Hey there. As a (somewhat) active member of this board, I thought I'd do my part to help you guys out. But, it took me a while to figure out what I could help you guys with. I mean, I have very few talents X_x... But then it hit me! I can help people with their sprite comics!

Now, I'm not saying my comic is perfect. In fact, i'd probably call it "Fairly decent", and on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd probably give it a 6. I mean, it's okay. But I'm not gonna go around and say, "Hey! My comic's the best on the net! Hah!" (We all know that Bob and George is. 8D)

But, I do know a thing or two about what to do, and what not to do, and I have quite a bit of experience, so! Post a link to your comic, or comic site here, and I'll see what I can help with!

((Don't worry! I will NOT be rude and say something like, "Dude! Your comic SUCKS! HAH!". No no, that doesn't help at all. And anyone who posts something like that on this thread will be considered SPAMMING. And I WILL contact the board admin if I see it.))

[Edited on 1-10-2004 by FlareMan]

I'm pining this topic in an attempt to get all those sprite comic discussions together. Maybe some people will have interesting tips to share.

~ Pin ~

YUSSSSSSSS!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH!! *Does the cabbage patch, the moonwalk, and the Robot, all at once.* PIN-NESS!!! WHO DA MAN!? I DA MAN!!! AWWW YEEEAAAH BABY!!!!

AHEM... Err, it's obvious I'm a bit ecstatic about having a topic I made pinned, but back TO the topic!

Here's a hint for all beginner sprite comic authors.

LEARN TO SPRITE.

I've seen some god-awful comics out there, and most of them were horrible because the sprites were poor in quality or the author didn't know how to use them. One of the most common spriting mistakes I've seen is the lack of cleanup. This is when a sprite is pasted onto one background with bits and peices of the old background still around it. This is just lazy. You should clean up a sprite by using the "Transparent Background" feature to paste it into a new area.

Here's a little how-to comic I made just now on how to paste using transparancy (For those of you who don't know.)



[Edited on 3-10-2004 by FlareMan]

Not really, but you could always wait for the ROM to come out, then get an emulator and rip the backgrounds yourself. Or find somebody who can do it already and ask them.

Now, completely unrelated to that question, I have more tips!

Beginning comic authors are prone to make a few, if not all, of the following mistakes.

BACKGROUNDS.
A common mistake that many beginners make is that they try to use backgrounds right off the bat. And once again, this can end in DISASTER if you don't know all the basics of spriting. Copy, Pasting, Recoloring, Editing... These are important to maintaining a decent background while working with sprites. Beginning authors should NEVER try to use backgrounds. Instead. Go with a simple Floor and Sky setup, where you have a line near the bottom indicating the floor. Then the top portion of space is colored for the sky, while the bottom portion is colored for the floor.

MIXED BITTAGES.
Another common mistake is the mixture of bittages. When I say "Mixing" bittages, I don't mean, like, taking a 16 bit X and making it look 8-bit, or 32-bit. A "Mixing of Bittages" occurs when you have one character, or object that is of one bittage, and then you have a completely different character or object of another bittage in the same comic panel. ALL SPRITES AND/OR OBJECTS IN YOUR COMIC SHOULD BE THE SAME BITTAGE. If you have an 8 bit comic, don't have 32 bit trees and 16-bit energy blasts...

SPECIAL EFFECTS.
Perhaps the most heinous of crimes. Beginning authors often try to create their own special effects, and they often turn out nasty. Perhaps the worst kind is when an author tries to use the Airbrush tool to make it look as though a character is charging his/her shot. Don't try effects until you become more familiar with how things need to look. You need to be VERY skeptical of your own work when you make a sprite comic. If you don't think it's absolutely perfect, then it's not.

CUSTOMS/EDITS/RECOLORS.
Another important mistake, though not the most frequently made, is the attempt at creating a customized character through recoloring, or editing... sometimes both. Once again, if you're going to attempt this, be sure that you know your spriting basics. Otherwise, don't even attempt it. Look at Bob and George, for example. They did just fine with simple recolors for quite a while in the beginning. In fact, you'll find very few edited characters in the comic itself.

That's all I can think up for now. Pay uh-tenshin! This stuff's m'portant!

Okay, the first thing that strikes me as odd is the, well... the fuzziness. Everything seems so blurred and unnatural. Do you know how you did this, or was it an accident?

Now, another thing, be sure to go through and read your script out loud. If it doesn't sound right when you voice it, then it won't read correctly, either. At the very bottom left, the purple navi says "Complete obliterate." I'm guessing he REALLY meant to say, "Complete obliteration", or maybe "Completely obliterate."

Also, to be honest, the whole "One scene, lots of mugshots" idea doesn't really work out too well. Go with the simpler idea of having several panels in which the events/conversations take place.



Unfortunately, I've never played, let alone heard of, any of those games... So I can't help you there.

Wait, why do you need to animate it??? I suppose you might be making an animated comic, but that's often more work than necessary. You shouldn't really bother.

And if you're just making an animation, then there are 2 things I can say to that.

1. This is a thread to discuss COMICS. I'd really appreciate it if you stayed on topic.

2. If you want your Zero-Edit Ryoko to run smoothly, you'll need to make sure you have ALL of Zero's running sprites edited into Ryoko poses. Then use all of those in the animation.

[Edited on 8-10-2004 by FlareMan]

Hmm... You should work on the things that your characters say. Use a spell-check if you're not sure how a word is spelled. Also, try to avoid giving personalities to characters that they normally wouldn't have. Lan WOULD be mad that Chaud defeated ShadowMan first, but I doubt he'd make a big scene out of it. (Refers to the panel where Lan is on his knees yelling at the ceiling.)

Now, like I said before, the text bubbles look like you drew them first, then typed the text in. The text is all bunched up at the left, try and get it centered within the bubble if at all possible.

The comic is good so far, but it's got room for improvement. Don't give up.

[Edited on 9-10-2004 by FlareMan]

Well, this is true. Wether or not you should use backgrounds depends entirely on your ability not to screw them up. I'm just stating this because beginning comic-authors are more likely to do JUST that.




Hmm... What program do you use to make your sprite comics?

[Edited on 9-10-2004 by FlareMan]

Yeah, but it doesn't look right somehow... Hmm...

Sure, I'd be glad to see some other sprite-comics out there.

[quote]Originally posted by Zero3.exe
Hey Flareman, would you look at my comic and see what I can do to improve? I currently have two pages ready, but I can only post them tomorrow (freewebs doesn't work on my home comp.) I'll give you links tomorrow when i get the comic up.

EDIT: ok, i have the pics up. Here are the links:

Comic #1

Comic #2

Please give me feedback on how i can improve! Thanks


[Edited on 10-12-2004 by Zero3.exe] [/quote]

Well, you get points for not having X and Zero as a gay couple...

And you also get points for not trying to make your own special laser effects and whatnot...

but, you lose points for the bittage mixing. (The 32-bit X and zero sprites, the 16 bit Dr. Light sprite. the Gameboy Advance Zero sprite, the Gameboy Zero sprite, and basically the funky backgrounds.)

Plus, the panels in the first page are hard to discern. You should never have a black background, maybe a really dark blue, but not black.

And the text is too big. Make it a little smaller so you can fit more dialogue in each panel.

Also, see if you can try to save as PNG. Not GIF or JPEG.