Billyboy's Sprite Comic Tutorial
With Adobe Photoshop

Hello there. I'm billyboy800, or if you're reading this at Drunk Duck, I am known as Billybob800. I've written a sprite comic tutorial with Adobe Photoshop for you all, because I wanted to share my knowledge of spriting with others. Hope this helps you all out!

*Note, if images don't load the first time, hit F5 and reload the page. That should do it

Sections

  • Updates History
  • A Basic Overview Of Sprite Comics
  • Getting Your Spriting Materials
  • Preparing Your Sprite Sheets
  • Starting Your Comic
  • Adding Your Sprites And Backgrounds
  • Making Your Text Boxes
  • Finishing Up
  • Finding Webcomic Hosting
  • End And Credits

    • Updates History

    December 15, 2006 Version 1.00
    First version of this tutorial.

    December 21, 2006 Version 1.01
    Fixed some mistakes regarding the drop shadow layer options screenshots (You were supposed to leave the global light options unchecked, which I did check, which I have also fixed), and fixed a mistake in the Text Boxes section where I put a blending options screenshot instead of a drop shadows option screenshot. Fixed some unaligned section headers as well. The text captions for the screenshots have been made smaller so that people can tell that they aren't a real part of the main tutorial. Also added this updates history section to the tutorial.

    December 22, 2006 Version 1.10
    Added a paragraph to the Preparing Your Sprite Sheets Section, which is the second to last paragraph in that section. Also added an optional Gradient Overlay style options screenshot to the Making Your Text Boxes section. If you don't know how to do gradient overlays, simply skip that extra style I added to the text box styles.

    December 23, 2006 Version 1.11
    Fixed a broken link in the Finding Webcomic Hosting section.

    March 29, 2007 Version 1.2
    Changed the background color to a simple dark red, because this tut isn't compatible with my new template :\
    Also changed some font sizes for some paragraphs and screenshot captions.

    A Basic Overview Of Sprite Comics

    What is a sprite comic you ask? Well, it is a comic that uses the two dimensional figures used to represent objects in a video game, which are called sprites.

    But in order to make sprite comics, you're going to need to acquire sprites, right? So let's find some. You can usually find them off of a resource site, such as The Spriter's Resource, The Shyguy Kingdom, and Sprite Database.

    But sometimes, you can't get some sprites off of a resource site, so you're going to have to rip them yourself. What is ripping? Ripping is when you take a screenshot of a game and extract a certain part out of it, such as a picture of a sprite. To rip from your computer, you're going to need a ROM for the game you want, and an Emulator for the game that system is on. ROMs are illegal, though, unless you have a retail copy of the game. So go to eBay or something and buy the retail copy so that you can avoid that lawsuit.

    But if you happen to get lucky and find the sprites you need at a resource site, make sure you give credit to whoever made that sheet. Whoever made the sheet will probably release their anger on you as if you plagiarized their work, which you probably did, since you just used their sheet.

    Getting Your Spriting Materials

    Okay, enough about all of that edumacational talk. Gather up your sprite sheets when you're ready to make your comic, and save them to your documents or something, so that you won't have to go back to the same site over and over.

    But wait! Before we start on the comics, we need to get a background! A background is just as important as the sprites themselves; without the backgrounds, the comic will feel empty and lifeless. So go get one. There's this great site called the Background Headquarters (BGHQ) that has the largest collection of video game backgrounds I have ever laid my eyes on. So fetch a few and save them to your docs, like with your sprite sheets.

    Now that you have your sprites, and backgrounds, you need only one more thing: your script! Without the script, you won't have any plans for your comic, so you practically won't know what you're doing! So type up a good script, and run a spelling and grammar check, dammit! Spelling and grammar is important, okay? I just want to get that straight.

    But to help make this tutorial more understandable, I should provide an example, eh? Okay, for the comic I'm going to make for this tutorial, I'll be making a sprite comic using Mario and Yoshi sprites from Super Mario World, and I'll use a background from SMW as well.

    Okay, for the sprites, I'll use the following sheets:

    Mario sprites:



    Yoshi Sprites:

    Now for the background. I'll use the following background for this comic:

    All right, just one more thing is left; the script. I'll type it up right now. I'll make it a one panel comic, since I'm too lazy to make a long comic :P

    Mario: You suck.
    Yoshi: Not as hard as your mom did last night.

    Well that took a while to type up. Now let's move on to the next section of the tutorial.

    Preparing Your Sprite Sheets

    Well, if you didn't notice the large header at the top of this tutorial, this tutorial will use Adobe Photoshop. I recomment you use versions 7.0 and up. So fire up PS and get ready to start spriting!

    All right, when you open Photoshop, go to File->Open, find where you saved your sheets, then open all of them. You should now have all of your sprite sheets open, all in separate windows.

    All right, before we do anything, we're going to need to resize the sprites. The reason we have to do this is because the sprites are already small to begin with, so you probably won't be able to notice them when they're in a comic, so making them bigger will put more focus on the sprites.

    Hmm...maybe I should make them four times as big. Yeah, that should do it. All right, first, go to Edit->Preferences->General, or just hit Ctrl+K. Set the Image Interpolation to "Nearest Neighbor (Fastest)", then hit Okay. If we didn't set it to this, then our sprites would look like shit when we resized them. I would tell you why, but it will just make this tutorial longer, and I want to get this over with quick. If you didn't get what to do, here's a picture that might help:

    All righty, now we should start resizing them, eh? So select one of your sheets and go to Image->Image Size. Hit the drop down menus that say "Pixels" and change it to "Percent". Now type in "400" in both the boxes that have the words "Width" and "Height" next to them. Hit OK. Now your sheet should be four times as big. YAY! If you didn't understand how to do it, the below picture should help you out:

    Now do the same resize with the other two sheets, especially with the background. If you just resized the sprites, but not the background, the sprites will look GIANT, so we should try to keep it at an even scale, so resize everything by 400, 'k?

    Oh, and when you finish resizing all of the sheets, remember to go to File->Save and save all of the changes for every sheet, okay? This way, you won't have to go through all of that resizing every time you start a comic.

    One more note, once you finish up resizing your sprite sheets, you won't have to do this part of the tutorial again because you saved your sheets, thus you won't have to go back to resizing them.

    All right, we've finished all of our preparations, so let's start on the comic shall we?

    Starting Your Comic

    Okay, go to File->New. Type in the following information for each field:

    Width = 400
    Height = 400
    Background Contents = Transparent
    Resolution = pixels/inch

    Now hit OK. You should now have a new document with a grey and white checkerboard pattern, which means it's transparent (Invisible, thus, has nothing in it.). Now go to your toolbar (The thing with all of the little buttons and the big pair of colored boxes on the bottom). You should see a big pair of colored boxes at the bottom, with one over the other, and there's a small black and white set below it. Click on the little small pair of boxes to reset the background and foreground color to black and white. If you can't find it, it's the little box in this image here:

    Click on the little pair of boxes under the big pair

    Now that you've reseted the colors to black and white, hit alt+backspace while on your comic to fill it with the background color, which is white in this case.

    All right, before we do anything else, we need to setup the rulers! Go to Edit->Preferences->Units and Rulers. Go into the units section and click on the drop down menu next "Rulers" and set it to pixels. Click on the "Type" drop down menu and set that to points. Hit OK. It should look like this:

    Make sure your Units and rulers preferences are set to this:

    Now go the layers pallet. It looks like this:

    The layers pallet looks like this. If you can't see it, hit F7 to make it pop-up:

    All right, we need to rename Layer 1 to Bottom. To do this, click on the name of the layer and then type in your desired name. In this case, type in "Bottom", then hit enter. Now click on the little icon in the layers pallet that's next to the trash can icon. Looks like this:

    Click on that icon in the layers pallet:

    When you click on that button, you should get a new layer, which will be called layer 1, if you renamed the first layer to bottom, that is. Now select your newly created layer, then select the rectangular marquee tool, which is the top left tool in the toolbar. If it isn't there, click and hold on that top left button and then select it. It looks like this:

    The rectangular marquee tool is the tool that is currently selected in the below image:

    Now go to the tool options toolbar. It's the toolbar at the top under the "File Edit Image Layer Select Filter View Window Help" menu bar thing. It looks like this:

    The tool options toolbar looks like this and is under the "File Edit Image Layer Select Filter View Window Help" menu bar:

    You should be seeing that above toolbar if you selected the rectangular marquee tool. Now click on the drop down menu beside the word "Style" and select "Fixed Size". Now in the "Width" box type in 301 and in the "Height" box type in 311, but just make sure everything looks like this:

    Make sure your rectangular marquee options look like this:

    Now go to your currently blank comic (make sure you're in layer 1!) and click inside of it. You should automatically have a 301x311 pixel rectangle. This is what Fixed Size does; it keeps the selection the same size that you specify it to be.

    Now that you have your selction, hit Ctrl+Backspace to fill with the background color, which is white in this case. Now hit Ctrl+D to deselect. You may not notice your white rectangle, since it's the same color as the layer below it. But we'll fix that by adding a thing called Layer Styles.

    What are layer styles, you ask? They're little effects that apply to everything in one layer. For example, if you have a layer style in effect for layer "X", it will only effect layer "X", not layer "Y".

    So let's apply one for Layer 1, eh? Double click to the right of the letters of Layer 1 in the layers pallet, wait a bit, and you'll have a little window that pops up that says "Layer Style" at the header of the window.

    On the menu at the left, click on "Stroke" and you should see the content to the right of that menu bar change. These are the Stroke style options. Change the size to 1 px, Position to Outside, Blend Mode to Normal, and the Opacity to 100%. Change the fill type to Color, then click on the color box (It should be red by default.) and change the color to black. Just type in "0" in the boxes that are next to the letters "R", "G", and "B". After all of that, you're Stroke options should now look like this:

    Your stroke style options should look like this:

    Now click on "Drop Shadow" on the left and the options for drop shadow should now show. I'm too lazy to tell you all of the options, so just look at the picture below for the options:

    Make sure your drop shadow style options look like this:

    Now that you have gone through all of that work, you probably don't want to do that again, don't you? There is a solution! We'll make a pre-made style, so that it will be as easy as clicking on a button. A pre-made style is a feature that applies all of your layers styles without having to go through all of that options setting and stuff. To do this, just go to the Styles pallet. If you can't see it, go to Window->Styles and the Styles pallet should show up. Click on the icon that looks just like the new layer icon in the layers pallet (But make sure you have Layer 1 selected!). There should be a new window named "Layer style" that asks you what to name your new style. Name it whatever you want (I named it "Panel stroke and shadow".) and make sure "Include Layer Effects" is checked. Hit OK and you'll have your style!

    Now all you have to do is click on the button for your new style and the layer effects will be applied. So basically, everytime you start a new comic, you can just use that style to save time

    Now go to the layers pallet and rename layer 1 to "Panel 1". This layer will be our panel for our comic. Well, the outline and the shadow for it, that is.

    Hmm...I don't like how this panel is aligned. I think it would be nice if we centered it, so let's do that, eh? Go to the Panel 1 layer and hit Ctrl+A to select all. Now go to Layer->Align to selection->Horizontal Centers. Now go to Layer->Align to Selection->Vertical centers. Hit Ctrl+D to deselect. Now your panel should be nice and centered. I guess we should save right now, just to be safe. Go to File->Save as. Name it whatever, save it wherever. You should have the following so far:

    You should have this so far:

    Okay, we're done with preparing. Now let's start working on the actual comic. To the backgrounds and sprites!

    Adding Your Sprites And Backgrounds

    All right, first of all, we need to get our background. Go to your background sheet, hit Ctrl+A to select all, then hit Ctrl+C to copy it. Now go back to your comic in progress. Hit Ctrl+V to paste it in. Now rename the new layer that the background made to "Background".

    But oh no! The background is too frickin' big! We need to get it to fit in our panel outline, quick! To do this, we'll need to "Clip" the background layer to the Panel 1 Layer. To do this, we go to the layers pallet and hover our mouse cursor in between the space between "Background" and "Panel 1". A little 8 thingy should show up in place of our mouse cursor. Click and voila! Background has been clipped in! Now the background will only be visible where Panel 1 is visible. Use the move tool (It's the little black arrow beside the rectangular marquee tool.) to move around the background a bit. I moved it so that you can see the ground and a bush, like so:

    I moved around my background to make it look like this, but you can make it look like however you want

    Yay, now we have the background set up! Now to put in the sprites. Before you do anything, make sure you have your rectangular marquee tool selected, and change the style option at the top from Fixed Size to Normal, so that you won't have to make that same 301x311 rectangle show up.

    Go to the Mario sprite sheet, find the sprite with him standing facing the right, then select around it and hit Ctrl+C to copy it. Since it's on the grey and white checkerboard pattern which means transparency, you don't have to worry about a solid color stuck to the outside of the sprite.

    Now go back to your comic and hit Ctrl+V to paste the sprite. Unlike the background, this sprite isn't frickin' huge, so you won't have to clip it. Rename the new layer Mario is in to "Mario". Move it around with the move tool so that Mario stands on the ground on the left, like so:

    Now go to your Yoshi sheet, and get the sprite with him standing there, too. Paste him into your comic, rename his layer to Yoshi, then move him around so that he's standing on the right side of the ground. But oh no! He's facing the wrong way! We should fix that. With the Yoshi layer selected, go to Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal. That should do it. Adjust his position a bit more if you'd like. You should have something close to this:

    You should have something close to this in your comic:

    All right, we're all done with the spriting! Now to move on to the part of the comic that makes it a comic; the text boxes!

    Making Your Text Boxes

    Text boxes are practically the most important thing when it comes to comics; for without them, your so-called comic would just be a regular picture!

    Also, the appearance of text boxes REALLY affects the look of the comic. The better looking the text boxes, the better looking the comic. And since you have the awesome-tastic program that is Adobe Photoshop, you can make them look so great and shiny that your eyes will melt in awe!

    Okay, to start on your text boxes, you're going to need to get your text. Luckily, you have a script, which can be found here.

    Select your text tool (It's the big frickin' T in the toolbar.), and make sure the options at the top look like this:

    Make sure the text tool options look like this:

    Now click and drag a rectangle in your comic for your text space, which is similar to doing text in MS Paint. You don't really have to make it that big, since Mario only has two words in his line. Copy and paste Mario's line from the script, then hit Ctrl+V to paste it in. It should look like this:

    Your text should look like this

    But oh no! The text doesn't have a nice box to live in! We should fix that. Make a new layer called "Mario's Word Bubble" and put it under the "You suck" text layer. Select the rounded rectangle tool (It's the tool under the Text tool. If you see some other shape, click and hold on that tool and select the Rounded Rectangle tool.). Make sure the options look like this, though:

    Make sure your rounded rectangle tool options look like this:

    Go to your toolbar, replace the foreground color (which is black.) with white. You can do this by clicking on the little arrows pointing to both of the big boxes. Now make a rounded rectangle around the "You Suck" text to make your text box. Now all that's left is to add the word bubble tail. To do this, select the polygonal lasso tool. It's the tool under the rounded rectangle tool. If you can't see it, click and hold and select the polygonal lasso tool, just like with the rounded rectangle tool. Now make sure the options look like this, as well:

    Make sure your polygonal lasso tool options look like this:

    Now click inside of the text box, then move your mouse cursor near Mario's head, click, then move it back to the inside of the text box, and make sure you form a tail with it, click, then immediately hit Enter. You should have a selection shaped like a text box tail. Now hit Alt+Backspace to fill with white, and you should have a text box tail, like so:

    Your text box should look like this:

    Hmm...that text box looks so...plain...we need to add a bit of pizzazz to it. With the help of layer styles that is!

    First, we'll double click to the right of the name of "Mario's Word Bubble" in the layers pallet, then click on drop shadow, bevel and emboss, and stroke. Since I'm too lazy to tell you all the options, I'll just provide a couple of pictures for every style:

    Drop shadow style options:

    Bevel and Emboss style options:

    Stroke style options:

    OPTIONAL!!!
    Gradient Overlay style options. Only do this option if you know how to set it up. My foreground color was DCDCDC and the background color was FFFFFF. If you don't know how to do this, simply skip this style.

    All right! After all of that, hit OK. You will now have a shiny new text box! Looks nice, doesn't it? I recomment you save a style, like how you did for your panel shadow and stroke. Remember, go to the styles pallet, hit the new styles button, then name it "Word Bubble Style". Now everytime you make a new text box layer, you can just apply that style to the text box layer just by clicking that style!

    Oh, and your text box should look like this now:

    Your text boxes should now look like this:

    You should probably have a basic understanding of how to make a text box now, eh? So I'll let you do Yoshi's text box all by yourself. Remember that you can find the script here.

    ...

    Done yet? Well, if you are, you should probably have Yoshi's text box done, and it should look like this:

    If you have something close to this, I'm so proud of you!

    Guess what. You're almost done! Hey, you shouldn't be surprised. This is a one panel comic :P

    Finishing Up

    All right, the last thing we need to do is type in the name of the comic and the credits to you and the owner of the sprites, who in this case, is Nintendo.

    First of all, go to the layers pallet and click on the little eye next to the "Bottom" layer. That layer should now be invisible, so now your comic panel is sitting on the that checkerboard. Select any layer other than "Bottom", then go to Layer->Merge Visible. You should now have two layers, the Bottom layer, and the layer with your comic in it. Make the Bottom layer visible again, then select your text tool

    Make sure that the text is aligned to the left, then click right above the left edge of the panel. Type in the name for your comic, but in this case, I'm just going to name it "Tutorial Comic".

    When you finish typing, select the layer with your comic in it to let PS know you finished typing your text. Now make the text right aligned, and click below the right edge of the comic on the bottom. Type in "All sprites and backgrounds are copyright of nintendo." hit enter, "This sprite comic was by (Your name here.)", then select your layer with the comic again to let PS know that you have finished typing again.

    Try to line up the text with the edges of the comic as best as you can with your move tool. Now we're going to crop this comic, because there's too much extra space anyway.

    Now make the Bottom layer invisible again, then merge visible layers. Make the Bottom layer reappear, them select the other layer with the comic in it. Select the crop tool (which is under the polygonal lasso tool.), and use it to make a box around everthing. Try to leave as little extra space as possible, but try to leave a bit of room as well. Hit enter once you're satisfied with your box, and it'll crop your comic for you.

    Make the bottom layer invisible again, then merge visible layers again. Select the comic layer, then hit Ctrl+A to select everything. Go to Layer->Align to Selection->Horizontal Center.

    Almost done! Now go Layer->Flatten Image. Now to File->Save as. Find a location to save it in, save it as a .PNG file, then hit Save.

    And you're done with your comic! You should have something like this:

    This should be your finished comic:

    But wait, why would you make a comic if you can't share it with everybody? You should get some webcomic hosting.

    Finding Webcomic Hosting

    Well, there are a few good webcomic hosts out there, but I'm going to show you my favorite two webcomic hosts: Smack Jeeves Webcomic Hosting and DrunkDuck: The Webcomics Community.

    Well, I'm going to start with Smack Jeeves, since it was the first webcomic host I ever used. Smack Jeeves has a boatload of features: unlimited comics, customizable web templates, optional extra HTML pages, news posting system, guest comments, multiple authors, banner uploads, and a rating system! You get all of that for free! It's a great site, so why don't you check it out now?

    But, there's another great site called DrunkDuck. It has a few great features as well, like page hit counters, chapters, simple and very customizable template, comic thumbnails, unlimited comic uploads with no file size limits, ability to upload your extra files, and the ability to backup your pages. It's free and it has a more webmaster-like experience too, so check it out as well.

    But overall, if you want a lot of features and ease, go for Smack Jeeves, but if you want very simple yet customizable features for managing your site, go for DrunkDuck. But if they don't seem good for you, you can always use Google and look around the 'net.

    End And Credits

    Well, there. That was my tutorial! Hopefully this guide has helped you learn how to make a good sprite comic and share it with the world. Good luck with your spriting, and drive safely.

    Credits

    Thanks to Nintendo for making Super Mario World.

    Thanks to The Shyguy Kingdom for the Mario and Yoshi sprites.

    Thanks to The Background Headquarters for the background.

    Thanks to Adobe for making Photoshop.

    Thanks to Smack Jeeves and DrunkDuck for hosting this tutorial.

    Thanks to ImageShack for hosting the images in this tutorial.

    Thanks to me for writing this tutorial.

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