Revamping Pokemon, a guide

Oh..so you want to revamp pokemon sprites? Alrighty then...
I'm not gonna take something that's easy to revamp for beginners though: A pokemon Diamond/Pearl sprite. Because I think nearly all pokemon sprites are crappy.
They have their charm to it, but they don't do much for me.
In this case: Girantina.
And for all you people that aint good at reading or don't have the patience to read. I'll keep it short.

(By the way, if you ask nicely, I might just revamp one of your fakemon...)

Phase 0: So yeah, the basic sprite that comes directly from the game:

(Source: www.pokemonelite2000.com)

Phase 1: Before we revamp, we devamp. The shading on pokemon sprites has always been lame and boring in my eyes, so get rid of it.


Phase 2: This is where we start changing some of the colours on the sprite. The pokemon colours are normaly all warm and candy like
and makes you feel like a telletubie. I don't want that though. Less saturation.
(you get less saturation if you drag the colour selector more down, to the gray.)


Phase 3: Added some basic shading to the golden parts. Remember to always set a light source before you start shading.


Phase 4: Basicly only a facelift :) This is where I basicly set the quality level I want the sprite to be overall.


Phase 5: Here is where I started shading some of the metal and the red parts.
Note that I also added some texture like scratches on the metal. This is only to make it look more like metal and less like plastic.


Phase 6: Basicly just some more detailing. Wings were shaded too.


Phase 7: Final phase, finished product. Finished all the shading. Note that you should make sure
that none of the colours are too different from each other, but not too close either.
At the gold parts: The saturation is high. And it's attached on the low saturated grey.
Too much difference can make things look unatached. (Look at phase 3-6, where I didn't change the selout to the grey.
You might also notice that this just looks wrong.)
So:
===>
(Gah, obviously all uploads went fast, except the last one that for some reason took forever...)

Huray it's done!
ber to keep it friendly!

I think it's quite good, though i'm a newbie:P

alche said:

I think it's quite good, though i'm a newbie:P

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Thanks :P
Don't be afraid to try it out though. You should always try things beyond your comfort zone :)

Good Guide!
I think it will help a lot of people (including me XP)

Viper said:

Good Guide!
I think it will help a lot of people (including me XP)

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Thank you, that's good to hear :)

Mmm, seems like a nice tut. ^^

Should the result look something like this?

Omega Latios said:

Mmm, seems like a nice tut. ^^

Should the result look something like this?

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Thanks for the comment, and thanks for taking the time for actually making a sprite with it :)
I hope you don't mind, but I made a revamp, of your revamp, so to speak :)


This adresses some of the problems I thought there were on your sprite.
There were too many colours, pixel art is all about using the least colours to get the best result.
This goes back to old consoles were pixel artists were forced to work with less colours since the machines couldn't handle alot of colours back then.
(It got quite complicated, often with only a number of colours allowed per so many pixels, and only from a set pallete etc)
However, this has still remained. I rarerlly, ever, go pass 32 colours. even on the biggest pixels I made. Since there is really no need.
So, I knocked of some colours. Especially since there were a few colours that were so close to each other you could barelly see the difference.
And, too many colours can make it look gradiented. Which is ugly.
Further, the colours are pretty nice.
But, this I should have mentioned before, less saturation is generally good. But NOT on yellow.
See, when you down-sature yellow, it becomes an army green/beige like colour.
Same goes for orange.

It's nice though, my stuff wasn't as good at your age :)

There is mine. Kinda dark to start with, but i think I did a half-decent attempt.

you know, you made some very good guide..
THis can be very usefull for some beginning spriters..
Im impressed how it turned out, very nice ;)
goodjob

Yeah this is a very good guide, it's hard to do they style you do. You know since you hav the accent colors, like the blue over the gold, and the red in the shadows. But you are amazing.

Sun_Ce said:

There is mine. Kinda dark to start with, but i think I did a half-decent attempt.

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Hey, yeah this is pretty good :)
Thanks for trying out the tut.
Anyway, it does have a few errors. Such as some cropped op colours, some banding. Also, too many colours that are too close to each other. A bit more contrast wouldn't hurt.
I might make an edit later if you'd like :)

Crossel said:

you know, you made some very good guide..
THis can be very usefull for some beginning spriters..
Im impressed how it turned out, very nice ;)
goodjob

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Thanks mate :)

Sun_Ce said:

Yeah this is a very good guide, it's hard to do they style you do. You know since you hav the accent colors, like the blue over the gold, and the red in the shadows. But you are amazing.

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Yes, that's called hue-shifting. You know the colours selector, we all do. The thing is simple:
Instead of that you take a darker part of the same colour, you make it darker, but you ALSO slide the bar a bit to the left or right. For example: You take yellow as the lightest colours, light orange as the first shade, dark orange/red as the second, and brown as the darkest.
This can give lovely effects. It's an advanced technique however, practice, practice, and
eventually you will get the hang of it.
And thank you ;)

Here are two pokemon style attempts on Bahamut. I with both only ever got as far as the baby phase then got lazy.

Well this is an impressive and very detailed tutorial (though it is a bit too specific at times), thanks for your contribution to the section. I've also gone ahead and added it to the resources thread so that others may benefit from it.

That said, you don't need 4 examples for a tutorial, so if you want, just remove those examples from your first post just so that it's only about the tutorial.

But yeah, once again, thanks~

Vipers right, This Tut will surely help many beginners :D
And... Thanx i'm gonna try it out right now!

;)

rayrayrayrayray said:

Well this is an impressive and very detailed tutorial (though it is a bit too specific at times), thanks for your contribution to the section. I've also gone ahead and added it to the resources thread so that others may benefit from it.

That said, you don't need 4 examples for a tutorial, so if you want, just remove those examples from your first post just so that it's only about the tutorial.

But yeah, once again, thanks~

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Wowa, that's awesome. Thank you =)
About the too detailed thing: I guess you can be right about that. I just wanted to miss nothing, and especially point out some common mistakes.

Bakuphoon said:

Vipers right, This Tut will surely help many beginners :D
And... Thanx i'm gonna try it out right now!

;)

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Thank you, please do!
And if you do and want critique, feel free to post it here and I'll give you my two cents =)

Nice tutorial, Opacus. It's nice to see someone attempt to turn this forum in the right direction. I just hope people don't get the impression that you're enabling them to put so little effort into a piece of artwork.

Thank you Allstories.
However, I am not entirelly sure what you mean exactly with your last sentence.

Great read and guide. Can finally teach more and more people in our community, and I liked how you presented it.

I'm going to get to work on revamps now, come here wailord! :D

Opacus said:

Thank you Allstories.
However, I am not entirelly sure what you mean exactly with your last sentence.

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It's just that so few people here actually draw their own pixel art, instead opting to just recolor and/or edit existing sprites, which might be okay every once in a while, but SO many people do it that this forum has become this vapid, artistic wasteland. Your tutorial is useful for helping people color better, but on the other hand, recolors probably aren't something we need more of.

Allstories said:

It's just that so few people here actually draw their own pixel art, instead opting to just recolor and/or edit existing sprites, which might be okay every once in a while, but SO many people do it that this forum has become this vapid, artistic wasteland. Your tutorial is useful for helping people color better, but on the other hand, recolors probably aren't something we need more of.

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Completely true. I guess I'll try to cook up a general pixel art tutorial aswell :)