On the creation and abuse of sprites.

Alright. I am (eventually) going to make a web comic, and I’ve had an intresting idea.

It’s going to be made with sprites.

Granted, as seen on this wiki that’s nothing special but I wanted to do something a little different, and used sprites that I’ve drawn myself, using pen and paper (and also scanner and tablet, but that’s irrelevant). In other words, think more Homestuck or Madness Combat, rather than 8-Bit Theater or Bob And George.

My reasoning on this is that it would allow me to more easily make huge battles, and also to keep the characters and especially their weapons on-model, and still being flexible enough to make a drawing from scratch if the scene necessitates it. Also, regular sprite comics are already too proflic and I have no intention of learning how to sprite myself.

Thing is I would like some pointers on how to go about spiriteing. Like, what sort of positions will a character likely need? What’s the key to making a pose that’s still vaguely interesting after having seen it a hundred times? What are some other considerations?

So, lay advice onto me. Or at least point me in the right direction.

Who's the lead protagonist? **crosses fingers**

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Try to make your own sprites too.

Dude, I am. As I said before, I'm planning on drawing all my sprites by hand first, then scanning them in and colouring them in photoshop.

I'm not even going to use pixel art. I just wanted more info on how to design sprites, as I imagine there will be a lot of crossover between designing pixel-drawn sprites and hand-drawn ones.

As for the main characters, the antiheroic five/more man band is trying to take over the multiverse, and is lead by a mostly insane commissar, along with a disgruntled mad scientist, a Bishonen nanobot swarm that may or may not be a girl, what basically amounts to the lovechild of the human torch and a female Alex mercer, a stoic robot super-solder who gets more powerful when he’s theme music comes on, and a cosmic imp, who actually doesn’t look that implike at all. These are just the only ones set in what amounts to stone though.

Also, the main “villain”, if not the big bad, is an affably evil, nigh invulnerable, ommicidal Buddha-like entity who makes his minions Put On The Reich because he likes nazi chic.

I’d say it’s a bit wired but that’s just standard issue for the internet these days.

This sounds like a pretty awesome idea.

Just remember that for every new outfit you make for a character, you'll likely have to render it across the spectrum of poses as well. In regards to that, my first question is, "How much action are the character really going to be getting up to?" As in, how few unique sprites of a single character do you think you could get away with in one page/strip?

"Silent Hill always gives the best presents." -agentjr "Death feels like acoustic guitar." -helloween

edit: Define unique first. Like, unique as in only-appering-on-that-page, or unique as in pose-that-is-repeated-all-the-time-within-the-comic?

That's a good point though. I was going to do this anyway, but I guess Limited Wardrobe is my friend.

edited 19th Feb '11 9:08:37 PM by doorhandle

This is going to be a bit videogame-sprite-centric, mainly because that's the only type of sprite comic I'm even remotely familiar with, but most should still kinda apply to you here.

Honestly? A good story. That can pretty much save most anything. That and not being too obvious with your laziness when you post it, though that can be a bit harder to define with a sprite comic, since you're supposed to be cutting and pasting things right and left…

On what poses you need, that wholly depends on what you need the characters to do. If you need them to fight, you need to figure out what type of fighting style you're going to use, both in general and for each individual character. If you need them to sit around talking, you're going to need a lot of different expressions and/or a lot of different poses for body language, and you'll need to think about how one sprite will interact with another.

There's also some issues with the actual size of the character sprites that you need to think about. If they're small, it will be much easier to make large battle scenes from one perspective, but it will be hard to do things like expressions and emotions, and creating backgrounds are almost mandatory. If you go the other way and make them larger, you get a bigger range of emotions, but more work in creating all the poses, a harder time rendering fight scenes, and it will take more effort to keep the perspective straight. If you have some that are small and some that are large, you'll get the best of both worlds, but an even larger work load and a harder time starting up the actual creation of the comic.

And you also need to think on perspective. This one is a little more challenging to explain, but I'll try to keep things clear. Sprites from side-scroller games — think the original Super Mario or Sonic The Hedgehog games — don't change perspective on the character, so all sprites will be facing the right with mirrored versions for when they change directions and go left. In games with a map to traverse over freely — think Pokemon games, or the original 1-5 Final Fantasy games — there are three perspectives on the character: right, facing the player, and facing away from the player, with sprites facing the left being mirrors of sprites facing the right. How many perspectives you have on the characters will effect your work load heavily, especially since you might have to re-render each pose from more than one angle.

There's also how the sprites of the characters are situated on the background to think about. Is the "camera" looking down at them at an angle, like in the Pokemon games, or are you seeing them from the side, as per side-scroller games?

So, yeah, that's the type of things you need to think about before you start. Thankfully, though, you don't necessarily need to make all the sprites you need before you start making the comic. All you need to do is figure out the story, create a rough script for the first few dozen pages, formulate the most basic starting character poses and background from the script, and once you got the most basic ones down you can quickly get the ball rolling — adding more poses from there should be much simpler, since you'll only be making one or two poses at a time.

EDIT: Oh, and if you need advice on how to actually create all the sprites, I know that Deviant Art has more than a few tutorials on the subject. It might also be beneficial to look at sprite sheets from videogames, even if you don't use them in the actual comic, as references for how to make your sprites.

edited 21st Feb '11 5:21:44 AM by Dec

Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.

I guess help with the story is beyond the scope of this thread, so I shall ask elsewhere if I need help.

As for what poses I need, I guess I will pay more attention on the fighting poses then the talking ones, although those will still need some attention for characters likely to do spit-takes. As for combat poses, I think I will order them in a vaguely Super Smash Bros style (basic combo, smash attack, up and B, block, FINAL SMASH, ect).

Perspective is easy, at least: I wanted it from a side-on perspective from the get-go, seeing as is the easiest to see and do.

Good advice at the bottom on when to draw the sprites though: I’ll keep that in mind. And I will be using sprite sheets as reference for some things, like backgrounds and possibly cars as honestly I cannot draw them for love OR money.

http://www.creaturesvillage.com/wafuru/e/faq.html

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

okay. What was the point of that link?