Pokémon Style Spriting

This is very simple. Get a 64x64 canvas, and draw your dude. Make sure everything is 1 pixel long, unless it is connecting to another part of the bady.

Step 2: Colors
Get a color that your sprite would be if we lived in a world with no shades and highlights. Then make that color a bit brighter. This'll be your highlighting color. Use eyedropper to get back to your basic color, then make a darker shade of it, and then even a darker shade. Oh, and be keeping all these colors you are getting somewhere on your canvas. They'll be erased at the end, but they are needed for nao. Do this for every color. Make sure there are no more than 16, including the background color, black, and to some extent, white. If you need to conserve colors for some reason, only make the two darker shades and skip the highlight. Nao color in your dude with the "basic" colors, or the 2nd to lightest color.

Step 3: Shading
Cool. Nao we start shading. This can be a bit difficult. Just remember that the light source is from the top left, or for a back sprite, the top right. For the shade color, pick the 2nd to darkest color. Almost everything has a shade, but there will be more towards the back than at the front. Do this for every color you have. Although, some colors may not need to use the shade color.

Step 4: Highlights
Highlights are where the sprite is directly hit by the light source. It can also make somethings look shiny. lol. Anyway, usually there are less highlights than shades, which is why if you need to conserve colors, you can most likely skip this step.

Step 5: Outlines
Outlines are an important part of the style. Get your darkest color, and where the highlights are start going over the black outline with the darkest color. This is also true for the basic color, but not as much, and as the basic color gets more towards the shade, it is wise to stop. Black outlines stay for where the shades are. Also, things like nostrils and the outline on lines: if they aren't in a shade, they are also made the same color.

Stey 6: Background Color
This is only important if you are inserting it into a ROM. The background color is just a color that is not part of the sprite you just sprited. Oh, and to make sure they insert properly, the fron and back sprites need the same background color.
And there you go!




I made this tutorial because the one 5qwerty made was deleted while "cleaning up."
He could probably make a better one.
Oh, and that sprite was deleted, because it was a tutorial one, and I didn't try hard enough on it.
But, it IS a beta design for a starter for my Pokémon game.
LEAKS.

Again, awesome, but outline needs work.

Yeah. Back is messed up.
And I now hate spriting fire.

Why so?

I can't do it right.
Looks like crap every time.

Well...

Same here.