8/5/11 07:45 PM, Duton wrote: Thanks!

EDIT: The links you provided me with are not what I was looking for, I was referring to creating sprites, from scratch.

The links you gave me led to:

Animating Sprites from Sprite Sheets
Compilers for Sprites (Which I have no clue how that will help in any way shape or form)
Again Animating Sprites from Sprite Sheets

[RoboJanitor]

Well first off im glad your like me a don't like stealing sprites from sprite sheets like everyone else on newgrounds. Honestly, the secret to sprite animation (when i say animation i mean for both games AND cartoons) is to organize everything into movie clips. Design your characters with the square and pixel brushes, then animate them in movie clips. You need to have artistic talent, as well as coding talent. When you have made all your action in the different movie clips, try making a sprite cartoon with all your motions to see if the flow well. When you label your movie clips, label them as "CharacterName_Action" to keep thing organized. Btw DO NOT animate you effects in the same movie clip as your sprites, animate the effects is a seperate movie clip so you can use them with other sprites as well. If you have problems with layering when you do effects keep in mind that you can put a movie clip inside a movie clip, so just do your effects in seperate movie clips

Hope this info helps :D

[Duton]

All right, thanks.

[MMM16]

huhm :) GL

[smartesthere]

Usually I use this technique for editing existing sprites, but I guess you could also draw your own.

1) Draw a basic outline of what you want to create, show outlines of all the components and colour.

2) New layer, Lock outline layer

3) Right Click> Grid> Show Grid

4) Right> Grid Options: Check 'snap to grid', change grid size to 1px by 1 px, and select 'Always snap' from the drop down menu.

5) Select line tool, set it to 'hairline' (properties box)

now zoom right in (2000%) and start tracing over your outline, keeping to the grid-lines.
(avoid diagonal lines at all cost!)
keep tracing and filling in finished blocks- it takes practice, but eventually you'll create some pretty sweet pixel art/sprites using flash.
(delete your lines by selecting your work, clicking on the line colour box and selecting the white box with the red line across it)

Essentially you're building the sprites pixel by pixel.

If you're making animated sprites then you'll want a new layer for each animated component.

If it all lines up ok, when you export an image then the pixels shouldn't get blurred.