Most versions of Microsoft Paint have no anti-aliasing, so if that's what you're using, don't worry about it in the 2007 version, however, it apparently does have anti-aliasing on the Brush tool, so don't ever use the Brush tool on a sprite.
Anti-aliasing is when instead of being blocky and pixely like a sprite, a tool's output is automatically soft and blurry. Basically, don't use anything anti-aliased on a sprite. The only tools you should use on them are a one-pixel pencil tool, maybe a slightly larger eraser tool (which must, in better paint programs, be in Pencil mode), a Paint Bucket tool that definitely has anti-aliasing off, and some selection tools that also have anti-aliasing off.If you're spriting in Paint, then resize the image frame down to fit around the sprite before saving it. It's usually very noticeable and looks silly. Do not mix sprites with other types of artwork or even different styles of spriting (such as sprites from other games, with more/fewer colors, drastically different styles, etc.).By all means use the magnifier/zoom tool to make them easier to work with, but never use paint program tools to actually make the sprite itself bigger or smaller it always looks terrible. Even if somebody is holding a gun to your head. That means you should always follow these rules: This guide will not touch on trainer sprites at all, as I myself am not very skilled with them, but mostly they use the same methods applied to different sprites the main difference is that they can have a slightly different shading style.
When it comes to Pokémon, the sprites referred to are usually Pokémon sprites and sometimes trainer sprites from the handheld Pokémon games, most of the time the Advance or DS main series games except in the case of revamps.
"In-Depth Tutorials" contains more extensive material on how to master some of the techniques used in spriting.Ī sprite (note, by the way, that a "spirit" is a completely different thing) is basically a 2D image of a character or object from a video game. "Popular Spriting Categories" has several tutorials each focused on a certain area of popular spriting, such as recoloring, revamping and splicing, that go through the step by step process of making such a sprite note that there is a reason for the way they're ordered, so I don't recommend skipping straight to the splice part, for instance, just because you're most excited to start doing those. If you already have some spriting experience, you've probably figured that stuff out already it's just the very basics of spriting, what it is, preaching about not saving them as. The section "Things to Know First" is, well, things you need to know first. Scorplack, the scratch spriting example, is not to be taken at all even with credit. If you take anything else you'll have to face dire consequences. Learn to sprite here with this guide! All examples in it, aside from the official sprites, are mine and are not to be taken off this page without appropriate credit - well, except I'm not going to do anything if you steal the finished recolor examples because recoloring is the simplest thing in the world and you could as well have made it yourself.