So, here I am. New to the forum, new to the world of Cortex Command (somewhat) and already I am boldly putting myself on the line.

I've been an artist for most of my life (non-professional, of course...) and I was browsing the forums, seeing all the posts about people complaining of poor spriting. Well, I weighed my options, considered it for a bit, then made an account and downloaded something better than MSPaint. I've found out that while I am no pro spriter by any stretch of my imagination or ego, I am fairly decent and can only get better with time.

So, if you feel like you need someone to sprite something for you, go ahead and ask me! I swear on all that's holy that I will try my hardest to produce quality sprites for someones mod. I cannot guarantee that I will make awesome pieces or even that they will be exactly your vision, so for the time being, I MIGHT need my hand to be held through the process a tiny bit. But I understand the basic premise of spriting and a few other things, such as shading and adding "dimensions" to otherwise 2D objects.

I realize this community is extremely harsh on newcomers, often dismaying them to the point of just giving up, but I promise if I have some help and your patience, I can add something to this wonderful game and hopefully bring people at least 1 minute of enjoyment blowing up something I helped to create.

If you have any questions feel free to post them.
Read the stickies and rules of course.
And try not to sound desperate for help.

Welcome to the Forums.

..Ontopic, do you have any examples of your work?

I don't personally believe we are particularly harsh on newcomers. I instead believe we are particularly harsh on those which are incoherent (and which have no reason to be) or have an otherwise bad attitude. However, due to the unlikelihood of members undergoing marked changes in behavior, the most likely source of incoherency and bad attitudes are the incoming members.
With an attitude and level of eloquence such as yours, I sincerely doubt forecasts of significant tension regarding you.

Unfortunately, no. Nothing relevant. Or worthwhile. Be that as it may, if people put their faith in me, examples will arrive in short order.



From what I've read, it does seem patience is a little short with people who are new (Lafe comes to mind) but people with poor attitudes have no excuse.

Don't compliment me too much, either. I don't want to get a big head too early.

The lack of patience with lafe is generally because he isn't new, to modding or spriting. But some people just don't have it in certain areas. I probably code worse than most people around, but I get by with my stronger suits.

I'm also, like Geti, curious to see some examples of your work. I say just pick some random sci-fi guy from whatever and try your hand at creating a sample sprite. I like seeing and distinguishing everyone's own style of spriting.

Since I don't exactly know how to embed images into a post yet, here is the file. You can zoom in to see what I did. Now, as I previously stated, I am NOT a hugely experienced spriter, but I am completely and utterly open to any criticism.

As a sidenote, if anyone wants a hand-drawn rendition of your favorite CC character or anything like that, I am an extremely experienced sketch artist. Rather contrary to my spriting abilities, but so it goes.

EDIT: Well here we go. Thanks for the tip.

Upload em to www.imageshack.com and copy the first link to your post.

I prefer tinypic for spriting, but make sure you save the image as a .png beforehand anyway. Most websites convert .bmp to .jpg to save on bandwidth, which produces artifacting in sprites.

Re: the zero sprite
Not bad, but the head seems disproportionate and the details are a little iffy. It could pay to do some studies of how CC sprites work (particularly the device sprites, as they're the most pixel-optimised. It is worth noting that Arne (CC's artist) paints the images beforehand, scales them to proper size and then retouches them, which could save you a lot of time if you're already a sketch artist) and general pixel art theory before taking up spritework here, but for beginning sprites you could do a lot worse.

I followed a picture and true to weirdo Japanese style the head was as big as the torso, which coincidentally seems to be the style of CC as well. Which isn't bad, but it's strange to someone who draws portraits, see.

Anywho, yes the head is a little big, I will admit. And details are iffy indeed, but only because (out of experience deficiency) I could not find suitable colors for doing more detail, and the area to work on is so small that it's a bit of a challenge for me.

I didn't know he did that. I do magnify the vanilla sprites and I see that one color is usually not used as a pre-dominate base or shade, but more that the general family of colors is used. This offers me some good insight...

I'll do my homework. Thank you good sir.

Are you aware of how the palette system works in CC?
If not, read on.
The image itself, not just the colours, must use the palette. To do this, you either must use a program that lets you do so, or just copy paste your sprite into Base.rte/Palette.bmp and Save As over your old sprite. This is to allow CC to correctly display your sprite.

I did read something similar, but both that explanation and yours are a tad vague for me. I understand SelectAll>Copy>Paste, but it pastes it into only a small section of the pallete.

The space is not the important thing. The important thing is that Palette.bmp, as a file, has some data which restricts it to the a palette in a certain order and selection of colours. The game uses this palette to display the sprite, and if the file's palette is not the same as the game's palette, the sprite in the file is distorted.

I know what you mean, because I have attempted to respite some of the vanilla actors and they came out...almost like a negative effect filter over them. This is valuable knowledge! Very helpful.

http://abysswolf.deviantart.com/
Go and study how he does hair.
Oh also, I noticed your outlining isn't very strong/is nonexistent. In cortex command, for your sprite to fit in, you'll need to add an outline to the sprite, in a shade of the main colour of that block. You'll see this in the vanilla sprites too.