Recoloring Sprites for Pokemon Prism
So you want to help out with the sprites for Pokemon Prism? That's awesome! We could honestly use all the help we can get. A project thread will be posted up on PXR in due time, but for now, take a look at this tutorial.
You're probably thinking something like, "Why do I need to read a tutorial? I already know how to recolor."
This is a valid concern. However, over the course of recoloring sprites for Pokemon Prism and showing some other people how it's done, I've realized that there's a little more to it than what it seems like.
You're probably thinking something like, "Why do I need to read a tutorial? I already know how to recolor."
This is a valid concern. However, over the course of recoloring sprites for Pokemon Prism and showing some other people how it's done, I've realized that there's a little more to it than what it seems like.
Selecting a Sprite to Recolor
A lot of 2D sprites of Pokemon have been made over the generations; this is especially true for Pokemon from the 1st generation. In Pokemon Prism, we don't recolor the same exact sprite for every color of the same Pokemon: that would be much too boring. Instead, we use as big of a variety of different sprites as we can--that is, minus generation V and VI Pokemon, since we have a very limited selection on those.
As stated before, Pokemon from generations I and II have plenty of sprites to select from: Ruby and Sapphire; Emerald; Fire Red and Leaf Green (for Gen I Pokemon); Diamond and Pearl; sometimes Platinum; HeartGold and SoulSilver; and Black and white. Ruby and Sapphire are the lowest you can go. Please do not use any sprites from Gold, Silver, Crystal, Green, Yellow, Blue, or Red.
With this being said, first choose which sprite you want to use. For Pokemon who have at least one sprite done for them already, the sprite that you need to use will be listed in this Google Spreadsheet.
For the sake of the actual forum spriting project that I plan on starting, though, let's keep it down to only being allowed to recolor for Pokemon whose sprites have already been decided by one of the PP staff. I'm sorry, that was one of the most awkward sentences I have ever typed. I'll fix it up later....
So for this example, let's use Rattata and Raticate. We'll use the male sprites, just for the sake of simplicity.
As stated before, Pokemon from generations I and II have plenty of sprites to select from: Ruby and Sapphire; Emerald; Fire Red and Leaf Green (for Gen I Pokemon); Diamond and Pearl; sometimes Platinum; HeartGold and SoulSilver; and Black and white. Ruby and Sapphire are the lowest you can go. Please do not use any sprites from Gold, Silver, Crystal, Green, Yellow, Blue, or Red.
With this being said, first choose which sprite you want to use. For Pokemon who have at least one sprite done for them already, the sprite that you need to use will be listed in this Google Spreadsheet.
For the sake of the actual forum spriting project that I plan on starting, though, let's keep it down to only being allowed to recolor for Pokemon whose sprites have already been decided by one of the PP staff. I'm sorry, that was one of the most awkward sentences I have ever typed. I'll fix it up later....
So for this example, let's use Rattata and Raticate. We'll use the male sprites, just for the sake of simplicity.
So now that we finally figured out what sprite we're going to use, now we need to figure out a color. For the sake of the project, you are only to focus on pure colors. Pure colors are the following hues: 0%, 30%, 60%, 90%, 120%, 150%, 180%, 210%, 240%, 270%, 300%, and 330%. Since MS Paint and like programs measure the hues differently, here's a palette of each color that you can copy and paste into your image editing software.
Let's get started! For this tutorial, we'll make Rattata and Raticate cyan, or 180% hue.
Now the easiest way to do this is to extract all of Rattata's colors on its sprite and simply change the hue to the appropriate value. Recolor.
Now the easiest way to do this is to extract all of Rattata's colors on its sprite and simply change the hue to the appropriate value. Recolor.
But hold on, there...we're not done quite yet! In Pokemon Prism, we want to make the Pokemon look as much like its assigned hue as we possibly can. Look at Rattata now: it looks so washed-out and looks more like a teal color than a bright--but not too bright--cyan color. The latter is what we want to go for.
This is because its original sprite relied on hue-shifting for shading, which is the process of altering the brightness, saturation, AND hue of a color when deciding the palette. Therefore, when translated all to just one singular hue, it doesn't look good. The yellow that made up its accent color no longer stands out from its body.
Yellow is much visibly brighter of a hue than purple, hence why they stand out so well in the original sprite. That and because purple and yellow are complementary colors....
So let's try to fix it! We'll start by making the main body color much more vivid...but again, not too vivid. As you go down to darker shades for one color, lowering the saturation of the color is crucial to do. Usually you just need to do it a little bit at a time, but it really just depends. So just remember:
the darker the shade of a color and the lower it is on the color ramp, the lower the saturation. Sometimes you just need to toy around with it. Also, contrast is a really big downfall here so be wary of that!
This is because its original sprite relied on hue-shifting for shading, which is the process of altering the brightness, saturation, AND hue of a color when deciding the palette. Therefore, when translated all to just one singular hue, it doesn't look good. The yellow that made up its accent color no longer stands out from its body.
Yellow is much visibly brighter of a hue than purple, hence why they stand out so well in the original sprite. That and because purple and yellow are complementary colors....
So let's try to fix it! We'll start by making the main body color much more vivid...but again, not too vivid. As you go down to darker shades for one color, lowering the saturation of the color is crucial to do. Usually you just need to do it a little bit at a time, but it really just depends. So just remember:
the darker the shade of a color and the lower it is on the color ramp, the lower the saturation. Sometimes you just need to toy around with it. Also, contrast is a really big downfall here so be wary of that!
Already starting to look better! Now we just need to make its belly color lighter. When working with lighter colors, be more strict on lowering the saturation as you go down the color ramp.
There we go! All ready to be submitted. Do the same with Raticate: change the hues over, edit them so they look better, and do some touch-ups when you're done.
Expect this to be updated as I see fit! For now, I'm just covering the basics.
Sometimes the turnout won't be perfect. That's perfectly okay! Submit your sprite to the project anyway, and we can work out what you need to work on. :>
Sometimes the turnout won't be perfect. That's perfectly okay! Submit your sprite to the project anyway, and we can work out what you need to work on. :>