SCRATCH SPRITING

Scratch spriting is just making a sprite without any other sprites, pixel by pixel. Because of this, all sprites look different. Everyone tends to develop his or her own style, and not all are complete imitations of Nintendo style sprites.

The Outline

The first thing to learn when learning to scratch sprite is how to make an outline. It should be very clean, here are examples of bad outlines and a good outline: In the first bad outline, there are "right angles", which is where the pixels make an L. Notice how in the first outline, none of the separate parts are directly beside each other, they are all diagonally separated. In the third example, the pixels go directly from being vertical (up and down) to be horizontal (side to side). Be sure to never do that, but to always separate the two with a few single pixels, like in the first example.
Now, using what you just learned, make the basic outline of the sprite. I will scratch a Pikachu to show you how. Here's my outline: Feel free to copy and paste it into paint if you want to observe how I did the outline.

The Coloring

Now, it's time for the coloring. You may either make your own colors, or copy those from a sprite. I will copy the colors from the FR/LG Pikachu sprite for this tutorial. Now, choose/make the middle shade for the sprite, and fill it in with that color. If there are body parts colored differently, make a middle shade for those and fill in the parts with the color they are supposed to be. Here's is the colored Pikachu:

The Shading

It's time to add the shading. Some spriters consider this the hardest part, while some say that the outline is harder. The basic concept of shading is to make the sprite look 3-D. So, pretend there is a light shining on your sprite from the top, left hand corner. If there was, where would the sprite be the lightest? The darkest? If there is a body part blocking the light from another body part, it would be dark there as well. Here is Pikachu with the darker shade added (you may make it or take it from a different sprite): Now, go back and add the highlight shade. This should be where the light most directly hits the sprite, mostly in the top left-hand parts of the different body parts. Now is also the time I chose to add the eyes and mouth. Here's the Pikachu:

Recoloring the Outline

Here's the part that a lot of people forget: recoloring the outline. Now, the first step is to make it completely colored. This means, either take the outline color from a sprite or make one yourself (it should be a bit darker than the darker shade color) Now, recolor the outline with it. If there is a body part that is a different color from the rest of the sprite, then make a outline color for the parts of the outline that it is touching. Like this: This part is optional: you may add a darker color to the colored outline. It is called the black shade, but it's not really black. You may take it from a different sprite or make it yourself (just make a shade from the color that is already on the outline, but don't quite make it black). Now, in the outline, wherever the darker shade touches it, add the "black" shade. It gives it a more Nintendo-type shading. Then, you have your finished product:

:: CHIKORITA :: Fuzzball of the Week

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