A friend asked how I made those little sprites (I kept forgetting to re-do) so I decided to make a tutorial on how I do my sprites and post it here for others to see as well! For this tutorial, I’ll be using Paint Tool SAI... which you can get right here if you don’t have it yet! (It’s a download link and instructions!)
First things first! You wanna start off with a 100 x 100 sized canvas for your sprite.
Perfect! Now for the next step. You then draw a sketch of your character choice in this tiny little box!
It’s Cube! Here’s the brush I used just in case anyone wants it! Make sure the brush size is tiny too!
Next you’re going to outline the sketch by using this binary brush! Here’s the settings for this as well.
To erase those pixels, click this thingy to erase!
Your sprite should look like this now!
Now color it in!
Perfect! Now for the talk frame. It’s very simple! Just add in a few pixels, color in the mouth, and that’s it!
Next up is the blinking animation!
This one is also simple to do! The way I do it, I don’t use each individual pixel to lower the eyelids. Instead, I go down one pixel then skip the rest to close the eyes. (Terrible explanation, I know. I wasn’t sure how to explain this part!). I’ll show each frames on how I do it for anyone who wants to use this as a reference! The bars next to her eyes is a reference to see how many pixels I skipped/used.
First frame. (None skipped/used.)
Second frame. (One pixel down.)
Third frame.This is the frame where the eyes close! Easy right? Now time to put these frames together! Don’t forget to save each frame into .png format AND clicking this option to make them transparent!
Time to put these frames together to make a gif! I use this website here. The frames are organized like this. [1st Frame > 2nd Frame > 3rd Frame > 2nd Frame > 1st Frame > 1st Frame until there’s 25 frames all together] Make sure the animation speed is 100! Everything should look like this!
Save this as a gif and you’re done! It should look like this.
Time for the talk animation! This one is also easy. The format is like this. [1st Frame > 1st Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 1st Frame > 1st Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 1st Frame > 1st Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 2nd Talking Frame > 1st Frame until there’s 25 frames all together] (Sorry if there’s so much!) Don’t forget to make the animation speed as 100! You can throw in a blink animation in there while you’re at it too! It should look like this.
And that’s it! I hope this tutorial was simple enough to understand!