Sprite Coloring Techniques
The way I see sprites and coloring, I see revamps, devamps, and recolors--with recolors broken into two categories, swaps, and choice or choosing.
This section supplies tutorials for all of those stated above.
I'm the only one I know who divides sprite coloring like this, so if you tell someone about this and they don't get it, don't be surprised; just show them the chart.
Color Swaps
Choosing Your Own Colors
Revamping
Devamping
Color Swaps
1) With color swaps, you have a choice of switching either one Pokemon's colors or 2+ Pokemon's colors. In this tutorial, we will be switching Mudkip and Torchic's colors.
So copy and paste them onto MS Paint and then use the paint bucket tool to get rid of the black boxes around them. If you are in need of the sprites, I suggest
Pokemon Elite 2000
2) Like in the splice tutorial, create a color scale. Take the colors from each sprite and organize them from lightest to darkest or darkest to lightest. Make sure you keep them organized as to what part of the sprite they are on.
So don't mix Mudkip's tail colors up with it's cheek fin colors. Since recoloring is more about coloring than splicing, you'll want to get most all of the colors. So try getting the really dark shades of the colors that make up the outlines.
Like on Torchic, there is a dark red/orange color, but there is also the color that is extremely close to black; you don't have to get the color extremely close to black, only because it doesn't have much hint of red or orange in it. Yet make sure you get the dark red/orange color.
3) Now start with the Mudkip... or Torchic, I don't care. Take the eyedropper tool and left click the lightest color of fur that Mudkip has, it should be on the end of Mudkip's fur part of the color scale.
Then, take the eyedropper tool once more and right click the lightest color of Torchic's fur/feathers. Now select the
eraser tool and hold control (ctrl). Then right click as you hold control an drag the
eraser across the lightest color of Mudkip's fur. This should turn it the lightest color of Torchic's fur/feathers.
Continue doing this until you've done it to all the colors on the Mudkip.
4) And what next? You've guessed it! Do the same thing to the Torchic except with
Mudkip's colors! You don't have to use all the colors, by the way. So don't get freaked out if you're unable to use a certain shade.
5) So um yeah... that was the last real step. So I guess step five should be "Enjoy your sprites!" Which should look
vaguely like this, by the way.
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Choosing Your Own Colors
1) First, set up your Paint and what Pokemon you plan to edit. In this case, we'll choose a Venusaur. If you are having trouble locating a sprite to use, once again, may I suggest
PE2K.com.
2) Second, make a color scale of the Pokemon's colors, like in the regular color swap and the splice tutorial. Don't forget to get the darker outline colors and the color of the stem of Venusaur's flower.
3) Third, up at the top, click on "Colors" then click on "Edit Colors...".
4) Fourth, when a popup comes up, click on "Define Custom Colors >>". This should increase the popup box with the add on of a color chart to choose colors from. There are three ways to choose your color from here. One way, is to click on the color on the big rainbow sheet of colors. Another way is to click on one of the Basic Colors and then scroll up and down on the bar on the very right of the popup by dragging the triangle in order to get the right shade. The last way is to type in the color combination in the text boxes underneath the rainbow color sheet. We'll deal with this in the next step, though.
5) Fifth, I like to pick my colors by choosing one from the Basic Colors and then choosing a shade from there. So lets make Venusaur a purple color. Since it's nearly impossible to get the same color as I did by just scrolling through the shades, we'll just have to cheat and copy the different color combinations onto your popup. Look in the picture below and copy the numbers into your own popup's text box. Once you have them in correctly, click "Add to custom colors". Then click "Ok"
6) Sixth, right click on the purple color that should have appeared somewhere down in your color palette. Then, take the eye dropper tool and click on the middle blue/green color that you took from Venusaur. Then click on the eraser button. Once this has been done, hold Control (Ctrl) while right clicking over the sprite. This should turn the blue/green color into your purple color. Drag your eraser while doing this over the sprite until all of that blue/green color has been turned purple.
7) Seventh, you just basically do the thing you just did, but with a darker color. I suggest taking your last purple color, and then taking the triangle and pulling it down, thus creating a darker shade. Even thought it's not shown in this image, the
Hue is 199, the
Sat is 104, the
Lum is 83, the
Red is 124, the
Green is 50, and the
Blue is 126. You can either type those into the color palette pop-up thing, or just scroll down from your original purple color to get what color you want. Then do what you did in step 7, but with the darker blue/green color.
8) Eighth, go back to your original purple color, and then scroll up this time, instead of down. Now, we are trying to get a color for Venusaur's highlight on his scales/skin stuff. A light purple is what we're after. Even though it's not shown in this image, the input is
Hue is 199,
Sat is 106, the
Lum is 188, the
Red is 223, the
Green is 175, the
Blue is 224. You can either place this in the input boxes, or just scroll up until you find a lighter shade of purple you want. Then once again, color over the lighter blue/green color. (If you haven't seen already, I like to cross my colors off with a red x or make some other indication to know I have used that color already, you don't have to do this. I just do to try to stay organized.)
9) Ninth, since you covered the basics, you no longer need to know step by step on how to create/retrieve a color. So I'll let you do the next colors on your own. I plan to turn Venusaur's leaves orange though, and his flower a blackish color, so why don't you try that too, just to see how to do it.
10) Tenth... well, there really isn't anything after that step to do but get rid of the color scale and save it. So, I guess that's what we'll do. I hope your sprite came out good! But if it didn't, whatever, you can change it later, right? Lol, happy spriting!
(Yes I know the sprite is JPEG'd, I'll fix it later.)
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Revamps
1) Well first is first, what is a revamp? A revamp is a sprite from an old game inwhich you edited the colors to make them match the more recent sprite's colors. So what's the first step? Open your MS Paint program and then head over to
PE2K and enter the section for Green Version sprites. I say we revamp a Green Version Zapdos. So click on the link to Zapdos and then copy and paste the image into paint.
2) Next, lets get the more recent sprite to get the colors off of. I'm thinking we use the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos. So on the page you got the Green Version Zapdos, click back a couple times until you're at the sprite resource, then click on the link to the normal Ruby/Sapphire sprites (normal as in not shiny). Once you're there, click on page two and scroll down until you see Zapdos. Then copy and paste that one into your Paint program along with your Green Version Zapdos.
3) Now, like in all the tutorials, you get to make a color scale for the two sprites. The Green Version Zapdos shouldn't be too hard though, it's only got 4 colors.
4) Like recolors, now all you have to do is well, recolor. But theres a bit more to it than that. First, lets take the lightest yellow from the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos and then recolor the color really close to white on the Green Version Zapdos. Then change the original yellow from the Green Version Zapdos into the next lightest yellow from the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos.
5) Well now it just looks wierd, doesn't it? It's supposed to look like that, though. Now lets do the beak, feet, and claws. Since the feet should have already been colored with a different yellow already on the sprite, if we were to recolor it, we would end up recoloring the whole thing. So lets use the pencil tool. First, select the middle orange color used on the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos's feet. Then, pencil over the brighter yellow on the Green Version's Zapdos with it. Do the same with the beak and any other parts that should be that color. Now as you do that, you notice that lighter yellow on the feet and beak too, right? Pencil over that with the highlight color of the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos's beak. Yay! The feet and beak are done. ...
or are they? It seems that where the claws/talons would be is colored yellow. Lets change that. This is where you need to actually pay attention. It's really your choice how large the claws are, but don't make them too long or too short. Use the white claw color from the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos to do this. Now it's starting to take some form, isn't it?
6) Now lets fix up the rest of it. At the beginning of the tutorial, we colored the Green Version Zapdos's shadow the average yellow color. Let's change that to the darker yellow color. And then lets change the rest of the sprite to that average yellow color. Also, while we're at it, lets change the eye color from yellow to white, and change all those odd yellow pixels on the border to the darker Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos border.
7) It looks like it's done, doesn't it? Well, there's just one more step. Highlighting. Remember that really light yellow from the Ruby/Sapphire Zapdos? We're gonna use that to make it look like a light it shining on Zapdos. Just use your best judgment on this step, because there really isn't a specific way on how to do it. After this, you're basically done. So congrats, you've successfully revamped a Green Version Zapdos!
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Devamping
1) So, what's a devamp? A devamp is basically the opposite of a devamp. You take a more recent sprite and recolor it with older sprite colors. Lets do an easy one for this. Go to
PE2K and click on the Green Version sprites. Then copy and paste the Ditto onto your Paint screen. Then click back a couple of times and click into the Ruby/Sapphire sprites. Once you're there, copy and paste that Ditto onto your Paint screen as well.
2) Second, make a color scale. Don't forget all the outline colors and the really light highlight colors.
3) Third, lets start changing the Ruby/Sapphire Ditto's colors. Lets start with the pink color thats one shade down from the highlight. Left click on it with your eye dropper tool and then right click on the other pink from the Green Version sprite that's one shade down from that nearly invisible white-color. Then color over the Ruby/Sapphire Ditto by right clicking and holding Control (Ctrl) over it with the eraser tool. Then, do the same for the highlight colors, (but of course, don't use the regular pink color, use the highlight colors.)
4) Fourth, we need to finish recoloring the rest of the colors. But this time, the rules change. Instead of coloring the border color another darker purple/pink color, color it that black color from the Green Version. Then color the shadow the shadow colors, (common sense.)
5) Well... this is more of just an "Enjoy Your Sprite!" step because guess what. You're done!
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