Tools needed:

Photoshop

1. The Base Shape

For this example, I’m going to work with a basic sphere.  Draw a circle the basic colour of the surface you want to add detail to. In my case  I’m just going to use a simple metallic gray. Make sure your circle is on a separate layer to the background.

2. Shading the Surface

Next, using the Dodge and Burn tools, add shadow and highlight as required. I recommend setting the Exposure to 25% and the Range to Highlights, but of course this is just my preference.

3. Panel Shapes

Now create a new layer and call it something like ‘Panel Shape’. Change your foreground colour to something highly visible (red in my case) and draw a shape over the sphere. I recommend using the path tool for this. The tricky part here is getting a convincing shape, but this will of course be easier on flat surfaces. The important part is where the red area intersects the sphere itself, as this is the line we will be working with. It does not matter if the shape goes over the edge of the sphere. Then, fill the path with your chosen colour.

4. The Magic

Now, turn off the Panel Shape layer’s visibility, so that you can just see the sphere. Then, CTRL+click on the thumbnail image  in the Layers palette, so that you get a selection the shape of the Panel Shape.

Next, go to Select > Modify > Expand, and select 2 pixels. Higher numbers will yield deeper grooves. Once you have expanded the selection, CTRL+ALT+Click on the thumbnail image  of the Panel Shape in the Layers palette, which subtracts the shape of the shape from the current selection. This will give you a thin outline selection.

Then, select the Burn tool and set the Exposure to 100%. Then, on the Sphere layer, shade the parts of the selection area that are facing away from the light source, and 100% Dodge on those that are.

5. The Clever Part

CTRL+Click again to select the shape of the Panel Shape, as before. Only this time, we’re going to contract the selection. Select > Modify > Contract, by 2 pixels again. Then, invert the selection (CTRL+Shift+I). Next, CTRL+Shift+ALT+Click on the thumbnail of the Panel Shape in the Layers palette. This will give another thin selection, only this time inside the previous shading area.

Now, use the 100% Dodge and Burn again, making sure that the shading is reversed from before, i.e. dark areas touching light areas, and vice versa. It will take a little practice!

6. Repeat!

Repeat the process as much as required to produce an assortment of panels and effects. I used this extensively on many of my sprites, for example, this guy:

I hope you find this useful in making your own sprites!

Tools used:

Adobe Photoshop (or similar graphics program)

1. Basic Shapes

First, I made a plain coloured circle. It’s worth making this nice and big, bigger than your final sprite will require, as then it will be suitable for any purpose.  It may sound obvious, but scaling down is not a problem, but scaling up to a larger size will result in pixellation, so make sure it’s larger than it has to be.

2. Surface Chaos

I then created a new layer, selected my foreground and background colours, selected only the circle, and used Filter > Render > Clouds. It’s important to only select the circle here, or you will get clouds everywhere!

Then, I inverted the image. Note that it will take some playing around with colours to get the effect you’re after. Next, I applied Mac’s Remove White Filter (available from http://morepunkinstuff.tripod.com/filters/Mac/mac.html). Then , I inverted the image again, so now the blue below showed through.

Then, I merged the blue and ‘cloudy’ layers , and inverted the resulting layer again. Again, experimentation is key here.

3. Shadows and Shapes

A bit of tweaking using Image > Adjustments > Levels and I had a shade and colour I was happy with. Next, I selected the circle only and applied Filter > Distort > Spherize, set to 100%. This gave the effect of the planet’s curvature.

At this point I applied an Unsharp Mask of 500% to the image, to give it a little more texture.

Then, I used the Dodge and Burn tools to apply highlight and shadow to the planet.  Both were set to 25% percent exposure and range: highlight, but a huge range of effects is possible.

A temporary black background helps show up the final step much better.

4. Glow

Finally, to give it that extra effect, I applied a white Outer Glow to the planet, lowering the opacity of the glow slightly.

Then, I blurred the edge of the planet slightly to give it a slightly hazy look, and that was it! One rather smooth desert planet.

Tools used:

• Pencil/paper
• Scanner
• Adobe Photoshop (or similar graphics program)

1. Drawing the design

First of all, I sketched the design of the sprite in it’s entirety, making sure to pick a ‘neutral’ pose and position, picturing how I wanted it to be presented on-screen. Therefore I chose the standard ‘head-on’ view as this would be what the player would be seeing, but needs may vary for different sprites and games, so this is the time to visualise what the sprite is going to look like and what it is going do.

2. Scanning the drawing

Once I had a fairly defined sketch of the sprite, I scanned it at 300dpi. It doesn’t need to be a highly defined drawing, as all we are going to do with it is draw over it in Photoshop or another graphics program.

At this stage I also found it helpful to have an image of the background that the sprite is going to appear on in-game behind the pencil sketch as another layer, in order to get a better feel for the colours to use. I set a space background as the background layer, then brought in my scanned pencil sketch as new layer, setting the layer type to Multiply for the background to show through.

If your background is dark, obviously the pencil sketch will not show up too well, as I found out rather quickly! To solve this problem, I removed the white from the image, only leaving my lines. This was done with Mac’s Remove White Filter, available from here: http://morepunkinstuff.tripod.com/filters/Mac/mac.html. I then inverted the colours of the sketch (Image > Adjustments > Invert), which left me with just the lines of my sketch in a nice chalky white that showed up perfectly on the black void of space.

3. Basic Shapes

From here I could draw the shapes that I needed, copying, pasting and mirroring wherever necessary. I used different layers for everything, which made it easy to reposition if I had to. I had to consider which parts were going to move, in this case the eyes and arms, so that these pieces could be constructed separately.

4. Shading and extra colour

This was the fun part! To darken the shadowy parts, I used the Burn tool, set to 25% Exposure and 0% Hardness, and Range using Highlights, using varying brush sizes as necessary to give a soft gradient to the shading. Since each piece was on a separate layer, I didn’t have to worry about going over any lines, as the Burn tool only darkens what is already there.

After that, the highlights were achieved by using the Dodge tool on the same settings, making them slightly sharper to give a glistening look.

The eyes were constructed using three layers each – the eyeball, the iris and pupil, and then shadows and highlight applied to each piece individually.

5. Saving

Of course, I was saving all the time! But the final file format cannot be a psd. As long as you have kept well organised with regard to layers and groups, you should have no problem here. I took each separate piece, copied it to preserve the original, and merged it before copying it to a new image with a transparent background. I then expanded the canvas so that the dimensions of the image were multiples of four to make it suitable for a game sprite. I repeated this process for the other pieces.

All in all, this guy took something in the region of 5 hours to complete. He’s one of my favourite sprites so far.