Spriting is usually defined as the act of creating partially transparent 2D

2D computer graphics

2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...

 raster graphics

Raster graphics

In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...

 for use in video games, commonly referred to as sprites

Sprite (computer graphics)

In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...

; by extension, it is also used to refer to the act of creating pixel art

Pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...

, though not all sprites are necessarily done in that style. Pixel art comprises a large part of "sprite art" as a whole; though technological advances since the mid-nineties allowed pre-rendered raytraced imagery, or essentially any 2-dimensional image style to be used as a sprite. In some communities, "pixel art" is considered a synonym of "sprite art", and classification of artwork as "sprite art" is held to the same standards, though pixel art itself is not limited to the creation of sprites.

Though sprites have been a major component of many early video games, the modern, "mainstream" activity called "Spriting" arose with the advent of widely-available computer graphics programs capable of editing and saving raster images. Such programs include MacPaint

MacPaint

MacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...

, and the later Microsoft Paint

Microsoft Paint

Paint is a simple graphics painting program that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. It is often referred to as MS Paint or Microsoft Paint...

. The distinctive style of imagery used in many early computer and arcade games inspired people to create similar works of their own. Having the tools available to do this allowed many people to experiment with what was previously a prohibitively difficult-to-enter craft. With the advent of the internet, practitioners of spriting were able to collaborate and share their creations, which established spriting as a proper hobby, and also exposed these artists to prospective employers, and vice-versa.

Spriting is primarily done for the direct purpose of creating video game artwork, especially by professional artists. By hobbyists, though, it is often done to create stand-alone artwork, or as part of a larger piece of art, such as a web comic. The use of sprites as cookie-cutter elements of comic strips has led to a genre called sprite comics.

Modified commercial sprites

Despite copyright concerns, many hobbyists new to spriting begin their work by editing sprite imagery made for commercial video games; often games seen on console platforms like the SNES

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...

 or Sega Genesis. Fans of these images collect transcribed copies of them in common image formats, and post them on websites for others to see. This process of extracting the imagery is called "ripping" or "dumping". In "ripping" a person collects the imagery via screen captures of an emulator running the source game - this practice is in enough demand that some emulators, like ZSNES

ZSNES

ZSNES is a free software SNES emulator written mostly in x86 assembly with official ports for Linux, MS-DOS, Mac OS X, Windows and an unofficial port for Xbox.-Background:...

, have a feature to optionally display only desired layers of the game's imagery, making it easier to copy. "Dumping" involves a more sophisticated way of directly extracting the images from the game; this is often rather difficult, since on systems like the SNES

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...

, the larger images seen on-screen are stored in several smaller parts. These images are collected into compilations known as sprite sheets, large raster images which each hold all of the frames associated with a single character, or a single terrain environment. These are the de facto standard for trading ripped commercial sprites online.

Those who edit these images, which generally depict characters in the game, often begin by simply shifting the color palette; thus turning all of a characters primary costume color into a different color. Later, they will redraw small parts of the image, making slight changes to the costuming, etc. This is generally much less intimidating than creating a full, original work, and allows them practice in imitating and matching the styles used by professional artists. This progresses to modifications which are sufficiently extensive as to make the source work they were derived from, unrecognizable.

Revamping (Reshading)

Some spriters specialize in renewing the colors of old game sprites to make them look fresh. This process is called revamping.

Most revampers choose an old sprite and replace the colors with those of a more recent one. Others recolor them with a set color palette.

There is also a form of spriting called devamping, considered the opposite of revamping. It is the process of changing the color of a new sprite to make them look older.

Recolors

Recolors of sprites are when you take a sprite, and change the palette to make the sprite a different color.

This method is considered unprofessional, and is done as a hobby by those who do not edit or customize sprites.

Styles of spriting

A sprite style is the way a certain sprite is made to look. Each style has methods and rules that must be followed in order to keep sprites uniform, even if they represent different characters entirely. Sprites of different styles often clash with each other, but mixing any style is never accepted. There are many different styles, even in games of the same series; some spriters also create their own styles.

Sprite styles may vary by size, palette, shading, detail, and further artistic touches.

Original sprites

With sufficient skill, often drawing from many general aspects of illustration (shading, color theory, foreshortening, and often comic art), an artist can create professional-quality sprite images and pixel art from scratch.

Artists will make sprites-to-order as a hobby, for either themselves, or friends. These sprites, created completely from scratch, but generally imitating sprites from a commercial game, are called "Custom" sprites, and are often seen as avatars, buddy icons, small animations, and elements of web comics. They will also often be used for small-scale video game projects.

Original Sprites are also used for advertisement. Sometimes you will see a spriter, or a small group of spriters, use a specific icon or logo made entirely from scratch. Most spriters that sprite for others yet do not have a group of spriters to work with them are called either Spriters-For-Hire, or Lone Spriters. After a while, once these spriters become more popular around forums and sometimes even YouTube, their icon or logo will become famous and well-known throughout the Internet.

Spriting as a profession

With the advent of dedicated 3D hardware, sprites lost their near-monopoly on video-game imagery. However, sprite art remains a popular medium for video-game imagery, and has witnessed a comeback in the commercial markets for handheld consoles (like the Game Boy Advance

Game Boy Advance

The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...

 and Nintendo DS

Nintendo DS

The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...

) or mobile phone games. The companies that create these games hire many of the best sprite artists who maintain online portfolios of their work, and who openly seek such employment.
Recently a demand for spriters has opened up in the MMORPG

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

 field, for games such as Habbo Hotel

Habbo Hotel

Habbo is a social networking site aimed at teenagers. The website is owned and operated by Sulake Corporation. The service began in 2000 and has expanded to include 11 online communities , with users in over 150 countries. As of August 2011, over 230 million avatars have been registered...

.

Professional sprite artists often delve into other areas of illustration, including animation, comics, and computer-generated art, often doing those on a professional basis as well.

Tools

Spriting needs only a computer and a graphic editing program, although other tools can help. Depending on the target use of the sprite, it may be necessary to have a program capable of adding transparency information (e.g. an "alpha channel") to sprites. For handheld/mobile games, it is also necessary to post-process the imagery, converting it to a format native to the hardware the game will run on. When editing pixel images, a professional artist will typically use either a program designed for sprite-editing and animation, and/or will modify the workspace of a major image-editor like Photoshop to accommodate sprite editing. The following programs are prevalent:

Software

The needs of pixel art

Pixel art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...

 are very different from those of high-resolution illustration, of image retouching and of digital photo management; not all image editors are suitable for spriting.

Common programs

• Microsoft Paint
  Microsoft Paint
  Paint is a simple graphics painting program that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. It is often referred to as MS Paint or Microsoft Paint...
  
   is included in Microsoft Windows
  Microsoft Windows
  Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
  
  . It lacks many advanced features, but basic graphic editing is very mature and suitable for pixel by pixel editing.

Programs designed for sprite editing

• GraphicsGale, for Windows, has both freeware and ¥1995 (roughly $20) shareware versions, and has features designed for animation and cursor creation.
• Pro Motion is available for Windows, and costs $78. It is often used by professionals, and offers many animation features, and features tailored to producing art for the Game Boy Advance, or Mobile Phones.
• Pixen is free, open-source, and available for Mac OS X. It offers many tools tailored to sprite creation and animation.
• ASEPRITE is free, open-source and available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It is specifically tailored for sprite creation. Supports animation, onion skinning and layers.

Major image editors

• The GIMP
  GIMP
  GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
  
   is a free, open-source image editor, available for all major platforms. The GIMP-GAP plugin greatly enhances its animation capabilities.
• Adobe Photoshop
  Adobe Photoshop
  Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
  
   is a commercial image editor available for Windows and Mac OS X. In order to make a sprite in this program, users mostly have to use the pencil tool.
• Paint.NET
  Paint.NET
  Paint.NET is a proprietary freeware raster graphics editor program for Microsoft Windows, developed on the .NET Framework. Originally created by Rick Brewster as a Washington State University student project, Paint.NET has evolved from a simple replacement for the Microsoft Paint program, which is...
  
  , built with the .NET framework, is open-source freeware capable of similar functionality as Adobe Photoshop and a number of professional tools.
• GrafX2
  GrafX2
  GrafX2 is a bitmap graphics editor inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance . It is free software and distributed under GNU General Public License.- History :...
  
   is an open-source picture editor very similar to Deluxe Paint and others from 80's and 90's.

Hardware

A scanner can be useful for transferring penciled sketches/designs of a sprite into a computer. Advanced sprite artists often create their sprites directly on a computer although, a graphics tablet can greatly ease the majority of the work; especially the sketching and blocking stages, although the finer details will inevitably need to get tweaked with the mouse.

Methodology

There are several ways to create a sprite. Virtually all of these involve some way of "planning out" the form of the final sprite image. By laying out simple, and quick to draw suggestions of the final form, an artist can evaluate and correct the general direction that the construction of an image is moving towards, eliminating errors in perspective, anatomy, and foreshortening before the major work of drawing begins. These methods are very similar to other forms of illustration.

"Blocking" is a term used to describe what painters do - a spriter will lay out large regions of color/shade, trying to lay them in what he or she will think to be their final position, but starting with the biggest regions first. The artist will then sculpt these regions into the correct shape, and add in additional highlights and shadows to form the image, sometimes finishing the image by adding cartoon-like outlines to frame parts of the image.

"Line Art" is the outlining used to draw many styles of illustration. These are usually shades of black (Pure black or dark grey, usually) but this is not always true. It can stand on its own without coloration, and many spriters will draw black and white outlines of their intended final images before filling them in with color, and shading those filled regions. More experienced sprite artists will often color most of this line art; giving it a darker hue of the region it surrounds, rather than using jet black for all of their outlines.

After any of these methods are followed, the sprite artist will clean the image of any extraneous pixels unrelated to their illustration, apply proper transparency, especially to the blank canvas surrounding their illustration, and then export the image to a format suitable for sending to their client or friends. The PNG and to a lesser degree, GIF

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

 formats are suitable, and JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

 is notable for not being so - the lossy nature of JPEG compression often mars some of the finer details of sprites, but more importantly, can shift the colors of a sprite's pixels. Many videogames that use sprites require the sprites to use an exact, predefined palette of colors, and often create graphical effects by shifting these colors; any colors outside of this scheme will cause this to fail. Specific projects may convert the images to a proprietary format used internally by their game.