Talk:Spriting

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[edit] Revision?

Okay, so I put a link in to find the next day it is taken out without explanation, the link is in external link as full spriting tutorial. if there is something wrong with it please tell me whats wrong with it.

209.244.187.125 (talk) 21:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)



The theft of intellectual property upsets the majority of the spriting community, but certain message boards and websites actually cater to and/or help these "thieves".

Although they may ask you to E-mail or credit them on anything you do with the sprites, you can ignore these because they do not own the copyright and therefore didn't create the sprites.

Ironic, isn't it? Anyone else think the second one should be edited?

No... no it's really not that ironic. The first passage refers to new material created by spriters either from scratch or through editting existing game sprites. The second passage, in context, refers to game sprites ripped straight from a game without any modifications. It is, however, kind of rude advice, which is probably why it was edited slightly already ¬.¬ --Author X 01:02, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Link to forums?

I am the owner of PMFinc Forums, a set of boards dedicated solely to artistic spriting. I believe a link would be appropriate on the article, but we are currently only forums (without a website) and I did not know whether it would be fine to put the link or not. What do you guys think? Shed 23:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


Go for it, Shed. The publicity would be nice. (Even though I assume very few people would visit the spriting page of Wiki) --Phizz 00:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added an image

Hi, I added a link to the main sprite wiki and added part of sprite I'm drawing from scratch for a game I'm writing for illustrative purposes.

[edit] Random name?

There's a "Butterfree" mentioned in this article, but no other names that I can immediately see. What's the great importance at mentioning this person? There's a passing mention to barely-explained methods that they use, nothing else.

66.57.0.117 10:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I took it out, it'd be better without it, as it seems to be a blatent advertizement for that website. Robert the Small 05:55, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pokemon spriting

Quite Frankly, this is FILLED with Pokemon spriting stuff, which is totally nothing big in spriting. A majority of Spriting doesn't even revolve around Pokemon spriting. I'm gonna try and axe it to make it less about Pokemon sprites, and more about the act of spriting. Robert the Small 06:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I know and I am sorry. I wrote most of the original section on artistic spriting, but I specialize in Pokémon spriting and am not very familiar with the other games and styles. I'm glad someone could fix it up.--Shed 06:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Ripping" and stuff

Now, uh, this may just be me, but that whole section reeks of misinformation. I know of nobody who rips sprites from binary code. If anybody does anything with the "code," they're using a visual editor like Tile Layer Pro. In addition, there's no possible way for there to be "sprite dumping" as NES and SNES games don't store data like that. Different sprites are made up of much smaller bits and pieces, many of which are reused over and over again. If it were as simple as just looking at the sprites that could be "dumped," all you'd have to do is go in there with a ROM graphics editor, and they'd be right there. To do That, you need to actually work and piece them together. It doesn't work by "dumping," there's a reason that hasn't happened yet.

Then maybe you could edit that passage?

Actually, Graphics from compressed games are usually dumped and re-arranged. although I doubt anyone does that. Usually sprites are just ripped from screenshots

[edit] The whole article seems confused

Seems to me that the article here has very little to do with spriting. Editing is displayed as the main thing, with 100% original sprite creation as a subsection -- but editing something isn't spriting, in the same way that if you edit someone else's photo, that does not make it your original work. Spriting implies CREATING a sprite, does it not? This really needs a lot of work. Sprite creation should be the main thing, with sprite editing either as a footnote or in a separate article.

Also, 'sprite' is rather vaguely defined. I can fix that, but it might require some non-obvious modifications too. See my comments on the paragraph defining 'sprite':

"A distinction is sometimes made between sprites and pixel-art."

True.

"Technically, an image is only a sprite once it has been integrated into a larger image, as in a video game."

Vague (not false, but not helpful.). A sprite is a graphic which has transparent parts (so that you can see the background in the areas that it doesn't cover) -- so that it can be drawn in front of anything.. it usually also moves and may be animated , but that is not part of its 'sprite-ness'.


"However, the image as it exists independently from the larger context falls into the category of pixel-art."

True (a bit vague, though)

"This is essentially the same as the difference between a single drawing and an animation; the larger is a composite of the smaller."

See my comment on 'Technically, an image is only a sprite once..' above. Possibly dubious.

"There are also restrictions that a sprite ahas to follow due the limits of the graphical memory."

True (and this is more in line with the professional meaning of spriting than most of the article.)

"Pixelart are often used as backgrounds in Videogames and thus have a bigger size and memory."

Dubious way of phrasing it. "Non-sprite pixel art typically has less stringent restrictions, as it is often static and therefore takes less memory (only taking up the space for a single frame, rather than the many frames sprites often have)" may be better. Comments?

-- NeoTA

Yes, I think this article needs a complete re-write and the attention of actual professional pixel-artists who make sprites, so I've put the two respective templates at the top of the article. - Ultravisitor 22:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Okay, it looks like all the subsections need to be axed for a start. Also, MSPaint may be the most commonly used, but it shouldn't be recommended or even mentioned, as it's terrible. http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/wiki/ohrrpgce/index.php/Graphics_Utilities gives a summary of common paint programs' effectiveness for sprite creation; it was partially done by me. I think we should note that Pro Motion is *the* professional software for spriting, and recommend GIMP plus GIMP-GAP (Gimp Animation Plugins) for free sprite-creating software. - NeoTA

A list of things that need to be addressed, after the above changes:

  • Animation (sprites are most often animated)
  • Transparency/color-key

I'm working on this in a local copy of the source. If anyone else edits it in the meantime, I'll try to use diff to affect only the sections I changed. - NeoTA

The example sprite creation image is fine (the caption must change). A full progress animation of the creation of a sprite would also be good. - NeoTA

[edit] Images with associated text + Ideas

It's nice to see this page finally got a request for more profesional help. It was shocking at first; the article was mostly focused on beginner-material. Using more images and "usefull" external links would be easier to explain this subject to people with no experience at all. More sprites and schemes, http://www.spriteart.com/, More details into some paragraphs and many more things come to mind. Explaining the concept of spriting is extremly hard without any illustration. I've worked on the beginning of this page a month ago, and It's nice to see that most of the elements stayed.

The article shouldn't using links to forums, which are mostly advertisements. Only sites should be allowed, or very large communities. More ideas that could be quite usefull and possibly added

  • Animations (as stated above).
  • Custom color palletes.
  • Color rules (extended version of "revamping/devamping").
  • More ripping processes (Tile extractors).
  • Less mentioning of "base-sprites" in the custom section.
  • Backgrounds, layers, and tilesheets
  • Isometric
  • Many more

This article could easily be extended, and rewritten, but It sure needs more ideas.

~ Frario

[edit] This article needs some serious help.

The article, in its present state, does not read very well at all. I can't imagine anyone who's new to spriting would understand anything the way it is currently explained. I fixed a lot of grammar/sentence structure/writing technique issues and added some more internal links to other pages on the wiki. I also added some "citation needed" tags, although honestly I think the article could still use a few more.

My major issues with what's ALREADY there:

  • Ripping vs. capturing: who came up with these terms and how much meaning do they actually have? And also, that part about "going into the binary code" was obviously written by someone who has no clue what they're talking about.
  • Weasel words : This article has way too many of these. "Some spriters..." or "in many circles". Statements like that don't prove anything; we just have to take the writer's word for it. I didn't do much to alleviate the problem, but I'm more into the ripping side of spriting, and I haven't been around as much, so I don't have any external links or other more concrete statements to add. Hey, at least I'm trying here.
  • Too much focus on overly specific types of spriting, particularly editing. Editing should probably get a MUCH briefer section. (It is my preferred type of spriting, but the artistic merits are negligble compared to custom spriting). Also, the section about de/revamping should probably be removed entirely, as it's not that common a practice and it's way too specific. The stuff about people creating their own styles is also unnecessary; it's redundant. Of course any artist is going to do things their own way.
  • The part about file formats (bmp, png, gif, and jpg) is in a rather random location, under sprite dumping. Something needs to be done about that.
  • The article needs more external links to sites about spriting that are not necessarily or exclusively sprite archives. Like Frario mentioned, spriteart would be a good one. I'm sure there are others. I know most of these types of sites are more suited to pixel art, but I'll bet there are at least some sprite-focused ones.
  • Consistency and flow. Like I said earlier, the article doesn't read very well. Terms like "MS Paint" are sometimes written as "MS Paint" "MSPaint" or "Paint"; random words are capitalized in the middle of sentences; sometimes pixel art is written as "pixelart" or other times as "pixel-art". I know not everyone (myself included) is a wordsmith, but we should be shooting for the highest level of professionalism we can get here.

What the article still needs:

  • More in depth discussion of the history of spriting, and the community.
  • Focus on more important issues; legality, popularity, inspiration/source material, and artistic value.
  • More detail about what makes spriting different from "pixel arting". (Other than a vague, loopy paragraph that doesn't really say anything. *cough*)
  • More images! This article should be BRIMMING with images, of different shading techniques, examples of different types of sprites (edits, customs, etc...there's already one but more would be great) and anything else. This is about an art form, so there should be lots to look at.
  • Better description of terminology. Terms like dithering, recoloring, and editing are only barely touched on when it comes to what they really mean; terms like antialiasing, emulators, and sprite archives give links that go into a signifigant lavel of depth.

Come on, spriters. It's up to us to make this article as good as it can be. Anyone unfamiliar with spriting would probably see the article the way it is now, get confused, and never even bother trying spriting. This is our hobby. Let's make it something we can be proud of.

-Grim (neuropod@gmail.com)

Well, Ravamping/devamping should stay,but expressed briefly. I think It'll be better to fuse it into 1 big subcategory about Sprite limits and system support.

~ Frario

Plus the Revamp there isn't the best on the planet. I'd say there have to be better ones out there. Heck nintendo THEMSELVES have revamped their own sprites many times. ~Balladofwindfishes
Got rid of it. We could actually get rid of the whole Revamping section and limit the editing as Grim stated. technical side of spriting should also be developed. We also need techniques:

Adding a sub section for colors (contrast, highlights, blending, hue, saturation etc.) could also be a good idea. ~ Frario

[edit] About the big update

hey

Well I am about to update this on behalf of AI, a member of the Pixelation forum. It was brought to the attention of many artists/members of the Pixelation forum (see this thread), that this article required a major rewrite. Thanks to AI, and to all contributions of those willing and with the knowledge to help, in collaboration the new article rewrite is now ready for wikipedia. We hope you take kindly to it, as we don't mean any harm to the original authors, as our intention is only to provide accurate information about Spriting.

cyas Yosh64 12:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The whole article now became too much technical and lost it's freestyle side to it. Good thing the "Editing" got redcued now.

The introduction doesn't fit with the main theme and doesn't explain spriting in terms of hobby,paid carrers or communities like Pixeljoint etc. The whole introduction is more like a summary of the technical side. The introduction shouldn't be a summary but a presentation, a main view about the article with less "Examples". You shouldn't go into details in an Introduction X_x. + It has it has to be comprhensive. Anybody new to the subject should understand it. Remember Wikipedia is something everybody visits. From beginers to experts.

Second part : All the placeholders shouldn't have their own category. Fuse it all in 1 big "techniques and tricks" part where you could create sub categories.

The Main details don't have anythign to do with "spriting" but with "sprite". There is a differance between an "action" and an "object". You should transform the main details in a short summary of a "sprite", but in terms of pixelation communities, THEN link to the main article of "sprites" which are a more complicated

The categories should be more differant from eachother and follow a plan.

Frario 29 October 2006 (spriters-resource)

Oh wow. The article is terrible now. Don't do stuff like putting editorial comments in articles or "content goes here" placeholders, that stuff belongs in the talk page. Please read the style guide before doing any major editing like this. --Mpontes 18:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Exactly like what Mpontes said, WE STILL have alot of valuable information. I suggest working paragraph per paragraph is the best way to proceed. We need some "plan". We have the ideas, but we need to classify them.

--Frario 22:47 29 October 2006 (spriters-resource)

The recolors subsection is too referential to editing. Since this is an article about spriting, it should say something oriented toward recoloring your own original sprites. The subsection should be renamed to something like 'palette swapping' or 'palette alteration' which are more apt to the actual process done by game makers. It also should credit that doing a palette swap is easy, but doing a good palette swap is hard.

--Aicaz (the original content, and a possible altered version follows)

Original: " Recolors, categorized as merely changing the color-scheme of a sprite, are often viewed as minor edits. This technique requires little skill to implement due to its simplicity. MS Paint can be used to instantly recolor any sprite sheet. Recolors are often categorized as the lowest form of spriting and considered amateur work in many circles. This technique is more common among Pokémon, Megaman and Sonic spriters, as it is the art of copying one sprite's colors and patterns onto another. This technique is often criticized by more experienced spriters due to the lack of effort creativity and effort required. "

Proposed:

" Recolors or palette swaps involve only changing the color-scheme of a sprite or set of sprites. Doing this is simple; doing it well takes a good deal of skill and finetuning. To make things easier, it is often wise to prearrange the order of the colors in your sprite palette, so it is easy to apply one palette-swap to all related sprites.

MS Paint can be used to instantly recolor sprites, but using a spriting-oriented tool such as Pro Motion makes it a lot easier and quicker to control the process. Recoloring is also a term used in relation to the editing of non-original sprites. This article is concerned primarily with the creation of original sprites, so more detail will not be given here. "

(plus, changing the sonic sprite to something less associated with editing.. something like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v449/neota/alphazero/photosynthesis-palswap.gif which is my own original sprite with some palette-swapping (5 palettes in total). It shows some of the complexities of palette swapping. )

```The above changes have now been made. The original text is left here in case someone wants to move it into a 'sprite ripping' article.```


Revamping/devamping: Revamp is indeed a term that is used in areas beyond the small world of sprite ripping. Devamping, however, I've never heard anywhere other than in this article. Is there a reason to avoid the terms 'upgrading' and 'downgrading'? Also, revamping and devamping, such as they supposedly are, are definitely not styles -- they are processes.

Revamping and devamping are not common in original sprite making. Generally, when a sprite, tile, or background needs to look good on multiple platforms (for instance, SNES and Genesis; or GBA and phone), either the graphics are batch-converted and touched-up from the higher-specced system to the lower-specced system, or a realtime-preview is used so that artists can see the resultant graphics for the lower-specced system as they are working on the higher-spec graphics.

Thus, the current content of the revamping/devamping section is unrelated to spriting; I've pasted the content here so that it can go into a 'sprite editing' article in the future.

A custom sprite reduced to 4 colors
A custom sprite reduced to 4 colors

"Revamping" and "devamping" are two similar but opposite styles of spriting. Revamping is the process of editing a simple sprite to have more shading and detail (for instance, adding extra colors and/or shading to an 8-bit sprite). On the other hand, devamping is the reverse process: editing a complex sprite to look like an older or simpler one (i.e. removing shading and colors from a 16-/32-bit sprite to make it 8-bit).[citation needed]

Color optimization (merging similar colors so that the total colors used are less, maybe touching up altered areas in the process) is however apropos to the process of spriting. Spriting should reference it, and the Pixel art article should explain it in detail.


--Aicaz

[edit] Article separations (pixel art, sprite, spriting)

This is my view of how content should be separated between the three articles:

  • Sprite describes the technical aspects of what a sprite is and how it's displayed. Referring to color limitations (eg '16colors inc transparency', or 'each color can be chosen from a spectrum of 32768 colors (32 intensity levels for each of R,G,B)') or dimensional limitations (eg. 'sizes must be a power of two') is appropriate.
  • Techniques that are only sparingly used on sprites, and more commonly on other sorts of pixeled graphics like background tiles, should go in the 'pixel art' article. This includes dithering, and the general idea of using a palette rather than any color that you care to plonk on the pixel-art, and the idea of limiting the amount of colors for aesthetic or technical reasons.
  • Techniques that are mainly used in the making of sprites should be mentioned here in the sprite article. So, ripping should not (it should refer to a new article 'sprite editing'). Game-related techniques and perspectives belong here (isometric, animations, color cycling, palette swaps). Sprite-specific techniques such as selective outlining ('selout') belong here.
  • The specifics of making tiles could be mentioned in the Pixel Art article. Dithering belongs there, too. Antialiasing belongs there. Cel shading should be referenced, but any detail should be in the spriting article, since it's a technique that simplifies the process of animation.

--Aicaz

[edit] Is spriting a common term?

I've been in game development since the sprite days, and I've honestly never heard this term. Is it a real game development term or something that sprung up among hobbyists? Or is it a term only heard in particular countries?

It's basicly a Hobby, and mostly done in communitities or alone. Try and Check the links below and you'll see sprite archives or pixelart galleries. Your Question could be an interesting addition to the article itself tough! Frario 09:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article still sucks

Um, yeah, and also, the first image (the guy with the pipe) is pixel art, not a sprite. (You could probably debate it but I really don't want to hear it; the fact is there should be something more sprite-y up there) Great thing to have right at the beginning of the article. =/ Not to mention that the angle taken in writing the article was completely wrong. The articles on paintings don't describe how to paint; they describe the significance of the art form. -Grim again

...Help out and fix it then. Gurko 17:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Update one of the links

The fe-planet recolor link doesn't work anymore. And I've notice nobody's done anything to this page for a while. Update please. 75.26.176.87 03:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I deleted a bunch of the links, for various reasons (Borked, not related to spriting, requiring signup to view). I also added Pixelation, because it's one of the few places you can get honest to god criticism on your pictures ;). I'd appreciate it, if you're re-adding a link I deleted, you give justification on WHY it belongs there. --Inane 01:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Revamped Flareon.png

Image:Revamped Flareon.png is being used in the 'revamping' section of this artcle. The image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why it would be constituting fair use if used in this Wikipedia article.

This image was originally made by Nintendo and modified by me. I uploaded it specifically for its use in this article, as an example of a 'revamped' sprite. I do not think it is replaceable by a free alternative because revamped sprites almost always need an existing, non-free sprite to begin with. --EinsteiNewton 05:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)