Which tools are used to design Sprites?

[The Doommer]

What tools are used to make Doom/Wolf3D-like sprites?

Because I only heard about Blender usage but that'd be for 3D models, no?

[Cacodoomonic]

14 hours ago, The Doommer said:

But how would you properly model them there?

What do you mean? You mean you want to use a 3D base? If you want to do that then you have two options, both of which will include additional steps. Yes, if you want to use a 3D model to turn into sprites, you will need a model viewer (XNALara is one I used to use about 11 years ago, but if you want to make 3D models from scratch then you'd need something like Blender I'd imagine. I don't do 3D modelling as I use the second option listed below.

 

Second option: Digitize a real life puppet. I have done this several times. It is how most of Doom's monsters were created originally. Create a stop-motion puppet, photograph it at all angles and animation frames then digitize. Both options are time consuming, maybe even expensive in some cases. One of my projects has a dedicated sprite artist, (in fact it's had 2) and they used both blender and puppets.

 

However, all this said, your first post indicated you just want to make sprites from scratch without a model base. So in that case, I would recommend just taking a sprite from Wolf3D or DOOM, opening it in paint and using it as a base or taking measurements from it to hand draw all your new sprites. It is tedious and time consuming but this is something I do so often now that it seems almost simple. 

 

If you want to make new monsters from scratch, just draw them pixel by pixel. You could also modify existing sprites this way. You can do fancy effects and colour tricks in gimp, using layers and effects (this is only a brief description). 

[Nihlith]

I use GIMP https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

But any image manipulation program that allows you to paint pixel by pixel could work if it saves in png format.

[Cacodoomonic]

21 hours ago, The Doommer said:

What tools are used to make Doom/Wolf3D-like sprites?

Because I only heard about Blender usage but that'd be for 3D models, no?

MS Paint and GIMP are the only 2 tools you'll need.

[prfunky]

http://chapsoftware/spriteColoring.htm

[Rifleman]

In addition to the above, I use GraphicsGale.

[RataUnderground]

Aseprite is very friendly for sprite making. Also, I would recommend Krita too.

[The Doommer]

On 12/7/2023 at 11:09 PM, Cacodoomonic said:

MS Paint and GIMP are the only 2 tools you'll need.

But how would you properly model them there?

[The Doommer]

3 hours ago, Cacodoomonic said:

What do you mean? You mean you want to use a 3D base?

Not necessarily, it's like creating your own sprites from scratch

But how would you shape them properly?

 

3 hours ago, Cacodoomonic said:

If you want to make new monsters from scratch, just draw them pixel by pixel.

Is there any sort of tutorial so that you can draw actual coherent shapes instead of badly-designed sprites?

 

3 hours ago, Cacodoomonic said:

So in that case, I would recommend just taking a sprite from Wolf3D or DOOM, opening it in paint and using it as a base or taking measurements from it to hand draw all your new sprites. It is tedious and time consuming but this is something I do so often now that it seems almost simple. 

So it's a matter of a lot of practice with already-existing Doom/Wolf3D Sprites?

 

And how would you scale up Wolf 3D Sprites to match the Doom engine system? Because back then when I used the Wolf3D sprites they looked extremely tiny

[Nihlith]

If you use GIMP you can scale your images before during and after you're working on them. If the final product is not the same size as you want the entity to be in game you can scale the sprite in the script so that it appears to be the right size. 

[The Doommer]

I appreciate the help from everyone here

I'll start doing some model changes and see how it'd go