I've never done spriting before, but I thought I would try my hand at it, especially since KanadaKid said that he was planning on releasing a beta version of his case editor in a few months (and heaven knows that's how long it will take me to get used to spriting).

Besides the fact that I have no idea where to start, I have another large obstacle to tackle:

Being me, to test out spriting I went immediately for the most complicated thing I could do and tried to make a defense-bench Maya. Since I was just testing things out, I was just drawing freely in a layer on top of everything else. I had started drawing, and realized that black outlines simply would not do. Upon closer inspection, I noticed not only the diversely coloured outlines but arbitrary dots of colour here and there on the sprite. Trying to make the outline colours more logical and/or erasing the coloured dots made the sprite look unnatural.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, open one of these sprites in whatever program and zoom in close. In certain spots on her skin there are blue and purple dots, and the coloured outlines in any one area are composed of many similar colours, placed in a seemingly random order across the outline)

If you do know what I'm talking about, please try to answer this, both for me and any others who are new to spriting:

Is there a particular pattern for placing outline colours, or is it random and "if it looks good, great"? And what purpose do the coloured dots serve, and how do I know when/where to place them?

Thank you, and any more hints on making natural-looking sprites would be very helpful.

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