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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - Modern Art - Please [READ THIS] before showing off your new sprite comic. |
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Cymoro Administrator                Since: 11-17-05 From: Cymoro Gaming Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| Modern Art is not the dumping grounds for "RECOLORED TAILS AND THE CHAOTIC EMERALD MARIO HOUR INSANE" types of sprite comics. If you are really willing to make a decent sprite comic, ask about some pointers before you head off into MSPaint. I'll list a few here, then rant on what will happen if your comic has all the opposites at once.
I even added pictures for those of you that suck at reading, or want this in a tl;dr format. 1) Remember to resize your sprites to proportion, and not to make them bigger/smaller in ratio to normal-sized sprites. Oh god, the horrors I've seen. If you want to make a sprite larger, ask yourself, why? Did you need the camera to zoom in to them? Well, that's fine, dynamic angles are a plus. However, when resizing, please, for the love of god, use the Stretch option in Paint. The bounding box (dashed-line that appears around what you selected) is not meant for sprites, it's meant for solid-color areas. Look at the example I provided: 
See Junkman? When you resize his sprite using Stretch (Ctrl-W is a handy shortcut), the pixels stay proportionate, keeping the level of detail in ratio with its original. Using the corner on the bounding box, not so much. Most of the detail is lost with constant resizing to get it right, If you were to flatten the box to 1 px long, them put it back to normal, you'd get a big gray blob. Also, please, don't enlarge sprites to make them bigger than other characters. If there is a more detailed sprite that is naturally larger (Giant Goombas in SMB3 or Banzai Bills in SMW), then use that in place of an enlarged one. However, if there isn't a larger version, then try and make one! Enlarge a normal one to 200% and try to give it the level of detail other characters that large are. You have to apply some effort when making a comic, and modifications are part of it. 2) Recolors. No. None. Never. 
See what I did? I made four two-tone recolors of X in less than 5 minutes. Yeah, that little green blob is him too. Recolors take almost no effort whatsoever, and are majorly frowned upon because of the fact that they, well, suck. If you want to use a sprite for the base of an original character, modify it. Change the clothing, facial structure, just reshape the base as-needed. Get original and creative. Even one pixel can add the biggest facial feature or exp However, don't just change some colors and then go "IM DONE LOL", otherwise I'll be delivering a kick to your groin using FedEx overnight shipping. I hear it's quite fast. 3) Use readable fonts and proper spelling/grammar. The text can make or break a comic. Unless you rely purely on sight gags, it's of utmost importance. I've seen so many comics abuse Comic Sans MS that it's reached a low only recolors could acheive. Please, people, there are fonts that are meant for reading. Verdana, Tahoma, and maybe Arial are well suited for text, as they're constantly used in websites that are meant for readability. However, if the font is too fancy, or just doesn't look good without anti-aliasing, do not use it. That includes: - Times New Roman - Comic Sans MS - Courier New - Impact These are huge offenders, and nearly never work. Another thing to remember is that big words suck big balls. Size-wise, that is. Most of the time, 8 px fonts look beautiful and add functionality. This also allows room for more text and for higher visibility. Let me demonstrate: 
As you can tell, the Mega Man on the left is using a readavle font with a nice box surrounding it. Remember that if you're going to add a box with a background, make sure to make the text first. Draw a box around it, and moce it out of the box. Fill in the box with a color, and re-insert the text. Now, the Mega Man on the right is suffering from a severe case of retardation due to all the pot it had to smoke to keep itself from suffering any more pain. Spelling and grammar are also key; I'm not saying you have to be the best speller in the world, or that you need to be a punctuation nazi, but when your text is mostly capital letters and sounds batshit retarded when spoken out loud, you need to re-write what you have. 4) JPGs suck, GIFs suck, BMPs suck. Go PNG. File formats are an important issue. Some don't look as good, while others just aren't compatiable. So, which should you go for? Why, PNG of course. In the world of MSPaint, your options are limited to JPG, BMP, GIF, and PNG, each with their own positives. So, why am I advocating some unheard of format? Because it's a space saver, and keeps the quality at a maximum, plus it's compatiable with most to all browsers. I'll break down each one individually, though. - JPG/JPEG STAY AWAY. This format is meant for photos, not solid colors. If you use this, your comics will become compressed and look like blurry shit. Not cool. - GIF Unless you use another program to save your work, GIF is not good. It limits the picture's color palette to 256 colors, and if you use Paint, you don't get to pick what they are. The colors in your comic will then be changed to appease the premade 256-color pallete Windows has. It's not pretty. - BMP This format preserved perfect quality for all the pictures in Paint, due to it being a Windows proprietary format. However, the files are huge, and aren't compatiable with some browsers and those people using Mac computers. - PNG Perfect quality, with only a bit more space than a JPG. Is also compatiable with most browsers, which is a big plus. Go for it. I swear to god, people who don't listen at all really get to me, and get no sympathy whatsoever when their comics are ripped on. This here is essentially a disclaimer saying that if you didn't read this, and posted your half-assed shitty work anyway, I'm going to take quick, justified action against your ass. I'll update this at a later time. As for right now, I'm going to go relax, knowing that people won't be stupid or brazen enough to defy these great tips. (edited by Cymoro on 12-08-05 08:36 PM) |
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Yoshi Dude TO HELL WITH THIS        Since: 11-17-05 From: Fleepa Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| THANK GOD.
It's amazing. NOTHING about content is mentioned, just the basic stuff anyone can easily do, and yet any comic can look decent with these guidelines. So much crap we've seen.. oh man. If only! |
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Kattwah Acro RIP Acmlm's Board: Feb. 18 2007   Since: 11-17-05 Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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I put this somewhere earlier... re-posting for emphasis.
Now... what does this quick little short, slightly informative, not meant to be terribly funny comic do right? -Oh, look at that... normal sized sprites... that fit on the page, and look decent. -And a very nice, non clashy FG and BG to fit 
-What a happy, 8pt sized font we have 
-No recolors... yay... -PNG... wewt. Now, on the negative side, there are few custom changes... but thats only slightly inconvenient. Please note that this comic was only meant to give an example of what a decent comic should look like... something that you would actually consider posting. PS: Cymoro, you are a savior to people everywhere for making this topic. (edited by KATW on 12-08-05 10:29 PM) |
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Cymoro Administrator Since: 11-17-05 From: Cymoro Gaming Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by Yoshi Dude Your mom didn't mention content >( There's a few thing I have to add, and two sections are going to be dedicated to content (humor and storylines), not to mention a few more. (My sarcasm meter is also down for the week due to having bad luck, so forgive me for any serious business D: ) |
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Xkeeper Took the board down in a blaze of glory, only to reveal how truly moronical ||bass is. Since: 11-17-05 From: Henderson, Nevada Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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JDavis Nintendo Fanboy Local Mod Affected by 'The Golden Power' +  Since: 11-17-05 From: Ada, OK, USA Last post: 6312 days Last view: 6300 days |
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What's wrong with Comic Sans?  |
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Xkeeper Took the board down in a blaze of glory, only to reveal how truly moronical ||bass is. Since: 11-17-05 From: Henderson, Nevada Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by JDavis It's overused and tends not to look that good in sprite comics. |
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JDavis Nintendo Fanboy Local Mod Affected by 'The Golden Power' + Since: 11-17-05 From: Ada, OK, USA Last post: 6312 days Last view: 6300 days |
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| It looks fine in mine.
Of course, I use Paint Shop Pro, so it's anti-aliased and I don't bold it 99.9% of the time (there have been occasions of bold when a character was yelling, but then it is also increased in size). |
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SantaMushroom Bit  Since: 11-19-05 Last post: 6301 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| I'm overall crap at sprite comics. In fact, i basically suck at most forms of art or comics. I am just one of those people that need to practice. A lot, infact. Let me get out one of my comics.. Wait.
I'm just going to tell you. It all is talking faces, and a stickman. Anyone that can help me more, like with some good dialouge tips, or even one liners, |
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Yoshi Dude TO HELL WITH THIS Since: 11-17-05 From: Fleepa Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by EvilMushroomProvided that you stick to good grammar and all, the only thing left is the content. Don't write down the first thing that pops into your head and show it off. It'll probably be stupid. Write it down, let it sit for a while, look at it again later.. is it still funny? Can any improvements be made? Should this writing be trashed? Show a few friends, get pointers. Heck, you can post it here. If you put in a good effort, it will show, even if the content itself bombs. People will be more willing to help you out. That's just one method of perfecting your comic. No inside jokes. 
Um.. yeah. Dialogue is much more difficult to guide, because a lot of it is just talent. You can make a sprite comic look good with practice, but sometimes people can never become a humorous or interesting writer. Just keep working at it. Comics improve with practice. |
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Cymoro Administrator Since: 11-17-05 From: Cymoro Gaming Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| Some suggestions for content: Do not get ideas from sitcoms or family-friendly TV. A much better type of humor to zuse is British. Wastch some Monty Python, Red Dwarf, and read a few Douglas Adams books. I'm not saying take material from them (i.e. A comic that says NI NI NI NI 42 ITS COLD OUTSIDE), but try to model your writing after it. | |||
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Zem Permabanned. Flaming, trolling, reregistering. Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6622 days Last view: 6622 days |
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| Excellent thread. A+. Would read again
Content is a bit harder. Lemme see if I can articulate a couple things though. One thing that I've seen a lot... people planning to introduce OHNO PLOT TWISTS in their comics and making use of AWESOME FORESHADOWING like having some shadowy bad guys give vague, shadowy pronouncements in a shadowy room. "DOES HE SUSPECT ANYTHING YET??" "NO." "GOOD SO YOU CAN BETRAY HIM. IN THE FUTURE. AND PEOPLE WILL GO LIKE OMG." Having a plan and hinting at craziness to come is fine and all, but make sure it's not completely predictable and stupid... and if you're planning ahead, try to really think through everything so you don't end up having to do a bunch of lame retcons (that is, changing things that already happened in the comic (or coming up with absurd situations to explain why they were NOT WHAT THEY SEEM) to fit in with what you decided your NEW plan is). Self-insertion comics about you and your friends are usually lame. Just something I've noticed. Don't think I've ever seen any good ones. Please, please, please re-read the dialogue and overall flow of a particular comic to ensure that it makes sense. Imagine you're someone else seeing it for the first time and just think whether it's easy to tell what's going on. I've tried to struggle through way too many comics where each panel was filled with characters, motion lines, and word bubbles of unknown origin and no clear sequence. Oh, that's another thing, word bubbles. For whatever reason, even the best-produced sprite comics out there have occasional slip-ups where you naturally read the word bubbles in the wrong order and have to go back over them to make sense. Most amateur sprite comics are filled with this kind of thing, and it makes reading through them twice as hard and makes them suck twice as much. Even if it causes a little more clutter, make sure that A) it's clear who's talking and B) it's easy to read left to right, top to bottom and you'll get the dialogue in the right order. Sometimes this takes a little finagling to get right, but it's worth it. That's all I can think of for now. |
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Riku Sledge Brother Unpredictable. Watch your backs. Or not. Whichever. I want Metal Gear Solid 4 so badly. Since: 11-17-05 From: Tompkinsville Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| *Copies and saves in wordpad*
Main things: - Jokes - Grammer (D
- Text?
So yeah, thanks. |
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Simon Belmont Except I'm totally fucking hyped about Dracula X: Chronicles.  Since: 11-18-05 From: Pittsburgh Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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Originally posted by Cymoro WINS |
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Deleted User Banned Since: 05-08-06 Last post: None Last view: 6300 days |
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| Also, make a step about using the jokes and context.
Bad: Why did something cross the road, Megadeux? ---------- Your butt! Ha! Good: (Insert Megadeux saying something new and fresh to ZZT here)  (edited by Shyguy on 12-14-05 07:26 PM) |
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Alastor Fearless Moderator Hero  Since: 11-17-05 From: An apartment by DigiPen, Redmond, Washington Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6299 days |
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| to Shyguy:
... What? Both of those seem bad to me. |
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Deleted User Banned Since: 05-08-06 Last post: None Last view: 6300 days |
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Meh.... Tried to pop it off the top of my head.  |
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JDavis Nintendo Fanboy Local Mod Affected by 'The Golden Power' + Since: 11-17-05 From: Ada, OK, USA Last post: 6312 days Last view: 6300 days |
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| I agree with Alastor for once. Amazing. | |||
Shadic The Adventure of Link Perfect Member Since: 11-18-05 From: Olympia, Washington Last post: 6305 days Last view: 6302 days |
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I... Don't fine that a bad use for comic sans... Even though it's you know, bolded and what-not. I've been using Comic Sans for awhile, but I guess I'll find another, smaller font. By the way, that's an old-as-hell comic that I did awhile ago, and gave up on. |
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Smallhacker Super Koopa I AM A Group Of Officially Frustrated Younglings, G.O.O.F.Y. MEMBER |
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Originally posted by Shyguy When did they rename Megazeux? |
| Pages: 1 2 | Add to favorites | Next newer thread | Next older thread |
| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - Modern Art - Please [READ THIS] before showing off your new sprite comic. |
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