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Development Forum Help with Spriting?    Cora      4/30/2013 I'm trying to learn to make a new breed with sprites (so learning to sprite?) and I was wondering if y'all could help me? I have a concept and everything, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I just acquired spritebuilder and I have GIMP; just not sure how to work it all to get what I want. Please help?   Wee Scrivener Trell     4/30/2013 I'm with ya there, luv. I'm trying to figure all this out myself! Out of curiosity, what are you going to be spriting? I'm spriting Satyr Norns from Fallows. Trell "Holy crap in a casket!"   mip     4/30/2013 I'm afraid I can't help you with the actual spriting - if you would like tips on how to make sprites and edit sprites in GIMP, it might be worth searching the internet for tutorials. That said, here are some Creatures-specific spriting tips: - Make sure that your sprites do not feature pure black sections. Make sure that the background they are on is pure black. This colour is completely transparent/invisible in the game. - Make sure you save your files as .bmp. Spritebuilder will not accept any other image format. - The images will appear in C3/DS just as they do in Spritebuilder (minus the pure black backgrounds). If you are seeing errors in the sprite in Spritebuilder, you may have saved the images in the wrong format. Exploring the Ark A journal for C3/DS - updated last: 5 May 2013   Cora   4/30/2013 Thanks for the advice, mip! I think I'll head off to explore online tutorial land. As for what I'm spriting, I wanna try a yin/yang concept, possibly with Fallow, though I am totally open to suggestions on that; ideas are the best!   Wee Scrivener Trell     4/30/2013 Where do you find Sprite Builder? Ooh, sounds neat! I love the Fallows. Trell "Holy crap in a casket!"   Cora   4/30/2013 I googled spritebuilder and got it from...treesprite's creatures grove, I think; couldn't get it from the gameware place anymore, I don't believe. I'm glad you like the idea! I wasn't sure about using Fallows for it though, because of the horns...whatcha think?   Wee Scrivener Trell     4/30/2013 I'll have to put it on mum's computer... Stupid laptop. Hmm... Maybe Magmas? Trell "Holy crap in a casket!"   Cora   4/30/2013 Hmm. Maybe. I shall have to think about it.   Jessica     4/30/2013 Besides Mip's great recommendations, I also recommend avoiding pure white pixels. I'm not sure if it's just a C1 thing, but these are also seen as transparent and can cause some ugly issues... I've learned from experience! I sometimes have to copy an individual bitmap, paste it in Paint, and then copy and paste it from there into Photoshop to avoid having some weird issues with red, green, and blue pixels showing up. Probably just my issue, but it's a tip in case it will help! I also use a pencil tool with the color (not normal) option chosen, which then recolors the chosen pixels with a color, while still preserving their relative brightness/darkness. This helps mostly with the fixes I've been working on, but it might also be useful for recoloring some sprites! Good luck with everything! Discover Albia   Sixty Third Karias   4/30/2013 Pure white pixels I believe was just a C1 thing, as I don't see that weird pink issue in the other games. I can always tell a photo from C1 vs C12DS by the weird white-pink issue. I don't know what's up with my photoshop but for some reason when I import or replace photos done with it back into Spritebuilder, it makes them inverted colors (brown = blue, gold = purple) and they've got terrible black bordering in-game. I know it isn't a fault on how I made the sprites, as I made sure there was no dark bordering, just a pure black background and my drawn sprite. So, I'm sticking with 3D rendered sprites for now. -Karias; a bit fruity and gone bananas in the wrong climate!   Prodigal Sock Ghosthande     4/30/2013 That sounds almost like an issue with the image parameters... I get it too, the colors will invert and sometimes get "scratchy" like a TV with horrible reception. Most of the time I copy-paste from Photoshop to Paint to SpriteBuilder, which prevents the issue from occurring. I recall that there is a more efficient way to do it when you save them in BMP format, but as a rule I don't save sprites as BMPs, so I've never used it.   Cora   4/30/2013 Thanks for all the advice, everyone! I have two questions for you now: You all keep talking about photoshop; anyone know where I can get it and how much it costs? And if anyone knows where some good spriting tutorials are, that would be great! Thanks very much!   Sixty Third Karias   5/1/2013 Photoshop isn't the only or best option, and it isn't cheap either. I was lucky enough to get mine from a friend who wasn't using it, but, mine's PS Elements (still just as good though) I'd imagine you can get it almost anywhere you can get other computer software, but, I've never bought it before so I don't know for sure. Before Photoshop I always used a discontinued MS program that was really, really good but sadly is no longer. There's also programs like GIMP, which is free, but I don't think it is compatible for Windows. -Karias; a bit fruity and gone bananas in the wrong climate!   Wee Scrivener Trell     5/1/2013 GIMP is compatible for Windows. Also, finding all the sprite files for these Fallows is nearly impossible! Trell "Holy crap in a casket!"   TheSecond     5/1/2013 The Gimp is a good Photoshop substitute, free, has a ton of pre-installed plugins, can be expanded with even more plugins.. Paint.net is good for beginners to image manipulation, has a simple interface and is expandable with plugins. One thing to note if using Paint.net to convert graphics to bmp format to import into Sprite Builder: Paint.net seems to add some information to the bmp header which Sprite Builder chokes on. If you have bmp's saved in Paint.net, you may need to re-save them in another image editor (MS Paint works) before you import them to Sprite Builder. If you have a ton of sprites to convert, IrfanView is a free image viewer that can also do bulk processing. Edit - Niiiiinjaaaaa! My favorite norn is still Belldandy.   Wee Scrivener Trell     5/1/2013 Personally, I use CoreFX. Trell "Holy crap in a casket!"   Jessica     5/1/2013 I would agree that Photoshop probably isn't the best option: I have the Adobe suite of products via work, and I know it wasn't all that cheap. I found that some of the tutorials listed Here had some good concepts for creating your own sprites! It covers some very basic tutorials, which were helpful for a beginner like me, and also went into more detail about shading and whatnot. Many are not 100% applicable to spriting for Creatures, but hopefully some of the tutorials will help you out like they did for me! Discover Albia   Feddlefew   5/1/2013 GIMP can be made to run on pretty much anything- it's my image editor of choice, and I use a mac.

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