[Art: Sprites] High-Resolution Sprites

[Bazaro]

This is sort of a resurrection of an old thread of mine. 

 

It takes a bit of time, but it's not too difficult to make these kinds of sprites. I might try to make some kind of tutorial in the future (might) but I recommend trying to make one yourself, it's pretty enjoyable.

 

The title says it all, really, here's some stuff:

 

 

 

[Daniel Blackworth]

These look good!  Are you planning to make high resolution sprites for all pokemon?

[Bazaro]

That was the original intention yes, but one person can't do all 800 Pokemon + forms + backsprites + everything else realistically, plus I'm busy with other things like life. Would be nice to see an entire game in high res.

[Siragon]

Ho my, that's BEAUTIFUL ! I'm looking forward this potential tuto, it could be fun to try this out

[Hycrox]

Gooooooooooooood shit mate

[Peanuts]

Very nicely done! A tutorial would be nice, but where else can I look if I want to do this?

Edited April 16, 2017 by Mint3kool

[Anime]

@Bazaro Good job mate  also i think if you make a tutorial about how to make High resolution sprites, other people can do the same and finish all 800 Pokemon + forms + backsprites + everything

[Peanuts]

@Bazaro I've decided to give making some of the high resolution sprites a shot, and in the interest of not making duplicates I was wondering if you had worked on any high res sprites other than the ones that you have marked off on the two threads that you have. If you have not, I'm probably gonna work numerically from the start just skipping the ones you have made.

 

Anyways, I'll post my attempt at ivysaur here:

 

Originals:

     

High Res:

     

 

Edit: Now that I look at them side by side, ivysaur is a lot more blue from the front than from the back - that kinda bugs me. These are both with the original color scheme.

 

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Mint3kool

[Bazaro]

These look pretty good, but some things look a little too angular and straight, namely the spots. Eyes are pretty hard to do too.

As for the differences in front and back, since I assume you pulled these from Reborn, that's because Reborn uses HGSS front sprites but BW backsprites, so some sprites have differences across generations (I know Gardevoir line and Ivysaur do, there's several others) In my opinion, the BW pallets are much better, so if you'd want to unify the colors, take from the backsprites. 

If I have anything else done I'll post it here. Also should get a tutorial going so more people can try this...

[Bazaro]

EDIT: Stupid Forum formatting destroyed this post. Half of it's out of order and this is just a huge pain. Will fix this when possible.

 

I'm not a good teacher or anything so I'll just give the step-by-step of what I normally do. I'll try to answer questions and the sort

 

So here's our demonstrator, Absol.



 

So the first step is to just pick a starting point. It doesn't really matter where, but it's usually best to work with the outline first. For this I'll start with the front right leg.

 

 



 



 



 

I use the red as a filler color here (any color works, preferably something that sticks out) to trace the outline behind details like horns, ears, and claws. This way I can see what the general shape of the leg looks like behind the extra details and avoid it crimping or bulging needlessly.

Onto the toes.

 

 

 

Start with rounding off the tops of the claws and making them come to a fine point. It's okay to go a little outside of the original outline, especially for points like claws or pointed fur. I extended the black outline in the backmost claw to keep the outline as uniform as possible.

 



 

Fill in the insides. For some reason on Absol, they decided to make 2 of the darker shades of blue almost identical, and that's fine. Cleaning time.

 



 

Just remember light shades go up and towards the center of the battlefield. Unified the entire outline to grey and black instead of mixed blues, it looks more unified this way. It's also important to keep the light outline along the light shade on the claws. Also fixed some angles around the foot to make it more of a separate joint from the leg instead of just a nub.

 



 

Going back to the division between light and dark white on the leg. Added a few pixels around parts of the outline to smooth out the curves. When a 1 pixel line meets a 2 pixel line, it's usually a good idea to put one shade on the inside of the first 2 pixel segment or two so the joint looks more rounded than obtuse. This depends on the shades available to the area, if the shade you have to use is too dark and becomes very noticeable it's better to not use this method.

 

Some more generic examples:
 

 

 

Some other generic patterns you may encounter:

 



 

The line is much smoother and feels like a natural arc. It may feel flat compared to the original, but that's okay. Organic details are rarely so jagged or pronounced.

 



 

The top reaches a sharp point with straight, jagged angles at the bottom. Not very organic feeling, but may be used for more artificial or jagged feels. In most cases you shouldn't use this.
 

 

And here's the whole sprite with the first leg done.

 

 

 

 

 

And just keep going from there. Will add more later because my Paint crashed after this point. There isn't a whole more to go over, except eyes and hair/fur, so I might skip over a lot of this sprite next time. When in doubt follow your gut, and trial&error and Google Images are your best friends.

[Anime]

6 hours ago, Bazaro said:

EDIT: Stupid Forum formatting destroyed this post. Half of it's out of order and this is just a huge pain. Will fix this when possible.

 

I'm not a good teacher or anything so I'll just give the step-by-step of what I normally do. I'll try to answer questions and the sort

  Hide contents

So here's our demonstrator, Absol.



 

So the first step is to just pick a starting point. It doesn't really matter where, but it's usually best to work with the outline first. For this I'll start with the front right leg.

 

Onto the toes.

 

 

 

 

 

  Hide contents

 

Start with rounding off the tops of the claws and making them come to a fine point. It's okay to go a little outside of the original outline, especially for points like claws or pointed fur. I extended the black outline in the backmost claw to keep the outline as uniform as possible.

 



 

Fill in the insides. For some reason on Absol, they decided to make 2 of the darker shades of blue almost identical, and that's fine. Cleaning time.

 



 

Just remember light shades go up and towards the center of the battlefield. Unified the entire outline to grey and black instead of mixed blues, it looks more unified this way. It's also important to keep the light outline along the light shade on the claws. Also fixed some angles around the foot to make it more of a separate joint from the leg instead of just a nub.

 



 

Going back to the division between light and dark white on the leg. Added a few pixels around parts of the outline to smooth out the curves. When a 1 pixel line meets a 2 pixel line, it's usually a good idea to put one shade on the inside of the first 2 pixel segment or two so the joint looks more rounded than obtuse. This depends on the shades available to the area, if the shade you have to use is too dark and becomes very noticeable it's better to not use this method.

 

Some more generic examples:
 

  Hide contents

 

Some other generic patterns you may encounter:

 



 

The line is much smoother and feels like a natural arc. It may feel flat compared to the original, but that's okay. Organic details are rarely so jagged or pronounced.

 



 

The top reaches a sharp point with straight, jagged angles at the bottom. Not very organic feeling, but may be used for more artificial or jagged feels. In most cases you shouldn't use this.
 

 

And here's the whole sprite with the first leg done.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

And just keep going from there. Will add more later because my Paint crashed after this point. There isn't a whole more to go over, except eyes and hair/fur, so I might skip over a lot of this sprite next time. When in doubt follow your gut, and trial&error and Google Images are your best friends.

you can do this with paint? GReat  i'll start with Weedle

[Peanuts]

12 hours ago, Bazaro said:

These look pretty good, but some things look a little too angular and straight, namely the spots. Eyes are pretty hard to do too.

 

The ivysaur spots are a little angular since a number of the ones online that I looked at for references basically had triangles for the spots. I'll round them off a bit though. I'll also probably go ahead and unify the colors as well. 

 

2 hours ago, Another Retired Shipper said:

you can do this with paint? GReat  i'll start with Weedle

 

From what I have found messing with images, paint works, but it will screw up the transparent background for the .png. So if you want to use paint, you will need to go back through with another program and add back in the transparency layer. As far as I know, there is no way to get around this with paint. Haven't tried paint 3d so I'm not sure if it would get around this issue. I currently use Gimp 2, Ame uses Graphics Gale, and there are definitely a handful of other programs out there that will preserve the transparent background.

 

Gimp isn't ideal either since I need to export from a .xcf to a .png, but It's what I have right now and I'm too lazy to change it.

[Bazaro]

I use Paint.Net and haven't run into any transparency issues with .png. At first it tries to save everything to .pdn or .jpeg, but you can change that easily. GG and Gimp take a bit more effort to learn than Paint, but they have more tools available if you're into those. I've found everything I need for spriting on Paint for the past several years. It's all on preference, really.

[Anime]

9 hours ago, Peanuts said:

 

The ivysaur spots are a little angular since a number of the ones online that I looked at for references basically had triangles for the spots. I'll round them off a bit though. I'll also probably go ahead and unify the colors as well. 

 

 

From what I have found messing with images, paint works, but it will screw up the transparent background for the .png. So if you want to use paint, you will need to go back through with another program and add back in the transparency layer. As far as I know, there is no way to get around this with paint. Haven't tried paint 3d so I'm not sure if it would get around this issue. I currently use Gimp 2, Ame uses Graphics Gale, and there are definitely a handful of other programs out there that will preserve the transparent background.

 

Gimp isn't ideal either since I need to export from a .xcf to a .png, but It's what I have right now and I'm too lazy to change it.

thanks for telling me, i'll see if i can use Paint.Net

[Peanuts]

Ok, looking for some feedback here on Venasaur. The leaves are being ridiculously annoying to draw, and i'm having some issues with the side ones.

 

This is the original:

You can't see it as well in this small photo, but the edges of both the left and right leaves are super thick, and have very little detail. So I attempted 

to fix the outlines for a more satisfactory edge. But that I have ended up with very rounded leaves that don't look particularly good. This is what I ended

up with:

 

I have it at 300% so it's easier to see, but the rounded edges are pretty obvious. And annoying. Here you can see I also already redid
the edges of the entire front leaf so it looks nicer. Initially it looked just like that leaf on the right. 

I am looking to fix the leaves so that they look more like this reference photo here:

 

I made some edits, and this is what the right side looks like right now:

 

The right leaf is still missing all of it's shading, and the edges still need to be refined a bit. But this is my general idea of what it should look like.

At this point I am redrawing the entire leaf since I've found modifying the existing edges to be basically unworkable.

Any comments on how I could improve this @Bazaro or anyone else more proficient with pixel art than I am?

 

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by Peanuts

[Peanuts]

Venasaur done!

 

Originals:

 

 

High res:

 

Since school is done for now I'll probably try to get one evolution chain done a day. I don't really want to be posting every single one, so I'll probably have a list of completed ones and the ones in progress on my profile page or something along those lines. If there are any Pokemon someone wants me to get done first just PM me or something.

[Alphagar]

Wait...what? How? : O Must...have Snorlax.

[Peanuts]

On 5/26/2017 at 10:05 AM, Alphagar said:

Wait...what? How? : O Must...have Snorlax.

 

Go for it!

[Alphagar]

I have no artistic ability. XD

[Candy]

These look superb

Will be following this thread, and maybe when I have time (like in a month?) I'll try some

[Peanuts]

Both Charizard Mega fronts are done now. TBH I've been enjoying making these recently.

 

Mega Charizard X:

 

High Res:                                                                               Original:
                                            

 

Mega Charizard Y:

 

High Res:                                                                               Original:
                                            

 

I might do custom shinies for both of these since the current ones seem very boring to me. I'm thinking maybe like the striped charizard during the first mewtwo battle.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Peanuts

[Anthony810]

These could go well on The Fan Games.

[Phi-Bi]

I'm quite surprised that this thread exist. There's this artist on dA who inspire me to do this kind of thing also. Actually, I intend to make a request-thread for motivation since the high resolution project I joined has been inactive. I wonder if I should make a new thread or just continue this one.

If you are curious with our work, here's what we have. So far, we have more than 300 sprites ready. Still a long way to go, though.
 

Spoiler

Phi-Bi's gallery

SpeedXaaa's gallery

Relic Castle High Resolution Project