~*~Babby's First Sprites!

~*~
First, go download GraphicsGale. GIMP is useful for some stuff too, but GraphicsGale is really good
for making sprites. And it's free Mostly
Get it here! http!""www.humanbalance.net"gale"us"
It's fairly intuiti#e for most things, but here are some basics!
Loupe: $his lets you know what pi%el your cursor is o#er. &eally useful.
Eyedropper: $here is no such tool ' (ust right click for the same functionality.
Transparency: )opy pasted from http!""pietepiet.legendof(elda.com"galeguide.pdf
*+ne of Gale's features a lot of people seem to ha#e trouble with is its transparency for .gifs and .pngs,
so I figured I'd co#er this first, as transparency is pretty important when outputting your .gifs or .pngs
for game or web use.
First, make a new can#as. +nce you ha#e your new can#as open, select Flood Fill and a colour from
the palette that you know you're not going to use in your sprite ,usually a bright pink or whate#er.
-omething super ugly. and fill up the can#as.
/ow that you ha#e your can#as filled up, go to File 0 Properties. $he Properties window will pop up.
)lick the eyedropper ne%t to the 1ackground )olor field. A new window will pop up. 2se the
eyedropper to select your background colour. 3hen you get back to the Properties screen, the
1ackground )olor field should now be the colour you selected. )lick +4 to go back to our workfield.
If you had the pre#iew window open, you can see that e#erything around your sprite is now the
background colour in said window.
/ow, mo#e your mouse to the Frame window and click the small button with the three dots, on the top
left of the first frame. $he Frame Properties window will pop up. )heck the bo% ne%t to All Frames,
then click on the greyed out checkbo% ne%t to $ransparent. $he 1ackgrond )olor field and eyedropper
will pop up again. )lick the eyedropper and again select the background colour, then click +4.
-a#e your image as a .gif or .png. $A56A7 8our image is now transparent. *
-priting is fun It's not hard to make basic stuff either. $he first sprite I made is in this folder ' it's the
throw crafting table. I made it out of the cooking table and crate files that are included in said folder.
Play around with them and make somethin'. It's a good way to introduce yourself to pi%els. /ote the
color #ariations on the crate ' those are for painting. 6on't worry about em.
$o make that table, I cut out the middle of the cooking table, copied the hammer from default wooden
crafting table and shrank it slightly, shrank the crate to fit nicely on the desk, and put a throwing dagger
on the desk for good measure. I also included a blank interface icon I used to make the icon for the
table, as well as the in#entory icon for the table. $he in#entory icons are used for both the in#entory
,duh. and the image for the item when it is sitting out in the world waiting to be picked up.
Go make some sprites 3hen it comes time to share them, they'll be hella small, so use GIMP's image
scaling to resi9e it. 1e careful to set the interpolation to *none:, as the default cubic interpolation will
make the image fu99y as all hell. 8ou can also use GIMP to fi% transparency if you fuck it up in
GraphicsGale using the eraser.
Palettes!
)olor choice is important, so &;A6 6I- -7I$ &IG7$ 7;&;
http!""forums.tigsource.com"inde%.php<topic=>?@AB.C
Also check out the pi%el art thread in )) on the forums. It's good.