Monster, Item and Weapon Creation.

[RederickDeathwill]

I'm quite new in this hellish and bloody addicting "WAD Obssession", and I'd like to ask for some tips, concerning something that in my opinion is the most hard craft to learn.

If you could answer in a relatively simple way:

What do you do to create a monster from scratch? Or, how the creators of Doom2 designed such beautiful graphics?.

I've opened SlumpED and exported all weapons graphics. But I've failed miserably when I tried to create them from scratch. Editing them with GIMP gave me some pretty good results, but FROM SCRATCH? I sincerely don't have the proper skills to do such a thing with my actual knowledge.

And monsters are worse.

So, do you have some tips to give me? Softwares, some information on "how the hell measure the position from frame to frame", and other things that only Sprite-Artists understand?

If I obtain this knowledge, I'll be able to create more interesting WADs and start more interesting projects.

Thank you very much!!!

[Kappes Buur]

There is a small app called Sprite Maker, which supposedly is easy to use.
How good it is, I do not know.
http://www.spriteland.com/sprites/sprite-maker.htm

Hand in hand with the graphics side is giving the new sprites some sort of behaviour with DECORATE.
You could have a look at these posts

[Tutorial] Monster Spriting for Amatuers by Phobus » Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:33 am
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19406&p=378003&hilit=+tutorial+creating+sprites#p378003

[brainstorm, all contributions welcome] Total Newbie Guide by Vaecrius » Fri Dec 07, 2007 9:51 pm
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=15472&p=310575&hilit=+tutorial+creating+sprites#p310575

How Do I Edit Monsters And Weapons? by HotWax » Sat Dec 08, 2007 6:27 pm
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=310496#p310496

[EDIT 07/24/05] DECORATE Weapons Support Guide by chaoscentral » Sun Apr 24, 2005 5:10 pm
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5995&start=0&hilit=tutorial+creating+sprites

New Spriting Tutorial - Angled Weapons Up! (P. 1) by Eriance » Thu Feb 05, 2009 11:35 am
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=20793&hilit=tutorial

[Tutorial] Monster Spriting for Amatuers by Phobus » Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:33 am
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19406&p=378141&hilit=+tutorial#p378141

The Custom Sprites Tutorial Thread by Eriance » Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:13 pm
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13992&p=284700&hilit=+tutorial#p284700

http://zdoom.org/wiki/DECORATE

[RederickDeathwill]

Thank you very much!!! I'll take a look on them :).

[Doom Juan]

Saved me the effort of making this thread >:)

[Kappes Buur]

I should have also mentioned that there is a very active thread about spriting over at the ZDoom forum

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15080

if you need some inspiration :)

And mappers trying to come to grips with DECORATE

http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21885