Pixeling - Jeybla/rathena GitHub Wiki
title: Pixeling permalink: /Pixeling/
Ragnarok Pixel Art
On pixel art, images are made on the pixel level. If you are going to start pixeling, you must know that everything you want to make, you will have to draw it pixel by pixel. It depends on how many frames you want to make and what size they have, but usually pixeling consumes much time and patience. Besides, you need to have much experience to make good designs.
However, not all are disadvantages. The method we use for pixeling is pretty simple. First, we have to make our base image. Remember that if we are going to make designs for RO, we will usually have to use RO Pixeling Colors, so we have to add the RO pixeling colors palette to our new image.
Base Image
frame|Shapes made with neon colors.The first step is to make the shape of our design. If we are going to make a hat, sword, body, etc. we must start by making its shape. We can use neon colors for that, since they are pretty much more visible than RO common colors, and this will help us. It is also recommened to compare the size of our design with other official designs. So, if we are going to make a body, in example, we must have an official RO body as a reference. It is recommended to know the number of pixels of average size (for bodies, it is 70 px for height).
We should make sure that sizes are correct before going to the next step. Also, it is important to put a look at the perspective. In RO, we see the sprites from a 30º~45º angle. It is very easy to make perspective wrong. Most people fail at this, so don't give up if you don't make good perspectives at first, it takes time to make it look good.
Once you finished your shapes, you will have to draw your edges. Use the three last tones of a 8 colours gradient. You may also use black, though it is not recommendable for bright designs. Instead of it, use dark brown. If you already used dark brown and need a darker color, maybe black is a good choice. But remember to apply it only to a few pixels. In RO and in pixeling in general, edges are dark. Not too dark, but at least it must be clear that edges are darker than interior area.
Don't spend much time with the shape of your design, since you can always modify it while you are drawing the design. Just make a decent base image, something that will guide you with the perspective and size while you are pixeling. Making an odd base image will be a drop in the bucket. It is better not to make a base image than to make a bad one. It will only mislead you while pixeling.
RO Shadding
frame|left|Design with two~three tones applied in each color area.frame|Design with shadding applied.This may be the best step in the making of a new design or may be the worst. It depends if you are patient and love art. Better sprites are those who have a good shadding. A good shadding can make your own designs look exactly like official RO designs or even better. You just have to keep in mind two things: RO common colors and shadding techniques.
First thing is pretty simple. You just have to use RO common colors in your designs (if you get enough experience, you may use your own colors, but those must be unsaturated just like RO colors). Get used to them, you will avoid to have a lot of trouble if you always use the RO palette.
Second thing is more complicated. This is based on experience. RO shadding techniques can only be learnt by analyzing RO official designs. It will help you with your designs to take a look at sprite data from time to time. At the end, you will get used to pixel like official spriters do. Shadding techniques also depends on what are you designing. Mobs are not as detailed as hats or jobs are. Besides, inventory sprites are much more different that the other types of sprites. They have darker edges and more contrast between the light and dark areas. Metal pieces are not pixeled like hairstyles or ordinary clothes. Metal pieces have a more "squared" shadding while ordinary clothes have a "wavy" shadding. Hairstyles mix dark lines with bright ones. There are many other techniques, but we can't enumerate them all. Everyone have to get to know them alone.
If we have our base image, we have to add first two or three tones of each color area. If we have a brown jaquet, we must add two or three tones of brown to that jacket at first, to divide dark areas, bright areas, and areas with average brightness (fourth tone of an 8x color gradient can be suitable for this area).
Final design
frame|Final design.Once we finished with the shadding, we may do some small fixes and additions. In any case, we will have to save it as a 8 bits bmp image (for 8 bits sprites) and then make our own sprite (just in case we want to use our designs to make a sprite and implement it in RO). Actually, nowadays, RO pixeling is not practiced just to make sprites for the game, but also is practiced as a hobby. There are several fan sites where we can see a lot of RO designs that are not used for sprite making.
As a final note, if you want to protect your designs from thiefs, it is recommended (if you want to show them to the public) to put your own watermark (with your name or username) on your work. This way, you can avoid people ripping your sprite. However, it would not be the first time if someone rip your design even if it has watermark. This happened in the past and may happen in the future.