I have a friend who has AS and I myself have a pretty outgoing personality that can be a bit overwhelming at times. I was just wondering outside of being aware and sensitive if there is anything I could do to make them more comfortable?
Aware and sensitive are usually all you need. :) Every person has different likes and dislikes, so there's not really one answer to this, but I will touch on some general concepts that can get missed.
Listen to what they have to say, and take them seriously. I've had so many people tell me what I was feeling in a certain situation wasn't possible. If I say "When you poke my sides it really hurts" and someone laughs and does it again, they usually say "no it doesn't." Just because its not your experience of painful/overwhelming/uncomfortable, doesn't mean its not someone else's.
Secondly, be open and transparent. The biggest anxiety I face in relationships is the unknown expectation. Sometimes it helps me to be told that I'm not expected to act the same way as the person I'm with. And personally, I love having outgoing friends. They tend carry the weight of the relationship, and so long as they're comfortable with me being soft spoken and often unspoken, then its fine! Being told I'm allowed to be me isn't something I got a lot in my life, so I find myself really appreciating when people say I'm free to be me and not hold me to any preconceived social standards.
Finally, something that gets repeated as sort of a mantra to family and friends... "Slow and soft." You don't have to take that super literally (for the love of god don't whisper, you might as well be screaming at me). And be aware of transitioning delays. If your friend is doing something, try not to jump right into another topic and expect them to keep up.
Nursey, do you have any tips on making talksprites for people without tablets?
hmmm i'd say, if you have trouble drawing with a mouse, then you should try working from a talksprite that already exists, editing it basically.
of course you can do more than just changing the colors on it, because spriting with a mouse is actually pretty easy, and there's a lot of times where i have to do them with a mouse too.
There's curve tools in mspaint, and if you know how to use them - path tools in gimp with a similar function. These basically help you get lines you couldn't really do with a mouse.
if it helps any, people can edit from any of my non-commission talksprites.
otherwise you can find all official talksprites here and here
This is a talksprite tutorial, I will take you step by step on how I make my talksprites. I hope this helps. This goes into a lot of detail so it may be rather wordy.
If you have any questions or get stuck, just send me an ask and I'll be glad to help.
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NOTE: The program I use for artwork is Gimp Version 2.6.11
While this is not necessary to make talksprites, if you would like to use the same version as me, you can get it HERE.
(Do NOT get the newer version of Gimp, it is far different and difficult to handle.)
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Step One: The sketch and size
You want to make sure your talksprite is the correct size, or it won't look right. To do this, you'll want to take a look at one of the official talksprites first off.
(The older ones are smaller than the new, alpha troll ones, pick your size accordingly.)
Now I set the opacity low, then sketch my character over it.
Note that you should never trace a talksprite, we merely do this to make sure our character will be the correct size.
Tracing would look strange anyway, because the talksprites generally have many different face shapes, which you'll want to do with your characters.
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Step Two: The outlines
Typically, I'll start with the hair. You'll want to do this with your brush at 1 or 2 pixel width, to make sure you get the spikiness correct.
If you're using gimp like I do, use the pencil tool for this.
If you're doing white hair, just outline it with 2 pixels width.
Now you'll want to outline the very outer edge of everything, this outline will be thicker than the rest.
I typically use 5 pixel width for this, on both the smaller and bigger talksprite sizes.
Next you'll want to do the inside.
Anything that would be black on your character will almost always be solid black in your talksprite.
For the rest of the inside outlines, you'll want to make them 2 px in widge. (3 pixels width on bigger talksprites.)
Typically, the skin is outlined in black, while the rest are colored outlines. (this doesn't apply for every official sprite.)
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Step Three: Coloring
Now fill in your colors!
Remember to color pick and use the official colors for for the skin, eyes, and horns, otherwise your character will look strange.
Now you're ready to shade! Remember to keep shading rather simple, and not to make your shading color too dark.
I don't make my shade color any darker than about 6 to 12 shades darker than the original color.
Note that horns do not get shaded, and there are no highlights!
If you highlight your talksprite (like above), it will look strange. You'll only want to do this if something on your character is made of metal (or if your character's eyes are human/filled in with the color of their blood.)
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Step Four: Animation
Getting a basic talking animation isn't too hard. It only requires two frames sans blinking if you add it.
In gimp, each layer = 1 frame. It plays the layers from bottom to top.
200 ms per frame is average for talking animation. In gimp, you can either add (200ms) to the layer name or when you save it as a gif, gimp will ask you how long to play each frame.
Now, when I add blinking, the blink frames only go 100 ms per frame. I allow 6 frames of talking before adding the blinks.
You'll need a regular frame and a blinking frame together, both set to 100 ms.
Doing this will make both frames together equal 200 ms and thus keep the animation's timing correct.
I usually make my characters blink twice, making them blink during both the closed mouth frame and the opened mouth frame.
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After that you're all finished with your basic talksprite!
Always feel free to animate different expressions and just have fun with your talksprite.
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Thank you Dakota for letting me use your fantroll, Kodiah, in this tutorial!
I really like making sprites and wow you're just so amazing would you mind giving me any tips because all your work is just so well made
oh thank you, I'm really glad you think so! ouo and goodluck with your sprites too.
ah lesse, tips hm.. reminds me that I really need to make that talksprite tutorial.
well. I would suggest sketching your character over a canon sprite, obviously not tracing, but to get the correct size, if you're going for a canon look.
Try not to make your sprites have the same shaped heads, the official talksprites have many many different headshapes.
The basic talking animation is at the speed of 200ms per frame. Keep your shading pretty simple too.
I'm not sure what besides that, otherwise I'll just be pretty much giving you a tutorial right here hahaha. I think I'll just go make that later.
i just keep trying to understand how do anythin on it and its really hard. do you have any guides that would be useful?
Ahh sadly no, I don't personally have any guides since I've been using it for years, googling around shouldn't be too hard but let's see...
I would suggest not using the newest version, it's terrible and even more complicated. I currently use version 2.6.11 if you can get ahold of that, use it.
The paintbrush tool is wonderful for sketching. Ink tool is fantastic for inking.
I would suggest opening a separate dialogue for colors and layers. Which can be found here.
Dialogues can either be freefloating or attached to your toolbox (which can make things easier, in my personal opinion.)
Not sure how helpful any of that was but those are things I do with my gimp.
i'm sorry to bother you, but i've done everything in the glitch effect tutorial right until the end, when i try to re-open the bmp it says the canvas exceeds 10000 pixels? i tried it a few times at different sizes (smalled one was 10x10) and it continued to say the canvas was exceeding 10k pixels. has this happened to you before?
WHOA
I've never had it do that, no. That's weird and I actually have no idea how to go about fixing that! aahh most apologies there, I'd maybe just suggest trying the effect on a different file, or trying to glitch it again another day!
(Weirdly, somedays the effect works, and somedays it doesn't. I don't know why either??)
