Basic Splicing Tutorial
Before you start splicing, you need to pick the portraits you are going to use, of course.
When doing so make sure to pick portraits who are roughly the same size and are facing
the same direction. Picking characters who have matching sizes and poses will make the
splicing process a lot easier, so make sure to choose carefully whne picking parts for splicing.
Note:
Before doing any sort of spriting you should turn "Draw opaque" off. This can be done by
choosing the select tool and clicking the part the arrow is pointing at in the picture below.
When I say "basic splice" I am referring to a splice that uses a body, aface and hair from
three different mugs. No more, no less. In this example I will use Cath's body, Tate's face
and Nino's hair.
Step 1
First Step is to seperate the parts you need from the parts you don't need.
Step 2
Next we clean up the parts we are going to use. This can be done in a few ways.
Personally, I use the eraser method to recolor part I don't need to white. Be careful
when doing this however, some sprites use the same colors for hair and eyes like
in Tate's case.
Notice how I left a bit of Cath's chin. It's good to leave this as it will make placing the head
on the body easier.
Step 3
Next we will make sure that all of our parts have the same skin and outline colors. First
thing is to get the colors you need. It is a good idea to keep a reference of different skin
colors so that you don't always have to go digging through your mugs every time you need
a skin color.
It would be a good idea to make a copy of your parts so far after this step. That way, in
case you make a mistake, you don't have to fix up your parts a second time.
Step 4
It is generally a good idea to start by splicing the face and body together first. We'll start
by placing Cath's body over Tate's neck. I used Cath's chin as a guide for where Tate's
chin should be.
Step 5
Next we will add the hair. Before starting make a copy of the right side of the mug's jaw
(from the mug's point of view). This part is a bit tricky to explain. I guess the easiest way
is to just try and put the hair on and see how it looks. A couple of things to note however,
first the bottom of the ear should be on the same level as the bottom of the nose while the
top of the ear should line up with the eyebrows. Second, the height of the head should
be between 48 and 55 pixels, roughly, so if the mug isn't around this height then you
probably placed the hair too low or too high.
Once you have placed the hair on, place the part of the face you copied over the original part.
The purpose of this is that sometimes the hair may cut into part of the mug after splicing.
It won't always do this; in fact, sometimes you will have to add some hair instead of
cutting some off.
Alternatively, you may just want to break the hair up into two parts and splice them
individually, though the method I previously explained is probably easier and cleaner.
Step 6
Alright, so we have our sprite mostly down. Next, we have to fill in any missing parts. In this
case, that's pretty much just the forehead.
Start by filling in the empty spaces with the first skin color.
Second, using the third skin color, add a single pixel to the parts of her hair that touch her skin.
Third, use the second skin color and add pixels next to the third skin color pixels you just added.
^ The three aforementioned steps
In general, you need to add shading/anti-aliasing in any place where two different parts of a
mug are touching.
Examples:
-Where hair touches the forehead or armor/clothing.
-Where a cape covers armor/clothing.
This part may be a bit difficult to understand, so I will show a zoomed in version of the mug
with color coded changes.
The light blue denotes where I placed the second skin color. The red denotes where I placed t
he third skin color. The dark blue denotes other changes I made.
On the left is an example of the correct way to shade and on the right is an example of a common
mistake that most beginners make. Admittedly, it is a bit exaggerated, but it still works as an
example. Notice how in most cases the red parts are the same length as the light blue parts.
This is called pillow-shading amd should be avoided (NOTE: Some parts are unchanged between
these two soomed in versions).
And while I'm on the topic of pillow-shading I may as well adress another kind of pillow-shading
that even some of the better spriters do.
Within the two red circles are parts that demonstrate how to anit-alias on lines that are at a 45 degree angle.
This kind of line if I wasn't clear.
To shade like this instead would be a form of pillow-shading. It isn't really as obvious, though
unless it is used quite heavily. Even so, you should still avoid shading like this.
Original anti-aliasing.
It should be noted that there are some FE mugs that have this kind of anti-aliasing. In some cases
it is because the part that is being shaded has four colors. On other mugs that use it, it is done
pretty lightly. Personally, I still think it looks bad. A pretty good chunk of FE mugs don't do this so
you probably shouldn't either.
Step 7
At this point the mug is more or less finished. All that is left to do is recolor it. There isn't really
much to actually recoloring the mug. Just keep in mind that if it's going to be in a hack it has to
have 15 colors plus a background.
One thing that you will almost always encounter is that your finished splice will have more than
15 colors, so make sure to take that into consideration when choosing your colors.
Finished product.
Since there isn't much to talk about recoloring I figured I would just talk about colors in general.
This isn't really necessary for splicing, but it's pretty good for any artist to know a little about
color theory.
This is a color wheel. A color wheel is a useful tool that let's an artist know how certain colors will
work with each other.
In simplest terms, colors that are directly opposite of each other (like yellow and blue, for example)
will contrast each other. Colors that are very close together (like pink, magenta and purple) will blend
well together. You can use this to your advantage to create certain "moods" with your mugs or
if you want a certain part of the mug to stand out thenyou could use contrasting colors.
There is actually a bit more to color theory, but I won't go into it further. If you are curious then
look it up on wikipedia. The article on wiki doea a sufficient job of explaining different moods
as well as the colors associated with them.
A few examples of color schemes. From left to right: A scheme that blends well, a scheme with
contrasting colors and a scheme that uses both.
