TUTORIAL TIME!
HOW TO 'PIXEL' SPRITES
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STEP 1:
If it's your first time giving spriting a go, or want to make sprites but aren't yet good at freestyling an image yet, your first step is to
PICK A BASE!

Here, I used a mix of 2 of Trucy's front-facing sprites as a base. I normally start tracing the shape of the chin first (my own starting point, but you start where you feel the most comfortable branching out from).
Just start using the pencil tool, size of 1px, and outline the features you want to use.

I stretched and rotated this sprite of Trucy to help shape her arm. (This sprite I'm making is the 1st frame in an animation, hence the weird shape)
I also used Franziska and traced her hand, to make that hand on the hip.
STEP 2:

Now that you have a base, it's time to start designing the outfit for your character!
This is totally up to you, and I recommend beginners use pre-existing sprites to help you work out all the shapes. Things useful to pay attention to when drawing clothing (or body shapes in general)
- Things will get covered - don't feel the need to show off everything, even if you know it should be there.
For example:
Even if you know a hand has 5 fingers, sometimes a finger may be hidden behind something (like how in this example, her thumb isn't visible because it's wrapping around her waist, and so the rest of the hand and her waist are covering it up.)
- Remember gravity exists - This one makes things hard, but remember that clothes have weight to them, and so they won't be perfectly static, or lack creases. This sprite isn't a good example of this, but if a character is wearing a shirt, remember it'll have creases. (Mostly at points that there is a lot of tension, like around the elbow, or armpits) In cases like these, look at existing sprites, or just real life to help you understand what looks natural.
Working with this, I made a simple dress for my character:
STEP 3:
Now that you have your design, it's time for
BASE COLOURING

Pick colours that you like, and make sure to colour it all in!
STEP 4:
Probably one of the most time consuming parts (aside from outlining) is
SHADING.
First, start working out where the shadows fall:

(kinda skipped ahead and did the face, but you get the jist)
Remember, if you're struggling, use references to help!
- Try to be consistent with this. If you've been putting shadows on the right hand side of something, don't put it to the left on another. I'm still pretty inexperienced with this, but envision it as there being a light shining from one direction, and the opposite side is where the shadows fall.
Some guarantees for shading though are:
- Under the head (the neck)
- Under the chest (more so for female characters).
- On one half the arm (depending on its direction. If it's facing straight down, shadows inside are more likely.)
Depending on whether you're going for the classic Trilogy's sprite style (which was around 16 colours), or Apollo Justice's (about 32 colours) each individual colour should have 3-4 shades. You can be resourceful though! For example, this character has orange hair, and so the darkest shade of the hair can overlap with the darkest shade of the skin tone I've picked. Same with using the skin tone's colour for hair highlights.
Finer details like the face I'll deal with later (but essentially I traced Trucy's eyes and edited their shape)
STEP 5:
Second, start to do the finer details. These include:
- The face
- Colouring your outlines
- Anti-aliasing (or making the outlines look smooth)
To help with outlines, I've made a little step by step image. I'll explain each frame:
1. With the arm, first thing I did was recolour the outline to the darkest shade of the skin colour I was wanting to use.
2. Using the 2nd darkest tone, draw a line through any parts of the outline that are longer than 2 pixels long, to help smooth out the colours. Alternatively, on the inside of the outline, put the 2nd darkest colour at the tips of each pixel chain (by "chain I mean ones that connect vertically or horizontally.)
For example:

(Using red to show how to place the pixels)
3. Use your shading colour (2nd/3rd lightest) to go around the outline, not entirely, just 1 single pixel around. And then do your shading
Step 2 and the beginning of Step 3 are how I manually
ANTI-ALIAS, which is smoothing the lines out so they don't look so jagged. Anti-aliasing itself is just smoothing out any harsh lines (not sure if this is the actual term, but it's an option in some programs, if you've ever wondered what it meant)
4. (Optional depending on colour palette) blend the shading colour with the base colour. 1 pixel line between them.
This technique works for the sprite in its entirety (you can see I did it with the hair as well in that zoom-in)
FINAL STEP:
Never forget this one! It's the
TOUCH UP!
The last step to a good sprite is making sure you clean up any messiness, touch up any parts you missed when anti-aliasing, or just change something up if it doesn't sit right with you.
Here's my finished sprite!

And here's me after touching it up (and modifying the hair style): (and next to it, an edited version for darker backgrounds)


(The reason the one on the left looks like it's a little messy around the edges, is I used something called "pixel bleeding" to help smooth out the lines. It's when you colour a little outside the lines.)
WELL THERE YOU HAVE IT!
If you have any questions, message and I'll modify this accordingly!