Utility: Sprite Editing Tutorial

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by DaveCG

Thanks for the advice llama! funny enough I've been recolouring my guys, darking them up, and praticing shading, I'll keep at it untill I'm happy and then as long as noone minds I'll show them off again, thanks again!

Sure, keep on showing them. This kind of discussion in plain view will help other starting modders. About that armor on the unit c. I'd probably shade it darker on the waist. Armors usually have the "chest" area in lighter colors and darker colors on the stomach (two very light areas for breasts if the unit is female). I usually copy all my armours, since it is probably the hardest thing to draw and make look good. One good "trick" to get past the armor problem and some other issues too is to cover the "difficult areas" with something (shields are good for this purpose). See that belt on my avatar pic? I copy-pasted it from another pic because I was having a hard time shading his waist right.

To Llamabeast: Oh right, the warrior priest. I used the same shades I used in templar shields, but it seems that the whitness really shows out without a logo on the shield. I'll make it darker and put a red X on it.

[DaveCG]

Alright folks, once more with SHADING DAAAAA!

Well, attempted shading, I don't know if it's alright or not, looks ok to me, but then again, my guys now look more "correct" than "good" I feel, oh well, can't have bright white outfits for everyone

Alright from the top...

A and B are just touched up from the last showing, abit darker with attemped shading on the skirt-thing between the legs.

C is my new unit, the wiseman, although my main beef with this guy is that it took me ages tidying up his skirt, making it look nice and clear, that I couldn't be bothered to tidy up the attack sprite yet, it's on the "to do when I'm crazy bored and want to kill someone because OMG IT JUST WON'T BLEN-ARRRGH!" fun.

D is polished up, with added shading on skirt.

E is my first proper attempt at the select by colour lark you had in your tut, I think it's turned out well, a black giant, hey we have white ones, I thought it'd be cool to have some black ones too, very happy with how his skirt turned out as well, I couldn't do that with the select/etc button, so I did by brush/burning and I think it looks good, abit too dark for the nation maybe, but alright.

F/tidy/shaded
G/same

H is HAH! my first attempt at real toga shading, I thought it went really well and I must admit, when it came to his attack sprite I sorta well "OH GOD NO" and thought of a lazy/AMAZING way do to his attack, keeping with his character of being the oldest wiseman/hero wiseman unit, I'm going to call the weapon 'Tree of souls' 'cause, let's be honest it's a giant red tree of lazy.

I/see G/etc

J MY FLAG! I'm really pleased with this, I thought it captured the nations feel really well, the hope sun aspect and the new dawn of the Early Age, needs some cleaning but I like the slightly tattered look.

K my king unit, now with slight toned down colours on the idle sprite, I left the attafck sprite the same being as I'm quite lazy and..well...I love the shiny bling.

L thanks to burnsabers suggestion I think I've managed to do the best I could with the armour, I really like it myself, and I'm keeping him shiny on purpose (not laziness) being as he's a king hero, I thought it'd add to his "I'm totally bad ***"-ness.

M the Caveman King hero unit, although he's got some issues I've worked them out, but I hadn't updated the .jpeg, really liked the way his toga turned out, I think I've nicely shaded the fold in it, but then again I could be wrong...

N not much done on witchy, looked fine I thought.

O+P redone from base again, I wasn't happy with the other ones, the regular unit had the right tone of white/grey, but was really messy, and the hero(P) was clean but too bright, so I redid them and I'm very happy, although attack sprite whites are alittle off, I don't think anyone cares.

Phew, that's it, comment are great as ever, and any suggestions for units would be cool too, I'm having a blast doing this, even if they're not the greatest in the world.

Thanks again everyone!

[DaveCG]

Abit better quality picture! hope it's abit more clear and less blur-o-scope.

[lch]

Originally Posted by DaveCG

Abit better quality picture! hope it's abit more clear and less blur-o-scope.

There goes my dream of having MCP in Dom3...

[Endoperez]

Wow, that's a grand flag!

[DaveCG]

Thanks very much endoperez! I must admit, I took alot of inspiration from zepaths amazing flags, also I really should stop doing this...sofar5.jpeg, with only new editions.

A is the lion-man, what I would think will be a summon for the nation, my first attempt at making a head from scratch, it's abit hard to tell where it's eyes are, but I'm happy with it, if I do managed to get better I'd certainly like to revist him.

Below him is the lion-man spearman(lion?) just for something other than hand to claw chaff.

And the last three fellows are my golden lions, top is the standard golden lion rider, I think these turned out really well, following burns advice I start trolling the sprite files, and lo and behold I had forgot about, spider riders! so I did abit of the old lasso and some joining and added a nice white skirt(naked is so pre early age) and blam o, quite nice I think, below him is the hero, riding the king of the golden lions, just jazzed the regular sprite up alittle, and then the last two are standard non-mounted golden lions, for summoning and jazz.

Comment/crits/anything at all is great, it's almost time to start writing my .dm, just need a pretender now.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by DaveCG

just need a pretender now.

Tarzan the Tarmangani, the King of the Apes, is a pretender god trying to take over the world. After perfecting his pectoral muscles, Tarzan is bored, so Tarzan take over the world! Autosummons Great Lions, randomly summons some elephants (#domsummon20) and has #onebattlespell "Howl".

[DaveCG]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Tarzan the Tarmangani, the King of the Apes, is a pretender god trying to take over the world. After perfecting his pectoral muscles, Tarzan is bored, so Tarzan take over the world! Autosummons Great Lions, randomly summons some elephants (#domsummon20) and has #onebattlespell "Howl".

Hmm, damn although silly (which is +2 to awesome btw) I'm so tempted to try this, what I basically did was recolour the lord of the sun sprite with the golden lion colours, and give him a golden lion head, but..now...man...tomorrow when I finish work I'm so trying this.

Also thanks for the crits burn, I'll do some more work on them and show them off tomorrow, thanks for the help again!

Oh, and burn I'm so going to make another hero with a afro now you've said that...maybe a young machaka prince with a afro whos father was killed infront of him, so he went to jomon(wrong age I know) to train in the samurai arts

Hmm, next idea try to make a afro samurai mod, oh lordy...

EDIT: about H, he's got a bowl of blood and a book in both hands, and his attack sprite is my attempt at making seem like the blood is forming souls (little head, two arms) to attack people, and then making it it's own weapon, called tree of souls or something jazzy, being as it sorta looks like a tree, it's not too clear, but I wanted to tie it to him history and junk, other than you just reading about it and not seeing it in action.

[DaveCG]

Alright, besides one tarzan, and maybe afro prince hero, I think I'm done for now, I mean I've got loads of ideas, but I don't think a single nation should have 30+ troops

Here's sofinished.jpeg for you gent to gander at, I might try making it smaller for better quality (sorry ich, no MCP ((multi cat party!?)) but for now, I think that's it, I'm going to try to make a decent tarzan, but for now explaining time, yay.

A = Summons, featuring golden lions, and both types of lionmen and hopefully some white elephants, but I've got to fire off a message to juzzi asking if it's alright to use his elephant sprite without riders, don't want the first thing I ever do to contain a 'dick move'.

B = Pretender(s) currently just lord of the golden plain, I know the head looks cheesy, but I quite like how the rest of him turned out, I tried following the shading from the original sprite, and it turned out pretty well.

C = Heroes! all as normal expect one thing, both the wiseman and hero wiseman have had their togas MC Hammered, going for a sorta pantaloons style, I wasn't so sure on how to make them seem less 90o angle, so I thought I'd try this, lemme know if it's alright, or if I should go for more of a triangle look, classic robe style.

D = My general army, recuitable everywhere, I wasn't so sure about putting the caveman there, but I can work things like that out later, one new guy is the tribal leader commander, mostly taken from MA Machaka, but with orangey toga thing, and darker red feathers.

E = Cap only/sacreds lots I know, I'm going to work out the details later but for now this seems about right, I could maybe do with another non-cap mage, other than the witchy, but like I said, working out later, last new guy here is the bottom white guy, being a prince came out pretty well, although I feel his regular sprite is alittle light torso and up, any shading advice for that?

All in all, very little left to do, I'm sort of dissapointed, I might keep adding to theses guys though, like I said, loads of ideas and stuff but nevermind for now, next on the list will proberly be my insane idea for a underwater blood nation...

Yeah you heard! :P

(will the blood slaves drown as soon as a battle starts if the command that has them 'equiped' doesn't have something like share water breathing?)

[Burnsaber]

Whoa, Dave! You've been productive. I'll just equip my +5 monocle of criticism and be on my way. If I don't comment on unit, my opinion defaults to "it's awesome"

C: I really like the pose. He seems to be meditating/mourning. I'd remove some of those dark pixels in his armpit and backside, thought. His waist also looks a tad too dark, I can't really figure out where his stomach is. The skirt is too square as 90 decree angles are very rare in clothing. You also should probably copy-paste the same skirt to both attack sprite and base sprite.

H: This pic probably got deformed in the "sofar"ing process. Is that thing his head? The toga is a bit too square in this one too. That "few dark lines" effect to create shading in the toga looks good.

J: Remember how I said that my opinion defaults to awesome? I mention this Flag because it is awesome to the power of two.

K: Oh. From your first pics I thought that his guy had a afro/ manly large cache of hair of sorts. Sad to see it gone, it looked pretty good. Like a lion mane.

L: The armour looks a lot better now. Good job.

The Lion-guys: You shouldn't worry about eyes. All size 2 troops on Dom3 do not have eyes at all. Just a 1x2 pixels white box with a tad darker colors.

Those Lion riders look very good. Very nice choice of colors for the hair and mane. Looks majestic to the extreme.