Tutorial: Pokemon Sprite Signature
 

Sprites.xcf
Hello. Here's a new tutorial. I haven't made one in a while and this is an old method I used to use, and I felt I should give it to you guys seeing as a lot of people (now including myself) are using Pokemon sprites for their avatar. Here's how to take it one step further.

Materials Needed
- GIMP 2.6 or Higher (Photoshop might work, not sure)
- At least 30-45 minutes of time
- A nice looking background stock
- A preferred sprite of something (see my avatar for an example)

Other Stuff
Difficulty: Easy with prior GIMP knowledge/moderate without. I tried to help the ones that had no prior knowledge.
Time: About 30-45 minutes. 10 if you memorize the method fully.
The Result
http://puu.sh/25Z7J

The Tutorial
1. To kick this off, open up a new canvas; mine was 350x100. Paste in your render and center it - we aren't taking the rule of thirds into account because sprites are small and therefore need central balance in the composition.

http://puu.sh/25Z1E

2. Add in a wallpaper/stock that fits the theme of your sprite. I chose a cropped waterfall for Suicune.

http://puu.sh/25Zc1

3. On this new background layer, go to Filters -> Artistic -> Oilify and play around with the settings until you get something that looks like mine.

http://puu.sh/25Zd1

4. (OPTIONAL - Slightly difficult) I wanted to add a little glow to help the focal of the image so I made a white-to-transparent radial with the gradient tool under Suicune. If you want to do this, create a new layer and put it under your sprite and above the background. I overlayed it with a pastel rainbow gradient and erased what I didn't like, then smudged the two layers a little.

http://puu.sh/25ZeN

5. Now, we're going to duplicate our sprite layer five times. Hide all of the duplicates except for the bottom sprite layer, and do a Filters -> Gaussian Blur and put both sliders at 12 or 13. Your image should look something like this:

http://puu.sh/25Zg8

6. Unhide the next layer up, and on that layer apply Filters -> Distort -> Waves. Keep the settings at default and set the layer mode to Overlay; lower the opacity a little bit so the excess pixels don't stand out too much but have a subtle effect behind the main stock.

http://puu.sh/25ZiE

7. Unhide the next layer up and apply a Filters -> Blur -> Motion Blur. Make it slightly larger than default (like 2-3 more length) and make sure it is in line with the flow of your signature. It should look something like:

http://puu.sh/25Zkh

8. Unhide your final sprite layer; this is our main unfiltered pure sprite layer. The image should look a lot nicer now, and it's time for some filters and color manipulation.

http://puu.sh/25Zmd

9. Create a new layer with black-to-white gradient that diagonals from the bottom left (or wherever your darker corner is) to the opposite corner. Set the layer mode to Soft Light and lower the opacity if it looks too extreme.

http://puu.sh/25ZoP

Then, create a new layer on top of everything and splatter some random brushes onto the left of the image and set the layer to Soft Light. Lower the opacity. Look at the next image for reference.

10. That's basically it, we're done! Here is our final image:

http://puu.sh/25Zvq

Now, from here on out you may want to add some touch-ups like a border or some text. That's great, the image didn't really feel complete to me either. First up, to tie the image together, I grabbed a color similar to Suicune's mane and created a little border with it. It's a 2px black line on the top and bottom of the image, and 1px black vertical line on either side. Under the 2px black line I took the color I grabbed from Suicune and made a 1px line that stopped at the 1px vertical black lines. This makes for a nice, subtle border that looks simplistic to go along with the minimalist style of the signature. Here's what mine looked like:

http://puu.sh/25Zsi

Next, I wanted to mess around with the colors a little as I haven't done that yet. I did an Edit -> Copy Visible and put it on top of the layer stack, and desaturated it. I then set that layer to Color and lowered the opacity a tiny bit so the whole image looked desaturated while still retaining hints of color. I then repeated that diagonal black-to-white gradient we made earlier and set it to a lower opacity to fine tune the colors. Then, I added some text, blurred it, made the same text again, and lowered the opacity. I could have made the text a lot nicer, but that's another tutorial in itself that I'm sure you are definitely not interested in. At this point, my tag looked like this:

http://puu.sh/25Zyc

I'm glad you've gotten this far - give yourself a pat on the back. Anyway - even after ALL OF THAT, I still didn't like how the image looked. Well, I got rid of the text completely and desaturated the image a little more and contrasted it, then brought my original sprite up to restore a tiny bit of color back into Suicune, and at this point... I am done.

http://puu.sh/25ZC0




Good job on making it this far! This concludes my Sprite Tag tutorial. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did making it and sharing it with you guys. Eager to see your outcomes if you dare tried to make one. If you did, I'll love you forever. Reps are welcome (or you can just do this, it'll make me happier). Thank you for reading!

Talon

where is my goopa signature >.>

Make it using this <3

you make it or else it will not be as special :(

But you can make it special the way you wanted it to be special though :D

You are just lazy >~>

i know ):

lala im so gonna try this out! Well i would if i knew where to get the sprites from..

Here is my resource: http://pldh.net/dex/sprites/index

Yay thanks <3

No problem, good luck!

im gonna make one, but not pokemon ;3

http://www.pokemonelite2000.com/blackwhite_bwa.html
has all poke sprites without having to download ^

I didn't have to download either see look

http://pldh.net/dex/sprites/suicune

that sight is a hacker then, made me download a rnr file or something lol

Jester is always there to save the day!

I think you tried to download the whole generation of sprites lol, I just used the search function

I like being able to see all the options xP anyways, graalians is now the pokecenter.

lmao...

Damn right it is. I'm considering going back into comp battling cause this site keeps remindin me how much fun i had while I did. Probably won't go comp again but I'm gonna start playing again and get an Umbreon and have a good time

I actually did some wifi battles from Pokemon black 2 yesterday...I liked it and I am not ashamed.

What´s with all the pokemon avatars o-o.

Dunno but someone should definitely take one of them Pokemon avatars and follow my tutorial with one

OMG I wanna be cool too...
changing my avatar now.

I tried and ragequit at step 2.
Gimp shows moving yellow outlines around my file
Couldnt find how to put the background behind it
The picture turned up black

Save the file off the website and drag it into GIMP, but if you don't know how to use layers, probably not gonna be able to do this :s

I'm gonna make another one of these with a different Pokemon, any suggestions?

Well I tried with a Deoxys, how is it?

http://i1336.photobucket.com/albums/...psc218fccf.png

That doesn't look too bad at all, though I would suggest a background with colors that match Deoxys' colors. + That little green stripe on the far left is a little distracting/looks out of place. Other than that, it looks great. Nice job.

goopa

I gave Deoxys a space type background since most people knows that deoxys came from space (to match it's theme as said in step 2)

Here's the background I cropped as you can see that green haze coming out.
http://images7.alphacoders.com/316/316688.jpg

Ah, by "thematic background" I was leaning more towards colors and flow rather than subject matter.

I made a "favorite Pokemon" thread, and now everyone has Pokemon avatars XD

Made another one, this time with Flareon. It took me half the time compared to my Deoxys now that i remembered most of the steps.

http://i1336.photobucket.com/albums/...ps357c7fb7.png

Made one really quick in 10 minutes.

http://i.imgur.com/tOlvDW0.png

Gonna play around with some more gradient maps, will post results

My third one, but Talon how do you make it so that there's those diagonal lines when you use gradient?

http://i1336.photobucket.com/albums/...ps49414fed.png

They're 1px scanlines I manually added; I omitted the step from the tutorial because everyone did it wrong when I put them in an old tutorial. Also a quick tip, play around with the Oilify sliders to get a more smooth, smudged effect like the one I just posted. Looks a lot cleaner and helps the focal pop.

Regards

I copied you
lol trendsetter

http://i.imgur.com/ZRZQJTW.png
I gave up on gradient, too hard rofl

Posers XD

DragonRider, use this one I found XD

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...ze-d3302f2.png

Not mine, all credit goes to Mayor McSteeze.

2deep4me
also, if you look closely at the background, you can see some Pokemon :o

Cool like meh :3

I started this whole nostalgia-fest XD

Do you actually play any of the games XD

yes

Sexc

If someone makes me a squirtle squad sig ill reward you.

Lazy >:(

Did another edit of my original Suicune.

http://i.imgur.com/oY3QiJU.png

I think I did something wrong on part 6.

http://i.imgur.com/ksKyXzB.png

Edit: Removed the messed up layer:

http://i.imgur.com/mBqM6UV.png

Also a Charizard, used the cartoon effect after I did everything in the tutorial.

http://i.imgur.com/n8Nz76H.png

I really like doing this, thanks for the tutorial.

scrub

o..