Lesson Two: Creating Sprites

What Are Sprites? Two-dimensional Image that is integrated into a larger graphics area. Sprites are everything that is visual in a video game. Anything that is graphic is a sprite. Some examples are: – Characters (in various positions) – Background – Title Page – Projectiles – Objects

How Do You Create Sprites Software that you can use: – Multimedia Fusion 2 (for basic graphics / not for advance graphics) – Paint – Photoshop – Any Graphics Software How to Create Sprites – First decide what the sprite will look like Basic drawing In Your Head If you are creating a character sprite that will be moving, determine how many positions will you need – Create a Basic Outline First – Add some flat colors to start to give the sprite color – Add shading, smoothing and highlights to make the 2-dimensional view look 3-D. – Finally, add texture and accents to simple shading and clean symmetrical outlines to make the sprite seem more “real” and not fake.

Tricks in Creating Sprites Using basic shapes (i.e. circles, squares) will allow you to create sprites faster. Outlining is good. – If the object you are creating is translucent or very shiny and smooth, you can make the outline of your sprite lighter. – If the object is solid, darker outlines are better. – The color of the outline should be the in the same group of color that the inside is. – Thicker outlines give a more cartoon effect. – Nothing should be perfectly black except for maybe the eyes of a character. The Size of the sprite should fit within your game. Try to create the sprite at that size, instead of making a big sprite and reducing the size after. This can cause the outline of your character to change, and will not look good in the game.

Tricks Continued… Limit the frames of your animation of your character. A good number to use is four frames (or positions). Color Advice: – Make sure your sprite is not the same color as your background. Otherwise it will blend in. – Warm Colors (reds, oranges, yellows) convey energy and give a positive effect in a video game. – Cool Colors (greens, blues and purples) convey a coolness and peaceful effect in a video game. – Neutral Colors (browns, white, back, grays, beige) are good for background work.

Exercise Think of a sprite you want to create. Draw a basic image on some paper to capture what you want the sprite to look like. Open up Paint, and try to create the sprite, using the techniques we discussed. Save your sprite. – Create a Folder for your Video Game Work. – Create a Subfolder for Sprites. – Save your sprite.

Additional Resources Spriters Resource: – great website to get free already made ripped sprites as well as tutorials on how to make sprites – Free sprites: – Sprite Tutorial: – s-09/sprite-tutorial.pdf s-09/sprite-tutorial.pdf