FUSIONS AND SPLICES
One of the most popular forms of spriting is a fusion, and it's not too complicated. Once you get the hang of basic fusing, you can make complicated fusions with a lot of different Pokemon. Now, on to the technique.
The Guide
First, you'll want to pick the Pokemon to fuse (or splice, they're interchangeable). I'll do something fairly basic by using Jigglypuff and Vaporeon. So, gather your two (or more, but for starters two) sprites and open an image editing program.
Then, choose a base. This is the Pokemon that is edited to be the fusion. I'm going to use Jigglypuff. The first step is to recolor your base Pokemon with the colors of your other Pokemon. For me, that means recolor Jigglypuff with Vaporeon's colors.
Now, pick some key features from your other Pokemon to put on the base. This could be tails, ears, or any other parts of the body. For Vaporeon, it would be the tail, fins, and head gear (dark blue on the top of the head) Crop out these parts by removing them from the sprite and erasing the access parts.
It's time to add these parts to Jigglypuff. When fusing, you might need to rotate parts around so that they fit on your new base Pokemon. This is fine, but remember to re-shade these parts if you flip them. Reshading means to change the colors, making sure that the dark shades stay are on the bottom and the light shades are on the top. I have to do this for Vaporeon's tail, and here's the reshaded tail on Jigglypuff:
We need to add the rest of the parts to Jigglypuff. I'm going to add each fin separately, since Jigglypuff's head is wider than Vaporeon's, so the full headgear wouldn't fit properly. Aftering adding in the fins, I have this:
You might have noticed that I used the fins on opposite sides of Jigglypuff's head (left fin on the right side, right fin on the left side.) That's because sometime when spriting, the parts don't work out perfectly, and you have to do things like that. Now it's time to add the fin in the middle of the head. Jigglypuff has a "puff" on her head, so you'll have to remove that. This isn't as hard as it sounds. First, just fill in that part of the head with whatever shade is there. Don't change the outline, just color over the puff, Like this:
Then, you'll have to change the outline above the puff. This requires a smaaaaall amount of scratching skill. Here's how you can do it.
1) Remove that area of the head. It's as if you rubbed a Jigglypuff agains a cheese grater. (Sorry for that image, folks).
2) Round it out, pixel by pixel. This sounds hard, but it's not. We all know what a round edge is, so just fill that in. If you need help, see the
scratching guide. This is a very basic form of scratching, and you don't have to be an expert spriter to do it.
It doesn't have to be perfect, since you're going to cover it up some with the head fin. You should have something like this:
Now, just paste on the head fin. WHAT? It's not at the right angle? Yes, I picked this fusion on purpose: it has problems. If you ever run across something like this, you have two options. You can either a) scratch it, or b) substitute. We're choosing option B. So, just fill in the arch pattern of Vaporeon's head, without the tail fin. You now have this, your final product:
Confused?
You might have gotten confused in this tutorial. That's okay! I picked a confusing fusion with a few problems, this it to help you understand how to handle them. If you're a beginner and can't do all of the things described in this tutorial, you've still got the basic steps down from reading it.
1) Choose 2 (or more) Pokemon
2) Pick a base.
3) Recolor the base with the shades of the non-base Pokemon.
4) Remove key parts from the non-base Pokemon.
5) Attach these parts to the base Pokemon.
Now, just take these steps and add your own style to them, and you'll have some unique fusions!
