Spriting Social Discussion

[eclipse]

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

It's not vision problems per se, but it's something where I can't stare at a computer screen too long (otherwise the light burns. . .it sounds cheesy, but that's what it feels like). I have no idea what's causing it, and it's really screwing me up. I know it's not my eyes (eye doctor appointment earlier this month), so the next step is to check my head.

[Anacybele]

I don't remember when I started spriting. At least a year or two ago, I know that much. I started cause it looked fun and I wanted to bring the original characters of my FE stories to life. I could just draw them all, and while I have been drawing some, it's quicker to make mugshots and sprites. I also don't plan to draw EVERY single one of my characters. I just created too many for that! xP

[Agro]

It's not vision problems per se, but it's something where I can't stare at a computer screen too long (otherwise the light burns. . .it sounds cheesy, but that's what it feels like). I have no idea what's causing it, and it's really screwing me up. I know it's not my eyes (eye doctor appointment earlier this month), so the next step is to check my head.

pfft you had this optometry student all ready to give you a diagnosis and then bam you killed it

[Matt Snow]

Well since this is about spriting in general I guess I'll ask, what happened to the mapping competitions?

[Chocolate Kitty]

People stopped entering so I retired them.

If there's any kind of interest, I can restart them. I had been thinking about it recently actually.

[Primefusion]

>"People stopped entering"

> I've entered every one of them since like round 6

You know me, I'm always interested in a mapping competition.

[Chocolate Kitty]

Yes, but

>1 person enters in the actual time allotted

>round last for 4-6 weeks

>no one enters still so time extends

>it's been 2 months

see where I'm going?

[Caliban of Sycorax]

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.

Yep. That's the exact tutorial. with the terribad color choices but eh

AK, I actually remember that first mug incarnation and was in love with it then and still love it now. Wow. I am old.

Fun fact: I also started around 2005 but I was never good and I am still not good. Also because there were lots of on/off periods of spriting for me.

[R.O.Berc]

I started spriting in late 2005. I was young and I had just figured out how to make an email adress in order to register as a member for website forums and such.
The first place I joined was the Nsider Nintendo forums (R.I.P) and I found a Fire Emblem dedicated art thread (one thread, singular) because I had played Fire Emblem 7 and loved the game to death. On this single Fire Emblem nintendo art thread people would post splices and such and since it was just one thread, you would post something and if you were lucky you would get C&C but sometimes your post could easily be over looked. So at this point I was only doing recolors or battle sprites and it got to about January or February of 2006 when a couple of the regulars from the thread decided to make an invisionfree Fire Emblem forum called Fire Emblem Spritez (Becuase Z's were pretty cool to make things plural). So I joined that and if you go through this gallery ( http://z15.invisionfree.com/Fire_Emblem_Spritez/index.php?showtopic=46 ), you can see I started out inoccent enough with simple edits and splices. Then as time goes on you can see where I went through puberty and started doing inappropriate cleavage edits and such and I guess no one said stop so this is what I have become. The rest is history.

Notable moments:
Ak (Jealousy) joins FES and now we're besties forevsies.
I go to FE Planet and see the work of Uther, Uther 33, and Vamp. Inspiration to do better skyrockets.
Uther 33 joins FES and we became besties for almost forevsies.
I see BwdYeti's Bleach battle sprite animations. Inspiration to do better skyrockets (after changing pants).
Join a bunch of forums and build a reputation as "That spriting guy that makes the boobs, lol."

Good times good times, and here I am on Serenes Forest...still making boobs. :3

Edited July 3, 2013 by The Merc

[Teapot]

@Hamlet - Shit, really. ._. Why can't I remember y--oh, right, shitty memory.

@Merc - Aw, yissssss.

[AthenaWyrm]

I started spriting back when Serenes Forest was only 10 years old

[ghast]

I started doing stuff in May of this year. making mugs is hard :\ and I would much rather do animations :3

[deleted35362]

"mug spriting is hard...I would rather do a 50 frame animation!"

Oh Ghastation, you character :3

[NICKT™]

Smaller, less detail, doesn't seem so bad.
Especially when you can easily just take frames from other animations and edit them to suit your needs. When you're going full custom animations though, it'd be harder than splicing. Probably not harder than full customing mugs though.

[Teapot]

Depends. They're different skill sets. Animation is a fine art that requires the knowledge of movement and how to properly convey it. Speed, posing, smoothness, timing - there's a lot to factor in. On the other hand, mugs are just one still image. Static detail is the forte for portraits, whereas creating the illusion of movement is what makes animation impressive. Personally speaking, I think anims might be more difficult and involved, especially because it isn't just one frame that needs to be done.

[Thor Odinson]

Anims are certainly more time consuming (at least for me), even with yeti helping out the stickmans and a lot of copypastaedit cheating

Then again I tend to do 60+ frame shit for original animations so whoops

[NICKT™]

The way I look at it, it just kinda seems more tedious rather than more difficult. But oh well, different strokes I suppose.

[Thor Odinson]

Well, if you don't have at least a rudimentary understanding of anatomy and some understanding of how the body moves (poor wording here, not sure how2wordbetter) the animation will lack fluidity and will end up looking stiff and unappealing. Spriting over someone else's stickmans is not hard but just tedious, yeah. At least I get to work with premium stickmans when they're not my own though

[Lenh]

Honestly pixel-for-pixel they're about the same, but take different modes of thinking. An animation takes more planning, and fixing an error that pops up can cause a lot of rework (but the errors might be okay to overlook in the final product). A mug can come more organically, but all of the final product gets looked at in detail (so errors typically need correction and are easier to correct).

Edited July 6, 2013 by Lenh

[EldinnerPlate]

I like the FE8 colors a lot more because I like brighter colors :P

I started spriting pretty recently. In about April of this year my computer programming class was given our final project in Greenfoot(Java development environment). I finished a little early so I thought I would go for the extra credit since I was borderline A/B. For extra credit all you had to do was to find a different character from the one that the teacher gave us and insert him/her into the game you made. I was trying to do a 5star HHM run at the time and I wondered if I could insert one of the class sprites into my own game. After some digging I discovered fire emblem hacking and after that I just kept wanting to learn more and more about it. I liked drawing as a kid, so when I found out I could make my own characters and put them in the game I almost cried(You can imagine what happened when I figured out you can make your own hack). Since then I have been learning how to hack and have done some sprites(maps, splices) as well. I had to take a vacation for the whole month of June without my laptop so I couldn't make any sprites, but I'm back now and I am currently trying to make my own hack but before I keep rambling the main thing I'm trying to say is, you guys got me an A in programming and I will love this forum forever for that.

P.S. Sorry for being a little late and off topic

P.P.S Kitty, I would totally enter a map spriting contest if there was one.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Eldinnnn

[ghast]

lolol boney!:3

edit: but yeah, I'm not very artsy but I know how make things move. One thing that makes me prefer it more is that I don't need to worry about faces, since anims tend to have a very similar face for almost every sprite. I've always struggled more with faces than anything when I tried to draw.

Also its more rewarding to me to see all my frames flow together along with sound.

GBA FE graphics are also insanely over the top which makes it so fun for me. I am really allowed to think of anything I want because in this realm anything goes. My only limitation is my skill in spriting, which I hope to get better at!

It definitely is just a different skill set. That said, I'm blown away by some portraiters (?) here. I am way jealous haha.

Edited July 7, 2013 by GhastStation

[Kon]

I've been spriting since I think 2007/2008, being inspired by peeps like TBA and MK404. I used to do splices only, but after a couple of years I finally started going into custom sprites, although I was pretty bad at them. Even after six years though, I don't think I'm all that great of a spriter, especially with people like Amelia, ALS and Nih that just kind of popped out of nowhere and became fantastic spriters in such a short amount of time. ;-;

[AstraLunaSol]

It took me a year and a half to get decent/start customing.

It is not fast.

Been spriting since 2009.

Fuck it's been 4 years already?

[Kon]

Compared to me it was pretty fast, considering that I'm only just now hitting my stride. D;

[NICKT™]

I've been spriting longer than all of you pups and to this date haven't really accomplished a full custom sprite. :P
You guys should all be proud of how your talent's grown, no matter how long it takes.