In this tutorial, I'll make the sprite of Medusa, from Soul Eater, to illustrate what I'm saying.

Part 1 - Doing the Head:

Step 0 - Pre-Spriting Steps When you want to sprite, you need some things ready and opened : -Your favorite spriting program -Around 3 to 6 images of your character, as a reference -Sprite Database opened on JUS sprites AKA this link : http://sdb.drshnaps.com/game.php?game=2 -(Optional) Some music. Music is always nice to hear Step 1 - Head shaping First step first, we're going to do the head. Easy task, you think. It's where we'll see if you're able to sprite or not. ~TIP : It's always a good thing to have a ripped sheet next to you.~ It is said that the face (NOT the head) must not exceed 7 high by 9 pixel width. Use it to guide yourself when you sprite. Frieza's head is also a good base for your head, if you need one. (This guy : http://sdb.drshnaps.com/display.php?object=953 ) This is a basic head shape. Don't worry, it does not look like anything close to a head now, but it will soon enough, or at least when we'll add the hairs. After, if you took the basic face, you can always edit some facial features, like eyes or mouth (rarely edit mouth, except if REALLY needed) and add the basic color for your skin. You also need to use some brown and retrace the nose and start of the mouth, and the part of the chin and cheek that will be in contact with the neck and the body. You should have something like this : I also added the basic skin color, to make it look a bit better. ~TIP : ALWAYS use colors took from other JUS sprites in yours. It'll make them look even more legit.~ Still not like your character? Well, that bring me to Step 2, which is... Step 2 - Hair Shaping Time to get a look at your references shots, if you didn't already! Hairs are a pain to sprite. You need to carefully do your outline, or it won't look good. Thing to note, hairs are the only anti-alised(1) part of a JUS sprite. Draw them, then fill them with the second lightest shade(2). You should have something close to this, but with your character's hair : Better isn't it? Good... If you have nothing else to do with the hairs, you can go to next step. But because Medusa have a hood, I'll need to do it. So, I'll call this Extra Step 2½ - Hats and related. ~TIP : When erasing a big part of a sprite, it's always a good thing to do a save copy of the sprite you're modifying.~ So, You take black, and you draw the basic shape of what you're doing, be it a fancy top hat or a war-torn bandana. In the case of my example, it's a hood. After the line work and filling, you should end up with something like this : Here, now you are ready for next step. It's the most important in Part 1, so listen up... Step 3 - Shading Now it's time to give some life to your sprite. If you have took your color from a sprite (Like I said you should), you saw there was other shades, other then the basic color. It's now they come in use. But, JUS feature a very unique thing among sprites : its light source(3) comes from behind-high, instead of the classic foward-high. ~TIP : If you think there is something wrong with your sprite anytime during shading, take the time to correct it now.~ We'll start with the face. Usually, there is some things that are often done with basic faces : Look in the blue rectangle. Notice how it does a line alongside the face, then does a W near the mouth, before continuing on the side. It's the basic way to shade the bottom of the face. Because of how my character is, I needed to change the basic shade a bit. It should be close to this : Looking closer and closer to a nice sprite, isn't it? But it's no time to loosen up. Now we'll shade the eyes and the top of the face. Depending on if your character have dark or colorful eyes, you may want to color them. Usually, dark and serious characters have black eyes while fragile and cheerful ones got them colored. Most of them have a darkened white part of the eye, in the top of it, like this : The top of the head, where the hairs cover the forehead, need to be darkened by one pixel thick. You can do more if your character has an hat or something that covers light. Now, we can attack the hairs. Open the sprite where you took the outline and the second lightest shade for the hairs, and take the shade just after the base one. Use it to darken the zone around the sides and the bottom of the hairs, a bit like this : After, you use the lightest shade to do little spots where the light hits the most directly. The result should result in nice-looking, nearly realistic hairs, close to this : Tada! You've done your head! You'll be ready to do the body, with the Part 2 of the tutorial. But if you have a hat, you need to do shade it later, during the shading of the clothes.

Part 2 - Doing the Body:

Step 1 - Body Shaping Your head look nice and all, but it need a body, don't you think? First thing first, you need to have your pose in mind. Will he stand still, chillin'? WIll he be crouched a bit, ready to kick asses? Will he do a sexy/mysterious/intimidating pose? It's the time to choose. I'll choose a pose that reflect Medusa's personality. This is now that some knowledge in drawing and body proportion will help. We'll do a very basic body line, using different colors for each bodypart (Torso, Hips, Right leg, Left leg, Right arm, Left arm). ~TIP : For the torso, if you do a male, use a rectangle. If you do a female, use an upside-down triangle.~ You will only have line, but it should be close to this, by now : Far from a body, right? Alright, time to make it look more realistic. Those lines are here to help you easily set up the body position. Now, you'll need to use the black color to do the lines, using the colored ones as the base. Still far from a sprite, but closer to what we have already, right? Now, the same sprite, after cleaning and filling... Alright, the next step is detailing. Your character have a bracelet, tattoo or an incredible desing on his shirt? You add it now. ~TIP : It's important to choose the good details when doing a sprite. Your character have a bracer? Good, add it. You character have a small wave pattern engraved on the bracer? Doing it will make the bracer overfilled. Choose wisely, and don't be afraid to cut one or two details for clearness.~ Step 2 - Shading Now, the most feared part : Shading. It's time to give some life to this pile of pixels. ~TIP : It's a good thing to go one color at the time. You won't need to change your color too much with this.~ Shading the body will work a bit like shading the head. So, you choose your colors and you strat with a part. ~TIP : The back arm is usually only in the dark skin color. You can even use the color you used for the nose, because you have a black outline.~ Shading the skin will bring you close to this : Your sprite is getting better and better. Now the is something that I want to talk you about : Black Shade. JUS let you use black as if it was an additionnal shade when your base color is really dark, resulting in even darker clothes. It does not need to be dark gray, you can do it with blue or green, or any VERY dark color. Medusa feature an example of this. So in those cases, you take black, and you shade as if it was any other color. The result is this : Looking nice, isn't it? Now you do the same process with any of your remaining parts. When finished... Step 3 - Building the sprite. Good. Now, it's the very last step, and it's went I recommend you to have a peculiar spriting program : Paint.NET. It's excellent and it's free. So I'll continue by giving the way with this program, people with other programs, try to do what you can to follow. So, You remember when I said I had two heads? one with the hood, and one without? Yeah, me neither, but the fact is I have them, so we'll need to clone that body : Now, in Paint.NET, you use the rectangle tool and you select every part of your head : Then, you take the magic wand, and, while holding alt, you click the white background to remove it. You may need to click a few times. The result? This : Now, you choose the BLUE arrow in the toolbar, and you line up the head and the neck. If there is things to correct, like in this case, the hood, you correct them : Now that I have done it with the other head... It's thereby FINISHED! Congratulations! The final result :

~Vocabulary zone~:
	(1): Anti-alising - It means to have an outline colored a shade darker then the darkest shade in your sprite. (2): Shade - Tint of the same colors used in the same zone, to create light effects and realism on the sprites. (3): Light Souce - Where the light comes from. Usually, lighter shaeds are closer to tohe light source and darker shades are further from the light source.

Reserved, if I will need it.

What music would you recommend for making sprites?

Frieza's head is a great head template. I've measured it to every head in the game, and it's proportionally the same for the most part, so perhaps try to mention or work that in if you could.

Also

Quote:

~Vocabulairy zone~:

The irony in this is stunning.

*Vocabulary, my friend. Vocabulary.

Now maybe some of the members here will actually sprite something for once...

Seriously though, I could never sprite human heads well, so this tutorial going to be really useful to me.

I think that you should sticky this.

This is exactly what I needed. I never was good at spriting, but now I can finally make a proper B.B. Hood sprite.

it's about time somebody made this.

Well, I grew tired to repeat how to do a sprite to everyone, so...

So yeah, we finally have a good tutorial out there. That's a good thing...