[Mini Guide] Tips for making new Multi-Palette Sprites

[R999]

I thought I'll share some basic tips that I have learned while making my generic Paladin Sprite.


The following steps will not only make your life 100x easier when making new palettes, but also give you more options for colorization.

Step 0. Choose a base.

Here's an Example:




Step 1. Color Manage.

Colorize the parts that you want to keep with extreme colors that is clearly distinguishable from each other.
It is best to choose colors that do not contain much Red, which are typically used for coloring of faces and hair. I like to use ranges in the deep blue or aqua blue, as an example:


-Because there's a lack of colors for hair, I will need to sacrifice something to make up for hair colors. For this example, I turned Orlandu's belt clip to hair colors.
-I decided to save 3 colors for the cape, and 4 colors for the armor. Turned these colors into light aqua and deep blue, respectively.
-I decided to keep Orlandu's red scarf/highlights, so I changed them to two high contrasting green tones
-Remember these colors will only serve as a guide; they are meant to be replaced later on (can be easily accomplished via Zodiac's Palette Editor)

Generally you want try to be really creative here as you are limited to only roughly less than 13 colors (3 reserved for eye color typically, try not to use those if possible). Leaving at least 2 colors for the face itself and if your sprite needs hair, try to get at least 2 colors for hair (it's possible to mix face color and hair color together, their color distance isn't that far apart). Here in my example, the palette looks like this:

Colors in the far most right reserved for face, and I changed Orlandu's belt clip color to be used for hair color as well. Don't worry about the messed up face and or the "messy" highlights on the cape; we will replace the face anyway, and those few pixels that use the face color on the cape can be easily remedied in Photoshop.



Step 2. Fix up the leftover mess.

In Photoshop (or your favorite bitmap editor), zoom all the way in (600-800%), take your Color Dropper (key I) and Pencil (key B) and proceed to replace all the leftover messy pixels (in our case, the face colors on the cape) with a similar destined color for the cape (replace the orange with aqua in our example). Do the same with the belt (it uses the dreaded Eye white color, replace it with a hair color). This is what all the frames should look like:





Step 3. Edit.

This is where you finally start to do your heavy duty editing. If you don't have a good idea of how the sprite should look like at this point, do try to save the polishing work until later on. Once you've got a good idea, start polishing up frame by frame, as early as possible (but don't overdo it too early, you'll likely end up wasting time going back and forth). Step 3 is the most time consuming process, but probably also the most fun. If you are smart with colors (especially if you managed them nicely in the previous steps), everything will work in your favor.



[Optional Tip] Photoshop lets you open two views of the same file at the same time, letting me view the sprite in a 1200% zoom and 200% zoom simultaneously. This is a huge time saver (so you don't have to keep zooming in and out). To do this in CS3/CS4, go to Window -> Arrange -> New View for...

[Optional Tip] The lasso tool in Photoshop's default mode is "freehand". Instead, you may want to do pixel selection using straight-lines (much better suited for pixel selection). To do this, simply hold down on the Option/Alt key and click away; each click will be become a "selection point". When you are finished, just release the Option/Alt key.

[Optional Tip] You can add pixels to your current selection by holding Shift with the Lasso(L); subtract pixels from selection by holding Option/Alt (only when there is a current selection already present, of course). A good use of the lasso tool should make those complex pixel selection work a much easier, error-free process.



Step 4. Color.

Once you have completed step 4, don't forget to fire up the sprite ingame and make sure that everything looks okay.
You can then finally ditch those ugly Aqua colors and turn them into something cool.



These colors give a pretty good generic "Death Knight" sprite. By lowering the saturation on the skin and hair and we get an Undead Death Knight. Notice that the armor and cape are 100% independent of the skin and hair colors. In fact even the scarf color is independent of it, so you can have a red scarf (not shown here) if you want.

[Optional Tip] Try not to use colors lower than RGB 5-5-5 (palette editor). They won't look good in the game in nighttime setting.

Once you are done, fire up Zodiac's Palette Editor and enjoy making epic colorizations to your liking. You can turn the armor to golden, or even black. Change the cape's color, etc. Whatever you want.









Hope this was helpful to some of you

[mav]

Great work. This is a pretty good tutorial and should help get some of the newer folks in the right direction.

[MiKeMiTchi]

Add some tips for choosing colors, and make it more newb-friendly.
Other than that, I think it's fine.

[Jon]

Well, the tip for colors is always the same: 1st, choose what colors you want, 2nd, find similar colors on already existing units and viola, you got what you want Then it is just down to Graphics Gale, Photoshop or Zodiac's pixel program to do all the work in seconds.

[MasterGrand]

Hello guys

how can you do different colors spirtes in one spirte ?

Example : like Knight spirte have three colors White and Green and Red ?

[DeadManWalking]

Really it's quite simple, from what I've found, Graphics Gale will put copied sprites in with the closest colors that match the copied colors, so, if you want want a copied part to have a particular color matching others from the set, just copy the colors to the sprite and then copy the sprite.

[Lijj]

Bump for the sake of Palettes as topic.
R999 I like your re-colours shown here. & actually like that toothpaste colored cloak
...don't want to start my own thread but, I'm bored:
 Ninja_M fun colors just for fun:Note:
This doesn't really contribute to this particular tutorial. This recolor was not completely edited right , this is no complimentary example.

[mav]

I've never been a fan of cyan...but I do like people who can handle making decent palettes. Mind giving this topic a quick look-at, Lijj?

[Lijj]

Oh yeah, I thought about posting this there, but it seemed pretty solid as per format. I haven't checked out that whole thread yet though. What I saw was super clean edits!

[Knox]

I'd really like to have that hooded knight sprite, R999, if you have it in sprite form with all those palettes.

[Clem]

I like it too, and the bard/delite sprite is great, is-it possoble that you make sprite sheet of this two concept please? I know that it take a lot of time and I anderstand if you don't want to. I saw some of your concept sprite and you're a very good spriter. Keep going  

[Knox]

Yeah i spoke to R999 yesterday about it in chat and she/he(sorry not sure) said that they would put it up when they had time.

[Clem]

That is pretty cool! Thanks a lot