How to Make a Sprite Comic

Sprite comics are 2D digital pixelated comics with Sprites as the main characters. It may seem difficult to create an original sprite comic, but with patience and a paint program you can lean how to quickly design your own unique characters.

Things You'll Need

• Paint or art software of your choice

Instructions

1. Come up with a story. Create rough draft storyboard ideas on paper including the setting background, characters and plot. To help break into the complex process of designing and crafting Sprite comics, create a six frame story for a single character.

2. Create a setting background for your Sprite character. Your setting background, whether complex or basic, should have a set horizontal line or space on which your Sprite can stand, sit or walk across from comic frame to frame.

3. Set aside a lot of time if you do not plan to use pre-designed Sprites from the Internet to draw your Sprite. Sprite creation is a time consuming process that requires a great deal of patience. Although your background need not be pixelated, your Sprite, by definition, must be designed in pixelated 2D (i.e., drawn or edited pixel by pixel) to qualify as a "Sprite." You must also design your Sprite so that in each frame the 2D image is altered slightly to show different movements (i.e., creates an illusion of movement, speech or action as you read frame to frame).

4. Paste your complete Sprite character onto your setting background in your paint program. Put your Sprite as an object "Forward" if it does not appear on top of the background (i.e., it accidentally dropped behind the setting background). If your Sprite has a white square around it that blocks part of the setting background, consult your software program's help index for information on how to make the character's background transparent to the setting background.

5. Design comic "balloons" or "bubbles," like traditional comic bubbles, to contain your character's words. Use your paint or word processing program. Paste your character's words into the bubbles for each frame: click the text box and bubble, click copy and then paste over your background next to your character's mouth. Follow the transparency instructions in Step Four if a white square background exists outside the bubble blocking part of your setting background.

6. Open a page layout program and paste each completed frame, right to left/story beginning to end, onto a single page to create your six frame comic. Keep in mind, that for Japanese manga style format, each frame should read left to right.