Monday, March 28, 2011

Tutorial: Sprite Art

Pokemon's Sprite Building Guide!
Some people have wondered how you make enormous sprite art, and some people don't know how you make sprite art whatsoever!

Things you will need:
  • Photoshop (don't currently know how to make in GIMP)
  • An image (for starters, I reccomend using video game sprites)
  • WoM client (download from http://www.worldofminecraft.com/Game_Client , you have to sign up!)
Alrighty, let's make a sprite!

Step 1. Resize image
The size that you resize to depends on what you are making.  If you are making sprite art, zoom in and manualy count the number of pixels.


Remember- each pixel is a block in game, so be sure you know the height and width of the server you will be building in, otherwise you will be unable to make your whole sprite!


The best way to resize an image is to open image size (Alt+Ctrl+I).  You should see something like this:

 Change the values under pixel dimentions down to your desired in-game size - remember, the more pixels you include, the more detailed your image will be, but it will be harder to build!  Also, be sure the constrain proportions box is checked - otherwise your image will get streched or squezzed and look bad!  I'll resize my image down to 64x46.
From this:





Down to this:

Oh no!  I can't see my image/it's too small!  On the bottom bar, you should see something that says 100%.  Increase this number until the image fills the screen.


At this point, you need to check your image to see if all the pixels look similar to a color in minecraft, like my Mewtwo.  If the colors are like those you see in Minecraft, great!  You're done!  If they a re different, however, you'll need to read the next part.


Step 2. Making a Color Swatch.

A color swatch is a set of colors.  What we want to do is make sure that every pixel in the picture corresponds to a color in Minecraft.  To do this, we first need an image with all the colors we will be using.  I will be using this screenshot from Minecraft in this tutorial:



Now that we have the image we will be using to make our swatch, we need to open it in Photoshop.
Okay, here comes a bit of work.  In the upper-right hand corner of Photoshop, you should see three tabs that say color, swatches, and styles.  Click on the Swatches tab.

Your current swatch will appear different than mine, as I already have mine set to my Minecraft swatch.  See all of those colored boxes?  Right click and delete every one of them.  Next, select the eyedropper tool by pressing I.  Now, click on your picture and drag your mouse until you have the color that you believe best represents the corrosponding block in Minecraft.  Try to make it as close as possible to the block's main color!  Once you have your color selected, click in the swatches box.  This should appear.

Name the color swatch what ever you want: Red, Red Block, whatever works for you.  Now, repeat for the rest of the blocks.  When you are done, you should have something like this:

Next, click here:


and select save swatches from the menu that appears. Now save the swatch in a folder where you will remember it.  Congratulations!  You have just made your own Minecraft color swatch! 

To apply the color swatch:
Open the image you want to build in Minecraft.
Go to Image->Mode->Indexed Color.
This window should appear:
Click on the box to the right of Palette, and select Custom.  A window like this should appear:


Click load.  In the box that appears next, navigate to the folder that you saved your swatch to.  MAKE SURE that you have files of type set to Swatches (.aco) OR YOU WILL NOT SEE YOUR SWATCH!

The custom color window should now appear like this:

Click OK.  Don't panic at your image, we're not done yet.  Chances are, your image colors have changed dramaticaly to something like this:
Now, Photoshop has an advanced feature to try and preserve the original colors of the image as best as possible using only the colors you have chosen.  Remember this window?
What you should now do is tinker with those 3 objects until you get an image that looks good.  Switching dither to pattern is easy to build, but you are forced to have the amount of color preservation all the way up at 100%.  Diffusion is similar, however there is no pattern to the pixel placement and you may have a tougher time building it.  Noise is extremely good at getting your image to its original colors, but it's really hard to build!  Tinker around with these values untill you have your image how you want it.  Once you have what you want, click OK.

You're done making your image in Photoshop!  Now to make it in-game!

Step 3:  Build!

This is the hard part.  Once you have your awesome image done in Photoshop, it's time to build it.

If you are going to make sprite art, YOU WILL NEED WOM CLIENT!!!
If you do not have WoM client, sprite art will be EXTREMELY hard to make!  Once you have WoM client up and running, you will have to know some new controls:
  • Z toggles flight on and off
  • Q makes you go up
  • E makes you go down
  • Hold down SHIFT while moving to go super fast.
With these new controls,  you're ready to begin building!  A couple tips:
  • Work row by row.  It's easier to build this way.
  • Edges of maps are great places to build sprites.
  • Don't wreck other peoples work to make room for your sprite, they worked hard on that!
Here's that Mewtwo up top built in game:

Have fun!  If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section.

15 comments:

  1. awesome guide i always wanted to know how they do this. thx for sharing

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  2. Heh, you can put out pretty creative stuff using this

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  3. Thanks for the guide. Probably use this later.

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  4. I really prefer working in photoshop to gimp.

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  5. Oh, so they actually cheat to make those awesome scenarios on Minecraft. Nice to know.

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  6. damn, I really should buy Minecraft

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  7. Wow, really interesting post! Great guide!

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  8. wow i had no idea how to make sprites thanks

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  9. I've been making these for a while (off server) but didn't know they were called sprites. I have a simpler way of doing it, but whatever works. =^_^= I use a gameboy emulator and pkmn rom., hit printscreen during play, zoom in on the pic, and build.

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