Bwaaah!
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Rank: Decisive Witness
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:42 am
Posts: 236
You mean animation? Just google .gif animator, or even image animator. I'm not so good with that, so you may want to ask someone else.
GIMP is okay, but personally, I prefer Paint, and that's what I'll detail in the tutorial.
Editing is a different story entirely. First, 'moving the sprite without the background.' You mean, the background of, say, the defense bench? Well, on c-r, we have (almost) every sprite, free of background, right
here.
Then the editing. First off, you decide what you want to do. Let's say, you wanted to give Phoenix some bangs. Edgeworth has bangs, so we could borrow those. Alternatively, you could sprite them yourself. I'll detail both.
If you want to borrow someone else's parts for your edit, you first pull up both characters you want to edit. In this case, Phoenix and Edgeworth. You go to
Phoenix's page, and Right Click > Copy(or Ctrl + C) his sprite sheet. Go into your program, and Right Click > Paste (or Ctrl + V). The sheet should appear. Then, you would grab
Edgeworth's sheet and do the same thing, possibly on a different window.
If you wanted custom, you'd only need the one character's sheet.
The editing. In this case, we're taking Edgeworth's bangs. So, you go into your Edgeworth window, or whatever it may be, and select his bangs. In Paint, there's a dotted rectangle tool for this purpose, and in GIMP I think it's kind of a lasso, but I may be wrong. Either way, you select your tool, and bring it around the area you're taking, here the bangs. Don't worry about being too specific, you'll cut the extras out later. Then Right Click > Copy (or Ctrl > C).
If you're doing custom, that above step was unneccasary, not to mention impossible.
Now you go into the larger character you're editing, here Phoenix. You Right Click > Paste (or Ctrl + V) the bangs, preferably into a large empty space. Make sure you have the background color selected, the eyedropper tool (or whatever it is in GIMP) can get that quickly. Then, select your pencil tool, and begin to pencil out anything that isn't the bangs, or whatever you may be editing. Once all the extra nonsense is gone, you can take your dotted rectangle, or lasso or whatever, select the bangs and move them on to Phoenix. We're almost done!
For custom, you'd take your pencil tool, take the darkest color of (in this case hair) whatever you're editing on, and make your line-art. Make the line-art on an area of white space, so we can just move it over later. Line-art is just the outline, which you later fill with color. Make sure it's pretty close to what you want, but if it's not, you can always use your eraser, or even undo(Ctrl + Z in Paint, and I think GIMP too), or use your eraser, and make the line again.
Now, recoloring. Sometimes, you want to change the color of what you're editing. Oftentimes, the color will be on the sprite, so you can steal it with eyedropper, but sometime it won't. If it won't, in Paint you can go Colors > Edit Colors..., grab your color, and change the shading with you little bar thingie on the right, but I don't know how it's done in GIMP. Then, (in Paint,) you'd make a little area with your color, grab it with the eyedropper and RIGHT CLICK (not left.) Left click is for the eyedropper on the color you want to change. Then (in Paint), you select the eraser, hold the right mouse over the area you want to change, and wave your mouse all over. The color should change, if not, read through again. GIMP I'm not as familiar with, so yeah. Continue until all of the shades are recolored, and you should be done! Voila, you've added a part to another character!
For customs, you have to get into shading. Again, you grab the color you want, using either your eyedropper or your Colors > Edit Colors..., but then the similarities end. You should have selected the lightest shade for the area. Then, you take a your Paint Can (whatever you use to fill large areas with one color), and fill your custom thing with the color.
*** Then, you go back into your eyedropper or Colors > Edit Colors... or whatever, and get the next darkest color. Phoenix Wright sprites shade from the top up, and on side-facing sprites from their face backwards, so you'd use your pencil to form the shading area, and once you have the entire section you want boxed off in your color, you get the Paint Can (or whatever you have for a fill tool) again and fill just below the line. If any goes above where you wanted, Ctrl > Z, and pencil it again. There must've been a pixel or two of free space.***
Now, go back to the area I surrounded with triple stars, and repeat until your thing is shaded to your liking. Now, grab your dotted rectangle, or lasso, or any selector tool, bring it around your finished thing, and Ctrl + C, just in case. Make sure it's in the right spot, then click anywhere else on the image. If it's in the wrong place once you've already clicked, or you wanted to change something, Ctrl + Z it and edit to perfection. If it's in the right place, and looks perfect, you're done!
Hope that was helpful, it took a long time to write. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. As you can see, I've got nothing but time.
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