Sprite drawing on paper?

[TwinBeast]

I was just wondering if it would be a good idea to draw the sprites/frames on paper, and then scan them to the computer?

I'm thinking I'd draw faster with pen than with computer (and maybe I would be more able to draw them from all angles). Should I then color/shade the sprites on paper, or just make the outlines and do colors/shades with computer? I'll probably have to do some final touch up with computer?

I can get some pretty interesting colors with some oil pastel crayons, although the oil pastel stuff might stick into the scanner surface...

Maybe it could work for level textures too?

Here's some examples what kind of colors I could do with the oil pastels:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/photos/paintings/minigunwarrior.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/photos/paintings/threebats.jpg
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/photos/paintings/bat_alien_4324.jpg

The first two are old and took me a few hours, but the bat_alien_4324 is new and I did that in some 45mins... So it wouldn't take insanely long time to do this kind of stuff?

[DaniJ]

In my experience you end up spending far more time polishing the scanned image than it would take to simply draw it digitally in the first place. I would recommend picking up an old Wacom tablet (the older ones can be had pretty cheaply on EBay, for example) and using that instead.

If you're a competent artist with "traditional" mediums like pen and paper, you'll probably take to drawing with a tablet relatively easily.

[TwinBeast]

Well, I just have all these art stuffs in a box and thought maybe I should do something with them... plus, it's fun to mess around with them.

[DaniJ]

Its certainly more fun and engaging using "real" mediums like oil pastels. However, for drawing sprites, which, by their nature demand careful and clean lines - I think you'll have better success with a wholly digital production method.

[zzzornbringer]

hey, id used clay models and digitalized them for the original doom. didn't work too well though because clay+heat=you get the idea.

i think it's at least interesting to traditionally paint something and scan it. but i'm no artist. no clue how much effort it is to polish the scanned image to use it as a texture for a game.

just try it out, see how your workflow is, if it's fun for you. that's the most important thing, the fun, and the end result of course. how you achieve it should be up to you.

[NiuHaka]

I second what Danij said and HIGHLY recommend getting yourself a wacom tablet. There is just no way to appropriately explain how good it feels to use one. The results will probably surprise you if you have a good digital "painting" program like painter or even photoshop. Painting digitally yields much quicker results and will save time on color/hue and blending etc. etc. etc. that you would have to do with scanned images.

[TwinBeast]

Maybe I'll get a wacom tablet, but meanwhile I think I'll give drawing on paper a go.

I thought I'd draw some stuff with pencil, then scan them and print.. and paint colors on the prints, and then scan the colored prints. This way I could keep the original simple line drawings intact.

I also thought I could take photos of me in some poses/angles, then draw stuff over them.. but that would probably work on human/humanoid characters only.

[kristus]

I've used this method while working on Phobia. For technical reasons I recommend you use a medium that lets you work with light and darkness easily. I for instance used coal. I also recommend you draw in black and white and use a program like photoshop to color the sprites. This makes it a lot easier for you in scanning and correcting the drawing. As well as getting colors that are working well with the colormap.

[TwinBeast]

I tested with drawing a Doomguy standing. I tried drawing with pencil, then color with computer.. and also tried painting with oil pastels, but that didn't work so well. I used a 7cm * 7cm area for the sprite. One A4 paper would then fit 12 frames or 24 if I use both sides (but the scanner might scan the other side a bit too).

I didn't do much fine tuning, colors might go a bit over the lines... Pretty much just cleaned the borders.

Pencil, color with computer:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/doomguy_test_01_sprite.png
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/doomguy_test_01_ingame.png

Pencil, color with oil pastels:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/doomguy_test_02_sprite.png
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/doomguy_test_02_ingame.png

Maybe better just color with computer. Not sure yet about shading with pencil or with computer.

edit and then I also decided to test with my photo:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/photo_test_sprite.png
http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/photo_test_ingame.png

Reminds me of some old adventure games...

[fraggle]

Some of the Freedoom zombies and other monsters were originally drawn by hand and scanned in (by an artist named Saint of Killers). A few tips for you:

• Drawing on paper and scanning in means that you'll get white bits around the borders. You have to be very careful in cropping the edges. I don't know if you can mitigate this by going round the edge with a black sharpie before you scan in or something similar? With Freedoom, I and others had to carefully go through the scanned sprites cutting out the "sparkly" pixels that were left on the edges. They really stand out against the in-game dark background.
  
  It looks like you've done a pretty good cropping job in the example sprite you've posted but there are a few sparklies visible there. View them against a dark background (instead of cyan) and they stand out better.
  
  
• Don't forget to adjust for aspect ratio. Doom's sprites are stretched vertically by 20% when they're shown in game. That means that you should "squash" your sprites down vertically by 17% so that what you draw will match what you see in game. I didn't know about this when the Freedoom sprites were done, which is why all the zombies look too thin.
  

[Shadow Hog]

The Freedoom zombies were hand-drawn? Funny, they always looked like plasticine models to me.

[NiuHaka]

If you use photoshop you can just have your drawing be multiplied over your color layers in several different ways so you don't actually have to worry about white pixels. There are all kinds of wonderful ways to avoid that.

[TwinBeast]

I have paintshop...

Anyway, I decided to try some HUD sprites, and try more photo sourced sprites. I made a pistol and a sword, since I have some old plastic ball shooting pistol and a sword. The pistol worked just fine, but the something weird with the sword.

I thought player would hold the sword pointed up with the tip being somewhere high above, but apparently that wasn't a good idea... It seems to tile from the bottom: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/sword_error.png Also when the sword is raised/lowered, or bobbed in fullscreen, player can see it cuts off from the top...

Looks ok when swinged: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/sword_swing.png

And the pistol: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/pistol_recoil.png

I have some blue sheets that I can place on the floor or maybe hang on a wall, so I can use them as backgrounds. Don't know if I'll continue with photo sprites. Not exactly the style I want to go for.

And, yea I do plan to remove any unwanted bright pixels in borders in final quality sprites. The current ones are experiment quality...

[kristus]

Jimi said:

I thought player would hold the sword pointed up with the tip being somewhere high above, but apparently that wasn't a good idea... It seems to tile from the bottom: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/sword_error.png Also when the sword is raised/lowered, or bobbed in fullscreen, player can see it cuts off from the top...

Sprite height limitin Doom is 128. If you go over that you get glitches like that.

[Pottus]

Some of the original sprites were done against a blue screen with actual models. I don't know how you feel about making models adjusting their positions and take pictures but it might be the fastest and most consistent way to generate sprites just a thought.

[TwinBeast]

I've only done some crappy clay models. Well, anyway I think I want to draw them. I think I'll try drawing some animated character tomorrow.

Mmh.. all the sword sprites were over 128, but only the ones that were 200 pixels tall had any errors.

[NiuHaka]

Cool. Those remind me of witchaven. Wanna see more.

[TwinBeast]

I need some more practice... I have drawn about nothing in the past few years. The diagonal angles were kinda difficult, they look more fitting for some isometric game. Maybe they became a bit too blurry too. Here's a pic: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/testchar_ingame.png

I also tried some drawing with computer last night, but these were just some simple item models: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/doom/health_ingame.png Maybe I try more of this, at least they look sharp/clean.

[NiuHaka]

hmmm... the npc sprites don't mesh well with that awesome weapon sprite. I know this is kind of getting off the topic of "drawing" but I wonder how feasible it would be to take photos of real people for your npc sprites the same way you did the hand. Hell, just having a TC with all textures and sprites that were taken from real life photos would be an incredibly charming creation IMO. Would only work with a source port because of the limited number of sprites you've got in vanilla but I'd play a Limit Removing TC like that.

[TwinBeast]

I guess it depends how many different characters I do. And then how do I ask if someone wants to be photographed as some enemy character in a game? Well, anyway, I think I have to use photos for references and draw stuff over them, so that they don't all look like me wearing different clothes.

I guess this thread is now more about different methods on how to make sprites..

[Vader]

I think it looks ok, except for the 4/6 frame, wich indeed looks like it's from a game with isometric view!
In general, I have to echo what most people around here already pointed out:
Drawing sprites on paper is time-consuming and not worth it in the end!
I tried it myself, but the lack of flexibility and the fact that you can't easily edit frames on paper makes this approach a pain in the ass. Coloring is a different story, but similary frustrating!

If you have some interest in art-related stuff and you know how to do rather simple edits, I recommend to get yourself into sculpting!
I'm not talking about high-detail models or anything like that, but just a proper source to base your sprites off.
Personally I just started to work with usual child-friendly putty, and after taking a few pictures of a really basic model
in front of a blue background, I can already say that it works great!
I'm not yet at the point to show anything, because the frames need quite a bit of post-processing, but again;
If you're comfortable with small scale clean-up work and you know how to color things in your graphic-program of choice, this method really works wonders.