DawnBat
April 8th 2005, 12:59 AM
The first thing you do when building a sprite is figure out how and what you are going to draw. Using Google's Image Search, I dug up half a dozen hamster pictures. I drew on all of them to some degree, but these two provided the most inspiration:
[attachment=1]
This baby is dynamic and inspiring for obvious reasons.
[attachment=2]
I just adore the way this guy's hair stands straight up!
Okay, so the next step is to draw it out on paper, to get an idea of what you're getting into. I'd show you how this step went, but my scanner is not working. Bad scanner. :bomb:
Once I got an idea of what the sprite was gonna look like, I went into Microsoft Paint and (using the line tool) made a snappy outline that pretty much conformed to my pencilwork. I then proceeded to quickly color it in with the ugly orange than Paint gives you, so that I knew where the different patches of color would be:
[attachment=3]
This is the base graphic. The next step is to mess around with the colors.
I went into Paint's color dialogue, and started mucking around until I found an attractive golden-brown. After I replaced the orange with this color, I needed two other colors: the gold color's shadow, and the shadow of the white.
The gold color's shadow is the gold color, only minus 50 luminance. Easy as pie. And once I had decided this, it became easy to make the white's shadow. I didn't want grey though, because I wanted to indicate a warmer, more cream sort of white. So I took my golden color, reduced the saturation a ways, cranked it up to max luminance, and then dropped the luminance fifty points. Easy as pie. Then, to make the outline fit the sprite better, I replaced the black with a dark brown.
[attachment=4]
Once you throw the shading in, you are home free. This is a professional-quality sprite. But I wanted to take it up one more level. So I used a technique I call "Half Pixelling." Basically, I pretended that I had twice the resolution that I really had. I created a step between the gold and the outline, and wherever the hamster's outline would have more curve to it than allowed in the resolution, I replaced the line with the lighter colour. Half-Pixelling allows you to make the sprite look like it has more detail than it really has.
After Half-Pixelling, I spent another ten minutes pushing, prodding, and tweaking. I moved the head so that it looked like his weight was more balanced. I pushed his forehead down, and tweaked the hair spikes:
[attachment=5]
Viola! Hamster-flavored Sprite!
Next week: How to make a Hamster walk.
[attachment=1]
This baby is dynamic and inspiring for obvious reasons.
[attachment=2]
I just adore the way this guy's hair stands straight up!
Okay, so the next step is to draw it out on paper, to get an idea of what you're getting into. I'd show you how this step went, but my scanner is not working. Bad scanner. :bomb:
Once I got an idea of what the sprite was gonna look like, I went into Microsoft Paint and (using the line tool) made a snappy outline that pretty much conformed to my pencilwork. I then proceeded to quickly color it in with the ugly orange than Paint gives you, so that I knew where the different patches of color would be:
[attachment=3]
This is the base graphic. The next step is to mess around with the colors.
I went into Paint's color dialogue, and started mucking around until I found an attractive golden-brown. After I replaced the orange with this color, I needed two other colors: the gold color's shadow, and the shadow of the white.
The gold color's shadow is the gold color, only minus 50 luminance. Easy as pie. And once I had decided this, it became easy to make the white's shadow. I didn't want grey though, because I wanted to indicate a warmer, more cream sort of white. So I took my golden color, reduced the saturation a ways, cranked it up to max luminance, and then dropped the luminance fifty points. Easy as pie. Then, to make the outline fit the sprite better, I replaced the black with a dark brown.
[attachment=4]
Once you throw the shading in, you are home free. This is a professional-quality sprite. But I wanted to take it up one more level. So I used a technique I call "Half Pixelling." Basically, I pretended that I had twice the resolution that I really had. I created a step between the gold and the outline, and wherever the hamster's outline would have more curve to it than allowed in the resolution, I replaced the line with the lighter colour. Half-Pixelling allows you to make the sprite look like it has more detail than it really has.
After Half-Pixelling, I spent another ten minutes pushing, prodding, and tweaking. I moved the head so that it looked like his weight was more balanced. I pushed his forehead down, and tweaked the hair spikes:
[attachment=5]
Viola! Hamster-flavored Sprite!
Next week: How to make a Hamster walk.