Maklo's gallery

[Strawman]

I take it you've never played FE2. In FE2, Gray, Robin and Cliff are all villlagers (as in that's their class) so I was trying to go for simplicity. Though I didn't really want to make them look completely like villagers so I made them look like classes that I figured would suit them because villagers can promote to five different classes I think, which you can choose. Gray is a mercenary, Robin is an archer and Cliff is a cavalier/soldier. So yeah I was trying to make them look rather simple in design. Peronally I never liked Robin anyways so he gets shafted.

I'll get to work on your suggestions when I get a chance.

AH! That explains it! If thats what you were going for then by all means, keep them that way.

And WOW, I just saw your Nephenee. Thats really good. You even got the facial expression pretty much dead on. And that seems to be one of the more difficult parts about FE9/10 characters as GBA sprites. Or so I've noticed when people try to sprite them.

[Frosty]

The improved Sigrun is still catching my attention.

As for Lethe, despite of the forward-ish look (I'm not a spriter, if you don't mind), I like her. I would love see to more FE9/10 mugs styled in GBA-mode.

Anyways is that woman next to Lethe, is by any chance, Midia from Shadow Dragon? For some odd reason, that mug reminds me of her.

Edited March 30, 2011 by Frostbite

[Maklo]

@iavasechui: Well, really you can make them whatever you want and it would probably work. That's actually what I liked about it. A mage with the mage ring (I think it was called) was pretty broken as I recall. I believe I saved that for Dyute, though. Go mage girls.

Quick question BTW, is the pallete okay on the mug I posted? The original splice you made went over the color limit so I cut one shade of blue, so the eyes only have two shades.

@strawman: oh thanks. That Nephenee was actually one of my earliest full customs. I think I made it two years ago or so. It still has some issues (like the ones seph pointed out), but I like how it came out otherwise.

@Frostbite:No, actually, it's not Midia. Though I did notice that myself while I was spriting it, but I liked that hair color cause it was the first time I made a color from scratch instead of borrowing it from a pre existing mug.

Cause I feel like it here are some things I'm working on.

These are mostly incomplete so they are subject to massive changes. Particularly the older ones starting from the guy whose hair is covering his eye and ending with Nolan. Those ones are almost a year old I think. The right most is probably the most incomplete, but yeah I got more FE9/FE10 characters coming.

If there's a FE9/FE10 character you want to see sprited that I haven't made or aren't making, Frostbite, just name him and I might give it a whirl.

Edited March 30, 2011 by Maklo

[iavasechui]

The palette's fine XD I forgot that wasn't the fixed version (I already had fixed her color issue and inserted her for chapter 1)

^_^; she's actually supposed to look a bit older, and shes one of the cavaliers who ride in to rescue Isabel and Ayame from at the moment placeholder bandits.

[Maklo]

Oh, I thought she was a peg knight XD. Oh well, I'll probably put this mug aside and use parts of it for other mugs later since it would be easier for me to just redraw it from scratch. Question, though: would you rather the character have a symmetrical suit of armor and seem more proper or would you rather it be something more like, say, Forde's armor.

Also, if it's no trouble, when you get a chance could you PM me a list of characters you immediately need along with their class and corresponding splice or description.

[Frosty]

An update, how lovely!

And take a look at that, there's Mia, Ilyana, Nolan and Catria! Oh my! These are really beautiful! I think I like Mia the most among the four, for that bright smile she's wearing right now.

I would wonder what will Kieran end up in your style, sir... ( I have patience, so I can wait to see him in your style )

But still... I am really digging your mugs as of now, please keep on making these, apparently they are really brightening up my day as I look at those sparkly eyes!

May I see more improvement in the future and kudos to you!

Edited March 30, 2011 by Frostbite

[iavasechui]

Oh, I thought she was a peg knight XD. Oh well, I'll probably put this mug aside and use parts of it for other mugs later since it would be easier for me to just redraw it from scratch. Question, though: would you rather the character have a symmetrical suit of armor and seem more proper or would you rather it be something more like, say, Forde's armor.

Also, if it's no trouble, when you get a chance could you PM me a list of characters you immediately need along with their class and corresponding splice or description.

^_^; Understandable, I did use a peg knight armor for the splice before I decided I wanted her to be a cavalier. I rather like Forde's asymmetrical armor so yeah XD

Right I'll go ahead and send you everyone from the prologue to chapter one since that's all I've got at the moment. Oh I'm not sure what to do with Isabel, right now she's a merc, but she's really supposed to be one of the Lord characters... XP The problem is I don't really want to reuse Lyn or Eirika for her.... -_-; Not like I can make custom animations though so for the moment she's a female merc. (Isabel is the Leila splice with the blue hair)

[Maklo]

Not an actual sprite related update, but I didn't want to make a whole new topic for this.

Recently, I have been considering putting together a very general spriting tutorial. Basically, I would assume the reader has never sprited or even opened MSpaint before. It would be geared towards absolute beginners. Chances are if you can do full customs this guide would probably be pretty useless to you. The main goal is for it to be as detailed as possible so that no question is left unanswered, for beginners anyways (hopefully).

Though, I would like some feedback on the idea first. I know there might already be such a tutorial out already, but I think it would be neat for SF to have somehting of it's own. Plus it might attract more spriters to this forum, which would be nice.

A couple of side notes though, if I was to make it, it would be geared more towards GBA-styled mugs with MSPaint as the featured tool. Another things is I actually already started it, but I'd like to get some feedback before I get too ahead of myself. It will also include pictures by the way.

If you have any question or suggestions or whatever I would like to hear them.

EDIT: forgot to mention. I already read the "Calling all spriters" thread, but I'd still like some up to date feedback first.

Edited April 1, 2011 by Maklo

[Darros]

If there's a FE9/FE10 character you want to see sprited that I haven't made or aren't making, Frostbite, just name him and I might give it a whirl.

I know I'm not Frostbite, but can you do a Bpyd and/or a Tibarn?

I love your work!

[Maklo]

^I assume you mean boyd, but yeah sure I can do both actually. Tibarn may take a bit longer, though, since I've never done wings before. One thing, though, would you prefer FE9 boyd or FE10?

Just a heads up for anyone else. Three's the limit for now, I don't want to get swamped with requests.

I'm glad you enjoyed my sprites by the way.

[Darros]

^I assume you mean boyd, but yeah sure I can do both actually. Tibarn may take a bit longer, though, since I've never done wings before. One thing, though, would you prefer FE9 boyd or FE10?

Yes I did. iPod touch keypads aren't always accurate. And FE10 Boyd please :)

[Maklo]

And Keiran is finished.

Sorry it took so long, I had one of those zany art slumps. You know the ones I mean.

[Xiltas Crysten]

Hmm, not bad, especially the hair. I just have a feeling that the mouth (or the lower lip) should be about one pixel more to the right, and there's something about the eyes that doesn't seem right.

[Astelaine]

The neck is also too thick, which makes him look pudgy.

[Nanami Touko]

Yay, better face proportions~!

I agree with Astel on the neck, and also the trim here looks quite messed up. I've never been good with really small trim, so, Iunno what to suggest to fix it.

[Maklo]

Two tutorials I just finished. One is on recoloring while the other is on basic splicing.

I consider this a rough draft (for the splicing one). I thought maybe the way I placed the text and such might be a bit confusing. Any comments? Does anyone even care?

Feel free to point out spelling errors or parts that sound confusing and you think I should rewrite or elaborate on.

EDIT: it appears the second one has been squished. I'll try fixing it in a second.

EDIT EDIT:

Had to split it up into three images. Photobucket kept screwing up the quality because of the size.

Edited April 15, 2011 by Maklo

[Joerachi]

I like how simple you're tut was. It was nice to go in depth a little bit more and to point out correct/incorrect Anti-Aliasing+Color Schemes.

[Maklo]

Minor updates

I was bored :P

New Stuff

May add smexier trim.

[deleted35362]

May add smexier trim.

DLV bait.png ;p

The women need wider shoulders.

[Rubizor]

Is Catria?

[Maklo]

Yes, that is Catria.

Just realized I forgot to shave a few pixels rows of pixels off of Catria. She's a bit tall at the moment.

[Maklo]

Made some small changes to my tutorial. Mostly just turned it into a post intead of one big picture.

Basic Splicing Tutorial

-By Maklo

Before you start splicing, you need to pick the portraits you are going to use, of course.

When doing so make sure to pick portraits who are roughly the same size and are facing

the same direction. Picking characters who have matching sizes and poses will make the

splicing process a lot easier, so make sure to choose carefully whne picking parts for splicing.

Note:

Before doing any sort of spriting you should turn "Draw opaque" off. This can be done by

choosing the select tool and clicking the part the arrow is pointing at in the picture below.

When I say "basic splice" I am referring to a splice that uses a body, aface and hair from

three different mugs. No more, no less. In this example I will use Cath's body, Tate's face

and Nino's hair.

Step 1

First Step is to seperate the parts you need from the parts you don't need.

Step 2

Next we clean up the parts we are going to use. This can be done in a few ways.

Personally, I use the eraser method to recolor part I don't need to white. Be careful

when doing this however, some sprites use the same colors for hair and eyes like

in Tate's case.

Notice how I left a bit of Cath's chin. It's good to leave this as it will make placing the head

on the body easier.

Step 3

Next we will make sure that all of our parts have the same skin and outline colors. First

thing is to get the colors you need. It is a good idea to keep a reference of different skin

colors so that you don't always have to go digging through your mugs every time you need

a skin color. (See below for a small compilation of FE7 skin colors).

It would be a good idea to make a copy of your parts so far after this step. That way, in

case you make a mistake, you don't have to fix up your parts a second time.

Step 4

It is generally a good idea to start by splicing the face and body together first. We'll start

by placing Cath's body over Tate's neck. I used Cath's chin as a guide for where Tate's

chin should be.

Step 5

Next we will add the hair. Before starting make a copy of the right side of the mug's jaw

(from the mug's point of view). This part is a bit tricky to explain. I guess the easiest way

is to just try and put the hair on and see how it looks. A couple of things to note however,

first the bottom of the ear should be on the same level as the bottom of the nose while the

top of the ear should line up with the eyebrows. Second, the height of the head should

be between 48 and 55 pixels, roughly, so if the mug isn't around this height then you

probably placed the hair too low or too high.

Once you have placed the hair on, place the part of the face you copied over the original part.

The purpose of this is that sometimes the hair may cut into part of the mug after splicing.

It won't always do this; in fact, sometimes you will have to add some hair instead of

cutting some off.

Alternatively, you may just want to break the hair up into two parts and splice them

individually, though the method I previously explained is probably easier and cleaner.

Step 6

Alright, so we have our sprite mostly down. Next, we have to fill in any missing parts. In this

case, that's pretty much just the forehead.

Start by filling in the empty spaces with the first skin color.

Second, using the third skin color, add a single pixel to the parts of her hair that touch her skin.

Third, use the second skin color and add pixels next to the third skin color pixels you just added.

^ The three aforementioned steps

In general, you need to add shading/anti-aliasing in any place where two different parts of a

mug are touching.

Examples:

-Where hair touches the forehead or armor/clothing.

-Where a cape covers armor/clothing.

This part may be a bit difficult to understand, so I will show a zoomed in version of the mug

with color coded changes.

The light blue denotes where I placed the second skin color. The red denotes where I placed t

he third skin color. The dark blue denotes other changes I made.

On the left is an example of the correct way to shade and on the right is an example of a common

mistake that most beginners make. Admittedly, it is a bit exaggerated, but it still works as an

example. Notice how in most cases the red parts are the same length as the light blue parts.

This is called pillow-shading amd should be avoided (NOTE: Some parts are unchanged between

these two soomed in versions).

And while I'm on the topic of pillow-shading I may as well adress another kind of pillow-shading

that even some of the better spriters do.

Within the two red circles are parts that demonstrate how to anit-alias on lines that are at a 45 degree angle.

This kind of line if I wasn't clear

To shade like this instead would be a form of pillow-shading. It isn't really as obvious, though

unless it is used quite heavily. Even so, you should still avoid shading like this.

Original anti-aliasing.

It should be noted that there are some FE mugs that have this kind of anti-aliasing. In some cases

it is because the part that is being shaded has four colors. On other mugs that use it, it is done

pretty lightly. Personally, I still think it looks bad. A pretty good chunk of FE mugs don't do this so

you probably shouldn't either.

Step 7

At this point the mug is more or less finished. All that is left to do is recolor it. There isn't really

much to actually recoloring the mug. Just keep in mind that if it's going to be in a hack it has to

have 15 colors plus a background.

One thing that you will almost always encounter is that your finished splice will have more than

15 colors, so make sure to take that into consideration when choosing your colors.

Finished product.

Since there isn't much to talk about recoloring I figured I would just talk about colors in general.

This isn't really necessary for splicing, but it's pretty good for any artist to know a little about

color theory.

This is a color wheel. A color wheel is a useful tool that let's an artist know how certain colors will

work with each other.

In simplest terms, colors that are directly opposite of each other (like yellow and blue, for example)

will contrast each other. Colors that are very close together (like pink, magenta and purple) will blend

well together. You can use this to your advantage to create certain "moods" with your mugs or

if you want a certain part of the mug to stand out thenyou could use contrasting colors.

There is actually a bit more to color theory, but I won't go into it further. If you are curious then

look it up on wikipedia. The article on wiki doea a sufficient job of explaining different moods

as well as the colors associated with them.

A few examples of color schemes. From left to right: A scheme that blends well, a scheme with

contrasting colors and a scheme that uses both.

May as well dump these here.

Remakes of iron/steel/silver weapons sans bows.

Edited May 6, 2011 by Maklo

[Strawman]

Umm, for your tutorial are using a weird color wheel or something? Every color wheel I've ever seen or learned about has Red complimentary to Green, Blue complimentary to Orange, and Purple/Violet to Yellow... Maybe its different for like the computer colors or something...but I was just confused by that.

Also I'm a huge fan of you axes for those weapon contests!

Edited May 6, 2011 by Strawman the SawmanShaman

[Maklo]

Actually, the way you're thinking about it isn't entirely wrong. Those colors are still complimentary to each other, to some degree. I was taught the same thing, actually, but after I brought some math into it I realized it was a bit more complicated than color x is complimentary to color y.

Basically, how it works is with light you have certain amount of red, green and blue in them that make up it's color. How well another color would blend with it is determined by how close it's own amount of red, green and blue are to the other color.

I will use an example of colors with RGB values of 0-2, 0 being none of this color and 2 being the highest amount.

The darkest blue in the wheel has RGB values 0,0,2. The blue right next to it has 0,1,2. So, these two colors have the same amount of blue, which is what makes them blend well, but they also have the difference in green, which is what makes them somewhat distinguishable.

Now,consider the green color with values 0,2,0. When compared to the blue with 0,0,2, you can see that they have the 0 in red in common so they won't compliment each other completely. On the other hand they have the opposite green and blue values so they do compliment each other somewhat. For this reason, green is exactly half way between blue and it's complimentary color.

The color that is directly opposite of the blue color is yellow, whose RGB values are 2,2,0. Compared to blue, whose RGB values are 0,0,2, it has the direct opposite RGB values and thus contrasts the most next to blue.

Though, to demonstrate why you aren't wrong we will look at orange's colors, which are 2,1,0 .These values are pretty close to the opposite of blue's values so they still compliment each other quite a bit. However, the lighter blue with values 0,1,2 has the direct opposite values and contrast more than the other blue. And it's more or less the same for all or most of the colors you pointed out, like purple, for example, is right next to blue which compliments yellow.

Basically, if you take a color in paint and invert it's colors you will gets it's compliment. In fact if you take the color wheel I made and invert the whole image you will see that all the colors have moved around, but it is still usable as a color wheel.

Usually if you are using paints, though (which I think is where you are coming from), what is considered blue paint doesn't actually match up with 0,0,2 blue. It's actually a bit closer to 0,1,2 blue, which does, in fact, compliment orange. At least, my acrylic blue looks like that.

Honestly, though the way you were taught isn't really wrong, it just depends on what you actually consider blue or what you consider red or whatever.

Hope that clears up the misunderstanding.

Glad you like the axes by the way.

[Frosty]

Wait, did I just saw axes? Very well, I am axe fan too!

And Keiran is finished.

Sorry it took so long, I had one of those zany art slumps. You know the ones I mean.

OMIGOSH It's Kieran!

*fanboy surges*

Minor updates

I was bored :P

New Stuff

May add smexier trim.

Cool updates, and a sexy Catria and Sigrun!

Your Black and White version of your personal mug seems interesting to look at!

Edited May 7, 2011 by Frostbite