Beginner Help?

[nimane9]

Hey everyone, I'm aiming to try to make a simple M.U.G.E.N. game by September 9th. I've decided a Pokemon brawling game could be pretty fun, so I wanna do something like that. I want to use original sprites, and the first sprite I want to make is Pikachu (images here: http://bit.ly/1c8M8Mu). I'm planning on starting by drawing him, then using a photo processing program. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what animations I'll need to do for each move, so if I could have some help that would be great. Thanks,

 -Nick

[Superjoker]

hey there!

This forum has become very... arrogant, but don't worry there are still some mugeneers that will lend a hand.

There are many tutorials here and accross the mugen community, you can also check out read me files and ELECTBYTE's website.

You will be very surprised as to how hard it can be though, just play around with chars and Fighter Factory.

Let's see some art!

Good luck

[nimane9]

I've looked in tons of places for guides on sprite making but none of them point me through the entire process of making a sprite from scratch which is why I came here.

[Cyanide]

You mean september 9 2015 right? If you're going from scratch you're honestly not going to make it. This isn't a slight on you in any way, you just need to change your priority from fast to good.

Spriting from scratch is pretty much the same as making a good drawing. Do the basic shapes as a lumpen stick figure, then apply lineart, then shade. If you've never done it before, your first "sprite" will probably take 3 hours and not look fantastic. Lots of practice (seriously heaps) will get you faster and with better looking sprites. You should be able to churn out pikachu's at a rate of 1 every 15 minutes or so, as he's not overly complex. But you still need to make about 20 sprites just for get hits, preferably an animated stance, 4 frames there, 4-6 for walk, 4-6 for jumping. Guard, attacks etc etc. A decent character can be made with about 150 sprites. But that's the bare minimum. I've seen characters with 3 sprites that are meant to be fighters (not lolboss stuff) and they're 100% awful. Including FX, sff files often reach over 1000 sprites.

You then need to learn to code which is a whole other experience. A character CAN be made in 3 days, they tend to be a bit lazy. I've done a character in 2 weeks, but i had nothing else to do and a decent amount of motivation for once.

Making a game, awesome. Making pikachu, also awesome. Making any other pokemon, awesome as well. Locking yourself into next month... less so. Just go with it and release it when you're done, don't set yourself any dates, you'll be forced to break them.