Basic character/sprite shapes.

When I did the tutorial covering beginner mistakes, there was someone who was a little put off by the fact that the sprite I edited wasn't more basic. Now, this isn't a tutorial on how to draw complex, or even simple characters, so much as it's a few examples of how basic shapes can be used as a starting point for just about anything.







Furthermore, while basic guidelines can be used to draw characters, with pixel are they can make up a character without refining the shape much at all. In the low res example below, you can see that the character is set up exactly the same as the first guidelines above. Even the higher res sprite is just the same set of shapes with the shading doing most of the work, and features such as breasts added afterwords.


That's about it really. If you don't know where to start, then start with simple shapes, and focus more on the shading.

37 comments:

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    1. Creating/animating sprites, creating tilesets, learning and doing sound design, composing/recording/mixing music, programming, bug testing/playtesting, designing levels, and dealing with people's bullshit every once and a while.

      The only thing not on that list is CGs, because I've yet to start those, and may not include CGs anyway..

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    2. Something you're not doing, anon.

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  2. I haven't seen it in the comments so I'll ask: Do you use drawpad, touchpad/mouse or something else? I want to know because i suck at drawing but don't know where to start refining. Any tips on that?

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    1. First off, do you USE a tablet or anything? What kind of medium do you practice with?

      Base skills are most useful to build if you practice traditionally (pencil/pen and paper) and don't have something like a tablet. You can still practice digitally and you will improve but you gotta put the time in.

      Sorry I'm not Kyieru and he might give you some advice a little more helpful to mine but I think you need to specify a little more if you want help.

      Refining though... As I can see above, Kyrieru seems to have some rather neat planning lines just like me, but honestly that doesn't matter. Your rough/planning lines can be as messy as you can as long as you have them in the right place. You just want them acting as a guide for the next lines in the end, since those will improve on what you had before (indicated by Kyrieru's coloured lines).

      I've recently been trying to use quicker sketched planning lines to see what I could do with clean lines:

      Plan: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRS1IwZWcAEfnt1.png
      Clean: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRS1I0CWwAAVf_I.png

      I skipped a few steps but I've been drawing for a fairly long time and wouldn't recommend doing this otherwise it could frustrate you. It's not the best example I'm afraid but it's the quickest one I've done and practice makes you a lot better, just never expect it to happen straight away.

      I'm trying not to write too much here but to sum it up: Don't worry about things looking your very best on the first try. People call them "roughs" for a reason.
      Again, sorry I'm not Kyrieru, he's probably got some better tips he's posting for you whilst I even write this lmao

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    2. Well, not sure i understand but thanks anyway.

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    3. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough but when you say "refining", you're referring to tidied up sketches right? As Kyrieru put: basic shapes are key to getting things like proportions and anything else right.
      As for your very first question, it really doesn't matter what you use to draw as long as you find it comfortable. Drawpads (I assume you mean tablets) do take some getting used to though if you're new to it.

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    4. I use a tablet. It's much faster than a mouse once you get used to it, and well worth it.

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  3. Probably not one to use the tutorial, but I like the girl from example 2

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  4. I'd definitely like to see more tutorials/examples, they're very interesting.

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    1. Anything specific you want a tutorial on?

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    2. I'm a different anon, but I'd love to read something about how you decide the number of frames to give an animation.

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    3. I'm the same anon and I concur.

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  5. I am appreciating these tutorials a lot, as I have a lot of interest in Sprite art and animations with them. Thanks you so much for doing these!

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    1. I should redefine, I like seeing how you do your art style. Probably one of my favorite Chibi design types.

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  6. reminds me of this:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20011121151716/http://www.omgjeremy.com/drawinganime.html

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    1. The entire point is to show how simple the base shapes of a character can be. A lot of people struggle with the details because they don't lay down basic forms first, or don't understand what those basic forms can be.

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    2. Different anon.
      The problem with drawing tutorials is that there *is* no magic trick to drawing well. Anyone who tries to copy these is going to have a bad time, unless they're already good artists. "Draw some triangles and cylinders, and then make it into an anime girl!" doesn't work unless you can *already draw anime girls.* Kyrieru's a good artist with a solid understanding of anatomy and perspective. If you want to draw well, you just need to suffer through practicing a million hours, like every other artist.

      That said, thanks for the tutorial, Kyrieru. It'd be more interesting to see your actual workflow while animating and stuff, though. More usable tricks of the trade hidden in your workflow than in something like this, probably.

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    3. I'm just bad at explaining the point of the examples...

      It's not about drawing the complex versions, or teaching people how to, it's saying "can you do this initial basic version? Good, start from there". Especially since with some sprites, you could use those shapes without any of the "refining" and it would still work as a character.

      I should just take this down and explain it better -__-

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    4. Nah, don't take it down. It's still good for what it is. Better than a lot of tutorials.

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    5. Already changed it. I removed a part about joints since I'll cover that in a better way when I do the animation tutorial anyway.

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    6. I'd love to see that animation tutorial!

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    7. It'll happen at some point lol

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    8. Yes, I hope it will.

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  7. OP here, it was a joke

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  8. Yeah, so, this might not concern only pixel art, but in some ways it does concern it even more due to the limitations of low resolution:
    Do you have any tips for character design? Like, how do you make it simple using just a few pieces of clothing, yet distinctive enough that you could tell your characters apart just based on a silhouette?
    For example, with the rabbit girl character, were those sketches you showed us all that you created in the process of designing her? Do you use any defined process for sketching and coming up with designs?

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  9. Hmm...I don't know what kind of tips I would give. I can think of a lot of individual tips, but nothing I can describe in a coherent way off the top of my head. I'll have to think about it more.

    With the rabbit girl, those sketches were all I did.

    This one,
    https://i.gyazo.com/a7c8e9840b550e3a7eab320ae1c8c303.png

    Was where I "designed" the character. Instead of doing multiple sketches, I just drew and erased parts of it until I was satisfied. I focused more on the general concept, shape, and colors rather than trying to draw anything in detail.

    In my case, I usually design characters at the sprite stage, rather than designing them with drawings.

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    1. Yeah makes sense. It's probably something I'll have to eventually get a hang of on my own. I'm mostly a programmer who has art as a hobby, so I lack knowledge of what may look good and what probably won't unless I literally make a hole in the paper trying out everything. (+ Trouble making it look 3d. My shading makes it look like the character is made out of paper O_o) My first sketch never looks as good, heh.

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  10. Its already there on the image but you could point out that you fit things into the basic shapes, and the important guidelines that will give you the correct form in the bottom-right of first pic

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    1. Well, it doesn't really have to fit into the shape all the time. Depending on the style you may cut away from the shape, or you might build on to it instead.

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  11. which software do you use to make the sprites? (designing and animations?)

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  12. I have a question I've read that many spriters artist Make multiple "blueprint" such as faces body type breast size and even as far as making different color hue with their own shadow counterpart. Do you do that as well or do you completely hand do every idea from scratch?

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  13. I have a question I've read that many spriters artist Make multiple "blueprint" such as faces body type breast size and even as far as making different color hue with their own shadow counterpart. Do you do that as well or do you completely hand do every idea from scratch?

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    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A3wd1YeY-g&feature=youtu.be

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  14. Hey ky! Thanks for your tutorials, they've been really helpful.
    If it's not too much troublesome, could you do some tutorials in the process of music creating? I absolutely love your music works, and would love to see more about it.

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