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[Ben_Hurr]

Hey guys,
anyone have any tips for making small sprites?

I'd love to have stuff like this fit inside single 16x16 tiles, but every time I try it ends up looking like poo.


edit:

Here's a better attempt. B)   crits anyone?

[diwil]

I like the little witch thing.

[Pietepiet]

For 16x16, forget about outlines and large amounts of shading. You don't have room for them, so use those pixels for other things. Separation between things should be made clear with colours and contrast in 16x16

[EDIT] I made something for you real quick:


It's kind of a sloppy job, but just wanted to give you an example.

[kenesque]

You need to exaggerate shapes and features more. For a human, focus mostly on the head (as that's the most recognizable and distinctive feature of a person). Choose the most important part of what you're drawing and make that the largest and most important part of the object, then fit the more subtle details around that.  

The squid thing is kind of cool though, don't see anything wrong with it.

[baconman]

You seem rather adept in your 32x32s. Why not just roll with those?

I do agree, however. Making something distinctive in NES-style spriting is a LOT lot harder than it first appears to be. But yes, outlines must go, and the sprite should focus on a few small, distinctive details.

[Ben_Hurr]

You seem rather adept in your 32x32s. Why not just roll with those?

I do agree, however. Making something distinctive in NES-style spriting is a LOT lot harder than it first appears to be. But yes, outlines must go, and the sprite should focus on a few small, distinctive details.

If at first you think 16x16 sprites with 3 colors are easy
try and fail miserably. 

[MaloEspada]

i don't know why you want to limit yourself so much; i think the number of details you lose in 16x16 is really bad. Your 32x32s seem fine;

also: NES sprites aren't limited to 3 colors + transp. that rule applies to 8x8 or 8x16 pixels of a sprite, so you can have more than 3 colors in a sprite if you do some smart pixelating.

this is a really nice example by thernz; notice how some characters have more than 3 colors, but they are properly divided in 8x8 or 8x16 grids.


not that you are going to code a real nes game, right?

(on an unrelated note: those mockups from months ago using that kitty sprite seemed to have a really cool style, and i believe it wasn't 16x16? why not stick with those?)

[Damian]

I've heard NES games like megaman gave an effect of more colours by using another layer? not sure exactly how it worked.

[moi]

I've heard NES games like megaman gave an effect of more colours by using another layer?

AKA stacking sprites

[Inane]

[quote author=//̙͓͚̯͓̯̥̰̪̻̟̖̝̤̊̑͂͌͑ͪͩ̊̑͂͌͑ͪͩ́̑ͅ&rdein/̑̃ͫ̽ͯ̓̽̽͛&# link=topic=14792.msg429553#msg429553 date=1284663430]
also: NES sprites aren't limited to 3 colors + transp. that rule applies to 8x8 or 8x16 pixels of a sprite, so you can have more than 3 colors in a sprite if you do some smart pixelating.
[/quote]
Technically they are, but anything larger than 8x16 requires multiple sprites anyway, so it's the same as stacking sprites.
The issue with having lots of stacked sprites is that there's a per-scanline limit. Something like 8 sprites per scanline or bad stuff happens?

[Pietepiet]

Something like 8 sprites per scanline or bad stuff happens?

Yup. You'll get a lot of slowdown if you have more sprites per scanline. Most of the time people fixed this by flickering sprites on and off, but it's godawful to look at. MegaMan 6, while having gorgeous sprites and tiles, has this problem a lot.

This is also why you see big boss fights on NES on black backgrounds most of the time, by the way. It frees up an extra color (black, since you can just place transparency where you want black) and you don't have any other sprites on screen that you have to account for, so you can make your boss nice and big.

By the way, Ben_Hurr, I don't agree with others in this thread that you should just stick with 32x32 because you're good at it. Trying new things, especially smaller things, is great for improving your technique. Making small sprites teaches you the importance of every single pixel much, much more than doing larger sprites.

@rdein: Offtopic, but can you get rid of the glitch thing in your name? It's cool and all, but makes for awful quoting as you can see in the post above me

[Ben_Hurr]

i don't know why you want to limit yourself so much; i think the number of details you lose in 16x16 is really bad. Your 32x32s seem fine;

also: NES sprites aren't limited to 3 colors + transp. that rule applies to 8x8 or 8x16 pixels of a sprite, so you can have more than 3 colors in a sprite if you do some smart pixelating.

this is a really nice example by thernz; notice how some characters have more than 3 colors, but they are properly divided in 8x8 or 8x16 grids.


not that you are going to code a real nes game, right?

(on an unrelated note: those mockups from months ago using that kitty sprite seemed to have a really cool style, and i believe it wasn't 16x16? why not stick with those?)

Nonono, I'm doing any crazy NES limitations!

It's just for this specific project I was hoping to go for an aesthetic similar to this:

Where everything (excluding large monsters) fits in a single tile.