Help on making Sprites. *I'm a first timer*

[DJ espeed]

Alright. After seeing Rael's "How-To" thread and some other user's thread in the art forum regarding loops, I felt inspired myself to make sprites. But, I lack Photoshop, MMF, Paint .NET, or w/e software that most everyone else uses, and to top that off, I'm tight on money. I have two questions here, hopefully, both of which can be answered.

1. Can I make and use sprites made in Paint?

2. Do I need any specific program (See the first paragraph for the programs I'm referring to) for making sprites?

[Spike]

I make all of my sprites in Paint. All of them.

[DJ espeed]

O_O

Well, (honestly) with my first question answered, there's no need answer the second question. Thanks a bunch! Now I shall re-setup my Mac Mini as a Windows Machine. I'll go ahead and install Vista. I'll stick with that so I can have a good version of Paint I can still use to sprite.

[Spike]

Yep. Just digging through my photobucket, here are some sprites I put together entirely in Paint a while ago:

I actually think Paint is one of the more popular tools for spriting.

[cyborg_ar]

try mtpaint, is really cool for spriting

it suports layers and has a lot of neat features like palette operations (color swapping and such)

It should run on OSX, but i couldnt find any binary for it, only a compile script, but i guess it more hasttle than installing windows in your mac.

[Blue Emerald]

I use Picture It for spriting; it can be a little glitchy on occasion (but easily fixable), but I find it to be more flexible for coloring and drawing than Paint.

Of course, the program was discontinued about a year or two ago, so you probably wouldn't be able to use it.

[DJ espeed]

try mtpaint, is really cool for spriting

it suports layers and has a lot of neat features like palette operations (color swapping and such)

It should run on OSX, but i couldnt find any binary for it, only a compile script, but i guess it more hasttle than installing windows in your mac.

I only found a Windows .exe and a Linux version (for Ubuntu, from what I read). I've already started a clean install of Vista and it's copying files right now, so, at least I'll get something with NT6 and Paint. Windows 7's paint isn't really good for spriting anymore, so win7 can screw itself.

[Streak Thunderstorm]

I use photoshop. Layering is nice.

[Damizean]

Paint.NET is the best Paint replacement possible, try it out.

[GSF]

Paint.NET is the best Paint replacement possible, try it out.

Indeed, it's quick and works pretty well for sprites. You have tons of plugins to add too, like a PSD file type one.

[Twimfy]

Wow...slow down. Forget bootcamp, just download Paint.net I use it on my Macbook and it's great.

[Svyat]

Wow...slow down. Forget bootcamp, just download Paint.net I use it on my Macbook and it's great.

Yep, Paint.NET is very good alternative. I workin' in it too, as usial(not Mac OS, Paint.NET).

[True Blue]

I use Paint. It's cool, because I learned a lot of tricks with it. I know how to replace a color entirely, manipulate the rubber, make copies faster than Copy-Paste, etc.

Photoshop is good for sprites too, but the tricks I learned on Paint really grew on me.

I'll give a look at MtPaint and Paint.NET later. Who knows, maybe I'll learn even more tricks.

[LarkSS]

After all the years I've spent with Clickteam programs, I use MMF2 for anything that I want to sprite. It's easier to use than paint imo and does a lot more. To contribute though, GIMP is a free art program that you can use ( don't know how good it is tbh however ).

[Aerosol]

It's odd. That's all i can really say about GIMP. It's odd.

[Ollie]

Heh, funny enough, I used Game Maker's built in art editor at one point. ^.^ Sometimes it's more useful than paint and cuts out all the importing-art-back-in time if it's only for a quick job.

[Kain]

Spriting requires two things: a non anti-aliasing pencil tool and a sufficient zoom level (4x is good, but it's nice to have an 8x).

Of course, layers, palette saving, animation viewing, color-preserving rough rotation, and duplicate viewing at different zooms are all nice things to have to speed things up and see the results quicker. I don't know of any program that have every one of the functions mentioned, though, but as long as it has the two main things.

[cyborg_ar]

Spriting requires two things: a non anti-aliasing pencil tool and a sufficient zoom level (4x is good, but it's nice to have an 8x).

Of course, layers, palette saving, animation viewing, color-preserving rough rotation, and duplicate viewing at different zooms are all nice things to have to speed things up and see the results quicker. I don't know of any program that have every one of the functions mentioned, though, but as long as it has the two main things.

mtpaint has all of them (just checked ), also 20x zoom with grid

It's odd. That's all i can really say about GIMP. It's odd.

Well its the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, it was designed for photo retouch, is not suitable for spriting

[Kain]

Very interesting. Looks like everything I wanted back when I was spriting now if only I was still spriting. (also, arg, another GTK+ program. now I gotta go find the fix for my tablet again)

[Rael0505]

MSPaint is my main program for making art. I also use MMF2 to layer stuff for shadows, and Paint Shop Pro 7 for ink effects and dithering (mostly used for skies, water reflections, etc)

Here's an example of some of my more recent stuff:

Big thanks to Dami for helping me with the ice blocks. This was mostly done in paint. I used MMF2 for the shadow under the snow, and I used Paint Shop Pro for most of the stuff in the background besides the mountains.

I <3 mspaint.

edit: I didn't make the HUD, Sonic sprite, or lives icon, by the way. That was all Blyde. I just did the level art.

[Blue Emerald]

Man, I wish I was able to sprite that well.

Wait a second, aren't you using all those level pieces in Retro Sonic XG? It's still cool, though.

[Rael0505]

Euan and I both based our ground tiles off the Ristar ice level:

But as you can see, our backgrounds are different:

[DJ espeed]

Wow...slow down. Forget bootcamp, just download Paint.net I use it on my Macbook and it's great.

Paint.NET has no Mac version, and if you were running it on your Macbook, it'd probably have to be ran through Parallels, VirtualBox, Fusion, or CrossOver. There's no way you can have Paint.NET running on OS X without some sort of emulation software.

[True Blue]

MSPaint is my main program for making art. I also use MMF2 to layer stuff for shadows, and Paint Shop Pro 7 for ink effects and dithering (mostly used for skies, water reflections, etc)

Here's an example of some of my more recent stuff:

[qimg]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v699/Rael0505/arcticapextest1.png[/qimg]

Big thanks to Dami for helping me with the ice blocks. This was mostly done in paint. I used MMF2 for the shadow under the snow, and I used Paint Shop Pro for most of the stuff in the background besides the mountains.

I <3 mspaint.

edit: I didn't make the HUD, Sonic sprite, or lives icon, by the way. That was all Blyde. I just did the level art.

How did Damizean help you out?

Know any good tutorials to learn how to sprite?

I noticed it's possible to add transparencies in MMF2. But I don't know how to do it.

[Blue Emerald]

I noticed it's possible to add transparencies in MMF2. But I don't know how to do it.

Click on the image, and under its Properties, there should be an option called "Ink Effect." You can choose "semi-transparent," "add," and "subtract," and they should all make your object transparent in some way. Under "semi-transparent," you can set the coefficient underneath it to change the amount of transparency.