Spriting Social Discussion

[NICKT™]

And you, Nickt? Just here to chat it up, or are you actually spriting anymore?

Just popping in for words, haven't had much mind for anything graphical lately, figured it wasn't much of my game as I wasn't really progressing forward in my capabilities like others were.

You? I haven't seen a gallery from you in a long, long time.

[eclipse]

If I have time, and my eyes stop being lame, I'll see if I can get back into splicing. I prefer FE7's colors, because they're easier on my eyes.

[deleted35362]

Do you actually have vision problems, Eclipse? Can't tell if serious because internet

[Teapot]

Just popping in for words, haven't had much mind for anything graphical lately, figured it wasn't much of my game as I wasn't really progressing forward in my capabilities like others were.

You? I haven't seen a gallery from you in a long, long time.

Pity.

I mostly sprite for projects nowadays, so I've some concerns about releasing pieces prematurely. Likewise, I don't produce work regularly enough or of decent enough quality to maintain one.

@Bonesy - That's rather rude. She's mentioned her eyes twice in a single, two-sentence post.

Edited June 26, 2013 by · j e a l o u s y ·

[NICKT™]

Pity.

I mostly sprite for projects nowadays, so I've some concerns about releasing pieces prematurely. Likewise, I don't produce work regularly enough or of decent enough quality to maintain one.

@Bonesy - That's rather rude. She's mentioned her eyes twice in a single, two-sentence post.

Not so much, going years without improvement is a clear indication that I should stop, haha.

Hm, guys, just curious, is another reason that some/most of you prefer the less saturated colorus of FE6/7 is because there's more choice and availability than FE8?

[Teapot]

It's good to know your limits, I guess? Wouldn't hurt to see you pick it up again, though.

I do love the diversity in colors and skintones, yes, but it's not like it's all that hard to do the same for FE8, necessarily. I just think the oversaturation is a bit tacky at times, and I just prefer lower levels of saturation in general.

[NICKT™]

It's good to know your limits, I guess? Wouldn't hurt to see you pick it up again, though.

I do love the diversity in colors and skintones, yes, but it's not like it's all that hard to do the same for FE8, necessarily. I just think the oversaturation is a bit tacky at times, and I just prefer lower levels of saturation in general.

Mm, I do see what you mean, not necessarily tacky in my opinion, but I do find it a tad, cartoony, I suppose.

The faded-esque quality of the FE7 palettes give a more serious vibe, when looking at things simply, in my opinion.

I tend to find myself using the same colours over and over again when I use original FE8 colours, simply cause they're more appealing so it's a struggle sometimes, it's why I enjoy now that I can make my own palettes, allows for more variety.

[Teapot]

Yeah. It just feels a tiny bit less anime, as well.

I liked that FE8 tried to use a slightly different style, with bolder hue variations, but the overall execution was sort of shoddy and thus didn't come across all that well. With some adjustment, it could be nice, but as it stands, vanilla FE8 doesn't really catch my fancy.

It's natural to have colors you favor. I try not to use similar color combinations and designs, but when it all boils down to it, they're awfully hard habits to break. everything is trim and fur

[NICKT™]

Yeah. It just feels a tiny bit less anime, as well.

I liked that FE8 tried to use a slightly different style, with bolder hue variations, but the overall execution was sort of shoddy and thus didn't come across all that well. With some adjustment, it could be nice, but as it stands, vanilla FE8 doesn't really catch my fancy.

It's natural to have colors you favor. I try not to use similar color combinations and designs, but when it all boils down to it, they're awfully hard habits to break. everything is trim and fur

I don't mind the anime style so much I guess, probably why I prefer the FE8 tones, also makes me psychologically allow the weird ideas I come up with for some of my characters. Lol.

Mm, at least you're good with what you do, your hair and fur always makes me jealous, I look at it and it always seems so easy and simple yet when I try to do it myself, it just blows my mind how clean you can make it when mine ends up like a bird's nest, haha. Though, messed up hair will always be my shtick.

[deleted35362]

Hm, guys, just curious, is another reason that some/most of you prefer the less saturated colorus of FE6/7 is because there's more choice and availability than FE8?

FE7 colors have a much more gentle appearance to them. Back then I would use FE7 colors for the mugs that I felt were more appropriate.

The relationship between FE7 and 8 colors is kinda like comparing music in the 80's or something and recent music. Like comparing old Iron Maiden and Judas Priest to Hammerfall or whatever. It's also like comparing old Valkyrie Profile music to the new. The modern stuff uses better equipment for a better sound, but it doesn't hurt the oldie goldies.

@Bonesy - That's rather rude. She's mentioned her eyes twice in a single, two-sentence post.

I don't care; I just asked for clarification.

¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯

[NICKT™]

I don't care; I just asked for clarification.

¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯

Lol, reminds me of a moment back on FEU, where in the topic of posting pictures of yourself, I commented how another person's eyes seemed red and bad, like he needed sleep. Fizdiz out of nowhere following called me out saying that I've got no place saying things like that cause I use "hot topic eyeliner".

..Never even knew what Hot Topic was until that day.

Ah, old memories, so long ago..

[Lord of Gabriel Knight]

Lol, reminds me of a moment back on FEU, where in the topic of posting pictures of yourself, I commented how another person's eyes seemed red and bad, like he needed sleep. Fizdiz out of nowhere following called me out saying that I've got no place saying things like that cause I use "hot topic eyeliner".

..Never even knew what Hot Topic was until that day.

Ah, old memories, so long ago..

He sounded like an idiot.

Edited June 27, 2013 by GabrielKnight

[deleted35362]

I don't even remember that name lol

[NICKT™]

I don't even remember that name lol

Doesn't surprise me, I've been around a lot longer than you have.

Arch would know him, I assume. Death and Fizdiz were two of the more, senior members hanging around Arch's old board back in the day.

[Anacybele]

I didn't know Hot Topic even sold eyeliner. :/ And I've been there a bunch of times.

[NICKT™]

I didn't know Hot Topic even sold eyeliner. :/ And I've been there a bunch of times.

I'm just going by what he said, there isn't a single Hot Topic in all of Australia as far as I've come across, so I've no way of saying otherwise, haha.

Alrighty guys, quick question. When did you start spriting? Was it still Fire Emblem spriting? Do you feel you've gotten better since then?

Personally, I started out Pokemon spriting on a forum board for the online game Pokemon Crater, or something to that effect. I was on the forums with my older brother and we both respectively would take request for different Pokemon sprites and things like that. Hm, probably would have been around 5/6/7 years ago, not entirely sure, but it was a long, long time ago. After that I found my way onto Fire Emblem World, which was just in it's dying days, I remember one of the first few sprites I did was 'Maetira', which was just older Eliwood's head in Karel's clothing with Roland's hair. But I at least got it into a game, that made me happy when it finally worked, the old, old way of text editing in FE ROMs was ridiculous. Though, I remember being so new to Fire Emblem that I wanted to make a sequel to FE7, as that was the only one I had played, without realizing it already did, in effect, with FE6. xD

Either way, after many board hoppings, I'm here and I feel like I've barely progressed at all. You guys?

[Teapot]

Sometime in '05/06, I think, and I did start off with FE spriting. I bought FE7 as an early birthday gift to myself (after playing Melee and maining Roy/Marth) and was instantly attracted to the mugs. Started out on FESS a year or so later with CO Raptor's splicing tutorial.

First mug I made was an awful prototype of my namesake personal mug, saved as a JPEG with use of pure black and pure white. I didn't feel very comfortable on FESS, and at the time, Nintend-Fan was recruiting members for his forum, Fire Emblem Spritez. Stuck around there for a few years and had a great time improving my sprites with the then-close-knit community. Went to FEND and PE after that, and finally ended up here on SF. I'd like to think I've improved. I dunno; you guys be the judge.

Edited June 28, 2013 by · j e a l o u s y ·

[Chocolate Kitty]

miss AK was perfect from day 1 ♥

[Matt Snow]

You have not improved at all, that first sprite is clearly better than the second one.

[NICKT™]

Sometime in '05/06, I think, and I did start off with FE spriting. I bought FE7 as an early birthday gift to myself (after playing Melee and maining Roy/Marth) and was instantly attracted to the mugs. Started out on FESS a year or so later with CO Raptor's splicing tutorial.

First mug I made was an awful prototype of my namesake personal mug, saved as a JPEG with use of pure black and pure white. I didn't feel very comfortable on FESS, and at the time, Nintend-Fan was recruiting members for his forum, Fire Emblem Spritez. Stuck around there for a few years and had a great time improving my sprites with the then-close-knit community. Went to FEND and PE after that, and finally ended up here on SF. I'd like to think I've improved. I dunno; you guys be the judge.

Not sure if I remember correctly or not, but was that tutorial the one that was an animated .gif?

Probably not, but eh.

Haha, you've improved a lot, loving the hair on the new one, definitely.

[Lenh]

My spriting journey began with a decent year in 2005 (RPGMaker, editing stock resources and porting various SNES/GBA sprites in), then a gap, then a few months in 2008 (focused on editing FE6/7- resources, attempted mugs and posted 'em on FEP, didn't work out*), then another gap, and finally came back again in 2012 (finally joined the community through the DA group and then into SF, and here we are). There was probably a lot of lurking and pixel-admiring in the gaps, but can't remember that at all.

In my opinion I haven't improved as much as I'd like, so I gotta get off my lazy and get dedicated. A year actually working on things is probably worth more than 5 of off-and-on business.

(Fire Emblem's about all I can sprite, although if I ever get enough confidence I'd add Suikoden and traditional 2D fighters to the mix.)

Edited June 28, 2013 by Lenh

[Lord Glenn]

I started spriting in mid-2005, a couple of months after I joined FESS. First works were terrible battle sprite splice stills and just-as-terrible weapon icons made on Paint canvases that were far too big in size and grouped together.

Later on, I did a couple of face sprite splices with an assist from Black Dragon for VASM's old Face Sprite Project ROM Hacks (back in the ancient days when we were still figuring out and working with trying to bring in new graphics) - to this day, they still remain the only face sprites I've done. Did some more battle sprite editing (mainly for mock up battle scenes) after that, tried to do a couple of animations (finished one, albeit it was simple and terrible) and then mostly focused on mock up requests for other users.

At some point later, I started transitioning to working on graphics for hacks (FESSer 7 Project, MK404's Hack) - namely weapon icons and a really crappy battle template - before dropping off from the hobby completely in college. A few years later, I got asked to make some icons for Trent for FE4R and slowly got back into the hobby, culmanating in recording the tutorial I did for making weapon icons and doing icons for EN and ASDDX, along with maps here and there, and template graphics (battle, stat screen).

I'd say I've gotten better, at least at the subdisciplines that I've mainly worked in. I mean, the stuff on the right in these examples looks better, right?

My only real regret is getting started when I did in the fandom's life and in my own life. As I was in high school when I got into the fandom and the spriting scene hadn't really "exploded" yet (there were talented artists, yes, but the hacking scene was still in its infancy, so spriting hadn't grown to such a level that you needed entire sheets of weapon icons or 40+ full face sprite sheets for an entire cast of playable units, etc.) and I really kinda missed the movement in its "prime" while I was in college and had stepped back from the hobby.

[The Joker]

I'm a relatively new spriter I guess. I just started last year. Around a month after I joined this site. That's barely a year iirc. I really like FE and I thought the mugs were really cool. When I learned the basics to splicing I gave it a shot. My first attempt at spriting was a splice of Lloyd, Percival, and Zeiss. It was decent for a first attempt. I only realized how difficult spriting was when I tried FC. It was a drawing I made based on official art of Denim from Tactics Ogre. Now that I'm looking back at it, it sucked so bad. I think I'm lucky though cause I got a fair amount of help from the get-go which I think really made me a better spriter. I just kept making and making more mugs(often times stretching myself too thin). My work seem to have caught a lil attention from the guys from 76. So now, I help out.

I try to observe other people's spriting style and see if I can incorporate some aspects into my own style. I've seen a lot of great spriters on this board. I just wish I learned about spriting back in highschool when I had all the time in the world. Having my own group of critics also really helped me get better. xD

[deleted35362]

I started spriting in 08. In mid 2011 I quit spriting for the most part, but 3 years of spriting is still pretty long. So it's rare that I actually make sprites these days, but when I do, they're not TOO bad.

*shot*

Edited June 28, 2013 by Boney

[MarioKirby]

My first attempts at spriting were back in 2005, back when I attended the old Nsider messageboards. Granted, back then I was downright horrible when it came to sprites, if they could even be called that. A few years later, and after forum-hopping for a while, I ended up at Pixeltendo, which is (or was at the time) The Spriter's Resourse's messageboard. There, I learned a lot of techniques that the better spriters used and started to get better, though I still was pretty bad. After that, I just sorta developed more as I hopped from forum to forum.

I think my first forays into FE styles was back in either 2008 or 2009, whenever I joined FEPlanet.

Like a lot of people here, though, I don't sprite as often as I used to. A lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation, and a lot of self-deprecation seems to have stymied it, though I jump into paint every now and then.