Art 1: HD Spriting method

Summer classes are over, so here's something I hadn't done before to celebrate.

My method for creating the HD sprites is pretty simple. My tool of choice is Manga Studio 5/ Clip Studio Paint. 

Here are 3 character sprites as an example.

The first phase is the "rough." The amount of how finished it turns out can vary a lot. 

I'll use a "messy" rough when I don't have a good idea of how the character's sprite will look, and just want to get the pose down so I can have at least a solid enough foundation to design on top of.

The "nude" rough comes out when I have a really good idea of the character and pose, but haven't fully finished their design or haven't decided on what they should be wearing. I use this one the most often, especially with finished pieces. Sometimes the nude rough won't even have hair.

The "polished" rough comes out when I know exactly what I want from the sprite. Usually there's still a messy and nude phase, but after a certain point I've cleaned the rough so much that I just ended up erasing them.

I just use a basic pen brush for this. Feel free to choose any thin brush with minimal aliasing.

The "outline" phase can go by very fast or very slow depending on how developed the rough phase is.  If the rough is "messy", the outline might as well be a second roughing. Regardless, the outline is always faster than the rough as even a very incorrect rough gives a good foundation. On the other end, if the rough turns into a "full outline" I can just skip this phase and copy the rough over.

For the initial idle sprite I do the roughing and outline using Manga Studio 5. But when I'm animating I use TvPaint instead, and then export the outline to MS5 for coloring and rendering. I'll go over my animating and TvPaint techniques some other time.

The "color" phase has multiple steps to it. First I select the area that's going to be colored. I do this by placing a selection block around the outline, and deselecting everything outside the character. After that I color everything inside the selection with the character's most prominent color. 

Each character gets a block. This is used to compare the colors without an outline getting in the way.

Then I just color the character with the fill bucket.

The following step of the "color" phase is one of the most important. I create color blocks representing the character in a minimalist form. I've mentioned this before (thank you, Mark), the best way to test if your colors are effective is to compare them in a simplified format. 

In the picture above: the right block is the character's original colors, and the left block with a circle over it is the re-colored version. You want to keep each color from clashing with anything it's touching. You also don't want two colors to fight for attention regardless of how far they are from each other. Lily(right) has red as the most saturated and dominant color. Originally the blues would clash with the red because they were just as bright, so I desaturated them in the second version.

The final phase is the "render," where the lights and shadows are applied.

When I'm working on a full piece, I have a dozen or so different layers full of colors and fx. However when I'm making a sprite I want to keep things simple as I have to move the sprites around a lot, so in total there are only 3 layers used for each sprite (rough layers are not counted): the outline, the color, and the shade layers.

You generally want the lighting to come from just above the camera, but it's not a bad idea to put it at a slight angle. The Crown sprites are designed to have the lighting come from just behind the character.

The first step of rendering is to just draw the shadows. My tool of choice is a custom brush I call "Watercolor Sketch," the settings of which are in the image above. 

The second step is drawing the highlights. I also use the Watercolor Sketch for this, but combined with the "Flat Brush" also shown above.

Overall this phase doesn't take very long. It's usually the shortest as it's the phase that requires the least design work, you're really just improving on the color phase. Keep in mind though that you do at least have to choose colors that look good. Beyond that, rendering is about technique.