Part One – Step by step tutorial

Everybody knows that there's an abundance of crappy sprite comics out there. When making excuses for the poor job they've done, the typical response of the author is “I only have MSPaint, so I can't make good comics!! WAAAAAH!!”
Well, Wil says NO EXCUSES!! Take a look at my main sprite comic series, Mushroom Kingdom Hearts. Not until World 2-24 did I have access to a copy of Photoshop, and it's still viewable (except perhaps for a few comics in the first stack of ten) without your eyes bleeding out. Now then, to do my part in quashing this excuse, I will take you through the Wil way of sprite comic making in MSPaint. Enjoy.

Step One – Write a story

While not specifically necessary for graphics, which is what we're discussing, writing a story first is integral to any comic. Even if it's just a random comic, you should still script that particular comic before you do anything else. So, open up a word processing program with spelling and grammar checking capabilities. I prefer Microsoft Word (mainly because I don't HAVE another spelling and grammar checking word processor). You'll want to separate your story segment into 4-8 panels worth of material. Remember not to overload one single panel with dialogue. A good example of a screw up can be found in MKH 3-19. See how in panel two Tails starts a lengthy explanation of Shadow, leaving a miniscule amount left to say in panel three? You also want to remember not to have too much banter in one panel- MKH 2 1/2-2 shows an example of too much dialogue gone wrong. See in the last panel how Mario's words are sort of hidden behind Clem? You need to know how to space out your dialogue in your final product. So, let's write a script. Your format can be however you like it, but here's an example of how to script a comic:

PANEL 1-
~Samus and Mario stand on a sidewalk~
Samus: Dude, I'm BORED.
Mario: We will buy goldfish!!

PANEL 2-
Samus: What the…?
Mario: Hurry, Samus! Or all the good ones will be taken!

PANEL 3-
~Mario runs around psychotically~
Samus: You just… stop it…
Mario: I love goldfishes ‘cus they're SOO delicious!!

PANEL 4-
Samus: ~sigh~ You've been going over your Super Mushrooms limit again, haven't you?
Mario: Froinlaven!!

Okay, now we have our script. That leads us into…

Step Two – Obtain your sprites

It almost feels redundant to put this step in here, but for the sake of thoroughness, I'm doing it. Some good sites for getting sprites include the following:
>The Shyguy Kingdom
>Ren's Comic Zone
>The Spriters Resource
>Deekman's Domain
There are many others out there, but these ones are some of the biggies. Deek's Domain, RCZ and tSR are also good sites to obtain backgrounds from. Google's Image Search is also a very good way to find realistic backgrounds. The sprites we'll be using are TGSK's sheets of Mario from Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga and Samus from Metroid Zero Mission. We'll use the Aqua Teen Hunger Force intro from Deek's site for our background.

Step Three – Set up your panel

Okay. To start out, open three MSPaint windows. In the first window, set a new document to 200 x 200 pixels. File>New, followed by Image>Attributes (Ctrl+E). It should look like this:

Get it? Got it? Good. Okay, now you have your 200x200 panel. GO YOU!!

Step Four – Get your background onto the panel

Now, in your second MSPaint window, open the background you should have saved. Go to Edit>Select All (Ctrl+A), then to Edit>Copy (Ctrl+C). Go back to the first window. Now, click Edit>Paste (Ctrl+V). A little pop-up will appear, asking if you want to enlarge your bitmap. Say no, and the background will have replaced the default whiteness. Use the cursor that appears when you mouse over the image to move the background to a point where you like it. You should be able to see some of the sidewalk.

I chose to arrange it so the Aqua Teens logo is cut out, but you can do it however you see fit. Remember: After you deselect the background, you will NOT be able to change its position without repeating this process. Go to File>Save. Save this as “comicbg1.bmp”.

Step Five – Put your sprites on the panel

Go back to your second MSPaint window. File>Open. Find the sheet you saved of Mario. First, make sure that the background color of this sheet is not ANYWHERE in the sprites themselves. If the background color can be found in the sprites, select the default burn-your-eyes-out green (as this color is usually not found in sprites), and fill in the background. Don't worry about filling in spaces between arms and ribs or anything yet- it's easier to just do that on an “as needed” basis. Now then, select an appropriate sprite with the rectangular Select tool. Hit Edit>Copy, then Edit>Paste. The sprite should appear in the top left-hand side of the MSPaint window. Right-click it, and select “Stretch/Skew”. This window should come up:

Fill in the Horizontal and Vertical fields in the Stretch box with “200”, and click okay. The sprite should now be twice as big. This is the method you should always always always use when resizing a sprite. Now, hit Edit>Cut. Back to the first window, and hit Edit>Paste.

“OH NOEZ!! Mario still has that green background!” I hear you saying. Never fear, my friend. See the little box with shapes in it under the toolbar? Yes? Excellent. Your eyes are in perfect working order. Right now the top one (with the blue) is selected. Click on the bottom one. Yes, yes, the green is still there. Chill. Down on your color selection bar, right click the default burn-your-eyes-out green. DISAPPEAR'D. Move Mario down to the sidewalk and deselect. Okay, now go back to your second window, and repeat the process with a Samus sprite. (If you made any beneficial changes to the Mario sheet, i.e. putting in a background of burn-your-eyes-out green, save the changes.) Your panel should now look something like this:


Step Six – Assembling your comic

Now that that's done, go over to your third MSPaint window. Adjust the settings of your work area using the Attributes panel we used earlier. Since we're going to be dealing with a 2x2 size comic with 200x200 pixel panels, set your image size to 1000x1000. This will leave muchas muchas room for adding talk bubbles, author's notes, disclaimers, and the like. In the first window, click Edit>Select All, then Edit>Copy. Go back to your third window, and hit Edit>Paste. Drag the panel into the upper left hand quadrant of the document, and deselect it. Now, the panel needs a frame. In your work area, zoom in by 200%. Select the Rectangle tool from your toolbar, and set it to the default setting in the shape style box.

Play with the tool a little bit until you get a black frame wrapped tight around the panel. The Line tool also works for this if the Rectangle tool is giving you trouble.

Step Seven – Repeat

Now, go back and repeat steps 4-6 as necessary until your comic is fully assembled. Reopen “comicbg1.bmp” that we saved earlier to get the fresh background for each new panel. You can copy/paste in any sprites that you want to keep the same from your final version in the third window. The end product should look something like this:

This is zoomed out, obviously. For Mario's mushroom recoloring, I used Paint's default dark red, and a custom red a few shades lighter than the dark red in Mario's outfit. If you don't know how to make custom colors, here's how: Select a color close to the one you want from the color selection bar. Go to Colors>Edit Colors, and select Define Custom Colors from the pop-up. A side panel will open and then you can play with the colors until you get one you like. Anyways, I'm rambling. Onto the next step.

Step Eight – Adding Dialogue

By this point, you should have already run your script through a spell-checking program. (If you think that the spell-checking thing is a bit hypocritical of me, you're probably right =P) Okay, this part is hard. You may have to repeat a few times before you get it right. First, fill the white background of your final version window with burn-your-eyes-out green. To make a talk bubble, select the Ellipse or Rounded Rectangle tool. I prefer the Ellipse. Click black to make it your stroke color, right click the white in your color selection box to make that the background color, and highlight the second option in the shape style box. Now, in the green space, try to eyeball how big Samus' first talk bubble should be, and then try to insert her line. Make sure that you have the same option we used to make the sprites background colors disappear selected for the text and that you already have your text color selected. If it doesn't fit, or you made the bubble too big, then TRY IT AGAIN. You can get your text to center by simply messing around with the space bar.

Now, right click burn-your-eyes-out green again, and use the Rectangular Selection tool to select the talk bubble only. Make sure the transparency option is still selected, and drag the bubble onto the panel. Remember, you want this to be the first thing that your audience reads, so put it near the top left hand side of the panel. Now, right click on the white again, select the Polygon tool, and zoom in by 200%. Make sure that you have the second option selected in the shape style box. Now, click on a point just inside your talk bubble, on the bottom, and hold it. Bring your cursor down near Samus' head, and release. Go back inside the talk bubble not to far from the first spot, and click again. One last click on the spot where you started, and it should fill in with white. Use your Eraser tool to get rid of the extra black line, and voila!! A non-crap talk bubble!!

Now, repeat the process and fill in the rest of your comic. Once everything is in place, kill the burn-your-eyes-out green by replacing it with white. Now it should look something like this:


Step Nine – Finishing your comic

Now add a title, comic number, author's note, etc. Once you've done that, use the Rectangular Selection tool select the entire comic, and drag it up to the top left-hand corner of the document. Scroll down to the bottom right-hand corner of your document. See the little blue dot. Click it, and then start to drag it towards your comic. Once you get it fairly close, zoom in by 200% and go to the blue dot at the bottom, and drag it up so there's only 1 or 2 pixels from your author's note to the border. Do the same thing with the right-hand side dot to the right-hand side of your comic. Now we have to save it. Just to be safe, save one copy as a .bmp to preserve the colors. Now, File>Save As, and type the same name as when you saved as a .bmp, only this time, put a .png extension on the end. Save it, open a new MSPaint window, and open “[comic name].png”. If it worked and the colors are not distorted, you may now delete the .bmp comic. Never ever ever save your comic as a .jpg. The result will be absolutely horrible.

Annnd… weeee're… DONE!!


Part Two – Other common questions and techniques

I've covered most of the basics in this tutorial, and some of the slightly fancier stuff, but there are a few things I didn't discuss. So, here is where I'll try to cover the rest.

-Sprite reflection and rotation
--One of the most common techniques a sprite comic maker will employ is changing a sprite's direction, or reflecting. To do this, have the sprite selected with the Rectangular Selection tool, and right click. Select Flip/Rotate from the drop-down menu, and choose “Flip horizontal” from the pop-up. You can also turn the sprite upside down from this screen, or rotate it by increments of 45 degrees.

-Inversion
--An easy (and overused) special effect in sprite comics is inverting the colors. You can use this as a warp zone, a time freeze moment, etc. To use this effect, go to Image>Invert Colors (Ctrl+I)

-Special Effect Text
--My personal favorite method is using Microsoft Word's Word Art. In your Word window, go to Insert>Picture>Word Art, and go from there to make a sound effect or exclamation. Once you have settled on your special effect text, cut/paste it into your MSPaint window.

-Special Effects in general
--I never put too much stock in special effects, but one thing I will say is that if you're going to use the Spray Paint tool, use it SPARINGLY. Trying to make quality effects with the Spray Paint tool is near impossible, and looks tacky 90% of the time. Try using sprited effects, i.e. explosion sprites, blasts, etc.