Jack Viscer - Sprite Process

So after far too many nights of arting until 2 in the morning, I have a nearly finished sprite for Jack. Currently, due to the limited amount of time I'm spending on Endgame, I'm not actually completely finishing any sprites. I'm doing their base shading, default expression, hair...and clothing designs. I'm not actually shading their clothing, or creating any additional expressions or poses for them. 

Just kind of doing the bare minimum so that when we do to official announcement for this project, I have enough to show off to get people interested. 

Anyway, I did want to kind of show off the process of creating a sprite. Eventually, I'll do a more detailed process/tutorial on how I'm doing the shading for the art in this project (it's very different from the shading I did in Changeling, and will be much easier to replicate in CGs and, hopefully by other artists so I can hire more help. LoL)

On to the process! 

When you're working on a large project that requires creating a large amount of artwork fairly quickly, most artists start looking for ways to speed up the process. For me, it's about references and models to speed up the concept and sketch phases.

I typically start with a photo reference that has the general pose I want to use for a given sprite. It can be really hard to pose sprites in a way that is natural and at least somewhat visually interesting. (It's always about where to put the arms. LoL) For endgame, I want to do minor pose variations, but as the sole artist (for now), those things are always lower on the priority list because the game can be functional and engaging without killing myself to make five poses per sprite or something.

For now, I'm just trying to get the basic pose set.

So yeah. I start with a photo - typically pulled from a stock resource site. I don't like referencing too heavily from photos , so my next step is to create a "doll" model that is loosely based off the photo pose. This model will form the foundation for the sprite sketch. Most 3D modelling programs allow you to adjust the default model for size and build but all of them have weird anatomical quirks or articulation problems that will prevent you from making a perfect model.

My models are just used as guides so it doesn't matter if it's not 100% correct. I just try to get it close enough to use as a springboard.

You can see below, that the sprite is posed similarly to the inspiration photo but ultimately looks very different because the body, head and legs are angled quite differently.

Next, I start sketching my sprite directly on top of the doll pose. Using the doll as a guide for my sprite sketch saves a lot of time and keeps sprite anatomy pretty consistent across the characters. I don't have to worry about general proportions as much and the pose itself is already there for me to follow.

That said, directly tracing the doll and going with that as the final sprite is generally a bad idea. It'll save a lot of time, but the drawback is that the sprite is probably going to look weird. As I mentioned, all doll/model programs have inaccurate anatomy and posing. They often are weirdly stiff through the shoulders and neck area, and don't have naturally articulated hands either.

In addition, you have to be able to pose them naturally from the start - using a photo (or yourself) for pose inspiration helps with this. But, in the end, if your sprite starts out with an unnatural pose that you just trace, your sprite will also have the unnatural pose. 

In addition, there are always issues with translating a 3D figure into a 2D plane.

The doll works as a good guide to speed you through the process of blocking in your sprite and getting the basic anatomy down. But you have to take time to refine and correct (and that means being able to spot where the corrections go.) 

So once I get the basic sketch, I turn off the model and do a lot of flipping, sketching, flipping back, correcting, adjusting, etc.

Even though the general form and positioning are the same, I altered the head size and position,face alignment, changed the neck structure, changed the shoulder slope, arm size, hand position, torso shape, leg and foot position, etc. 

I also never use the lighting/shading on the doll to help with the final shading. You'll see that in the next images.

Once I have the rough sketch for the sprite base, I create a smooth line art and do a flat color fill. At this point, the doll base has done its job and I don't refer back to it anymore. Usually for shading, I may reference specific parts, but never a full image. (For instance, I may look at some images of abs to get the shading over the tummy done. But for the most part, I don't reference the shading.)

For the first round of shading, I use a variety of soft and hard brushes set at varying opacity to block in, blend and erase. I try to use a mixture of soft edges and harder edges without over-blending. This style is a lot less "painterly" than what I did for Changeling but it's no where close to "cell shading" either. One major diffence is the amount of detail in the face. There's generally just less shading through the face than what I did in Changeling. I'm hoping this makes it easier to replicate characters in CGs.

Overall, this style is still much easier than Changeling because it uses layer styles to achieve affects rather than using a lot of colors and time-consuming blending between colors. For the first time, I usually use 2 colors only; a lighter one and a slightly darker one. Adjusting opacity helps me blend between the two. (Contrast to Changeling, where I had about 4 - 6 shadow shades that went from warm/light ---> cool/dark.)

The next step is to use two more layers to cool down the shadows, and add a touch of warmth to face, fingers, shoulders, and other areas. I did this in Changeling too. This helps the skin look like, well, skin, and just adds dimension. No one's skin is just varying shades of the same color - skin has a ton of different colors in it and while I'm trying to keep the shading simpler for Endgame, adding an overlay of purple - and another of pink - to certain areas of the sprite does give that color variation without taking too much time to do.

Final step is highlighting. I tend to go pretty easy on the highlights since I don't want them to look shiny. I just want them to have a little more depth and warmth.

Obviously additional parts to the sprite are adding the face, hair, clothes, etc. Even after the base is "done" I'm prone to going back and making minor adjustments. Jack has already had a few tweaks done since I put these images together because I can see some small issues with various parts.

Anyway, that's kind of the general process for creating a sprite. As I said, I'll do a post soon where I go more in depth regarding the actual shading process and how I set my layers up.

Hope you guys found this interesting!