What Is Spriting?

[Forte 0]

In the early days of video games, the graphics processors of the systems that dominated the home consoles market were nowhere near the power of ours today. As opposed to 3D models, sprites were used as the primary graphic in games.

 

What is a Sprite?

A sprite is any graphical representation of a character, enemy, or scenery object that isn't a part of the background tiles. The most common error is for people to call only moving objects sprites, but these are referred to as "mobiles" or, in more common terms, "mobs". Sprites come in hundreds of varieties, varying greatly by the system the game they're from is on, and the game they're from in general.

 

Classifications of Sprite

There are many places on the internet that have sprites freely available for people who wish to use them for basically anything: comics, fangames, website graphics; you name it, it exists. On sites such as this, the sprites are often classified by what is referred to as "bits" or "bittage", referring typically to how many colors the sprite has. Generally, the spriting community regards "8 bit" as a sprite with 4 colors, 3 visible on the sprite and one set aside as a transparency to be used for the game's sake. "16 bit" and "32 bit" range from 8 to 16 colors, all of which will of course have one transparency, making them have 7 to 15 colors. Technically, these classifications are incorrect, but semantics does nothing to aid learning.

 

How to begin spriting

Spriting is one of the few art forms that takes no investment on the spriter's part aside from time. All the materials and tools you need are provided to you simply by being able to read this post right now: your computer's default, preinstalled paint program: Paint for Windows, or Paintbrush for Mac. For beginners, these programs seem simplistic and underpowered, as if they could never produce anything complex, but for someone experienced, they are the perfect tool because of their simplicity. Fewer options and less interference allows you to manipulate your pixels without the added stress that comes from having to deal with advanced image manipulation programs.

 

Where to start

For beginners, it's simplest to start out by editing sprites, to help understand the basics of your paint program. This will help most beginners to understand concepts of shading, color choice, and general anatomy. The more you practice in one style, the better you'll be in that style, as with most things that you can practice in. It is encouraged for all spriters to pick up their own spriting style, since this opens you up for an actual career in game graphics if you're lucky.

 

What you can do with your new talent

As a spriter, you can make your own game graphics, sprite comics, or other projects without relying on other people's works.

[sheepdog 10]

Humm, I actually find this very interesting. I didn't think you could do much of anything with Paint program. I used to play around with it a lot when I first started messing with computers, but I could never do anything much that didn't look like something any 6 year old would of drawn. I would like to see some examples of good drawings done in paint. I can draw a little bit, but never could get the computer part of it handled.

[k_nitin_r 8]

sheepdog,You ought to take a look at the newer versions of Paint (included with Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8). They are more capable than the ancient Paint in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 - back then, Microsoft Paint could not even open JPEG files so all you could do is open and save BMP files. If you aren't going to go over 256 colors, the GIF file format was pretty cool back in the day because it was not a lossy format like JPEG and you could use the GIF file format for creating multiple frames and build animated sequences. The disadvantage was that the GIF file format was the intellectual property of CompuServe. The BMP file format was lossless and simple enough that ab could write the source code to read a BMP format file.There are lots of free utilities out there today so you will most likely never have to use Microsoft Paint. GIMP is a free utility that isn't a powerful as Photoshop but is a good alternative nevertheless. For vector art, you can choose between Adobe's Illustrator or the free Inkscape. Adobe Fireworks is also great for a combination of vector and raster graphics work. I also find Fireworks easier to work with than Illustrator.