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00:00Welcome!
00:01In this lesson I will show you how to use Asprite, my personal favorite pixel art tool.
00:08Now you can get Asprite from asprite.org or you can buy it even on Steam.
00:14So even if I click here buy now it would transfer me to the Steam store.
00:19So probably all of you have Steam so no worries about it.
00:22I will jump into Asprite in just a few seconds but since Asprite has a lot of features and
00:29all of them are pretty decent actually pretty awesome for pixel art but I will not be covering
00:35all of them.
00:36As well just like I didn't cover everything in Photoshop because I want to give you everything
00:42you need to get started on pixel art but not exactly all features so you don't get confused
00:49with all the possibilities.
00:50When you scroll down on their official site you can see all of the possibilities and yes
00:59I will show you the most important ones but I just wanted to point out that you might
01:08want to go through all of this once you finish the beginner part of the course and once you
01:15get comfortable with Asprite if you choose Asprite as your main tool.
01:19Ok so let's go into the software itself.
01:23Here we have file and we can click new.
01:26Here we can choose the width and height of our canvas.
01:30The color mode I usually leave it at RGBA and background is transparent.
01:35You have the advanced options but I usually leave that by default.
01:41Alright so what do we have here?
01:44Well on the right side we have our tools.
01:46On the left side we have our colors.
01:50On the bottom part we have the animation and the preview and in the middle we have our canvas.
01:56So let's go over the tools one by one.
02:00I will be skipping them in a certain order just so it makes sense.
02:06The first one is Rectagonal Marquee tool.
02:09This is used for selection which I'll show you in a few seconds but the most important
02:13one is the pencil tool.
02:15This pencil tool enables you to actually draw pixel art.
02:20Now over here you can choose what type of pencil you want to use whether it's a rounded edge or
02:27a square edge so if I pick a color you can see this is a round edge.
02:34If I choose to create a square here we go.
02:40Now also you can pick the size of your brush anywhere from 1 to 64 pixels which is honestly
02:48more than enough and there you go.
02:51So the next one on the list is Eraser tool and this one we use to erase things.
02:58One more thing that I forgot to say about the pencil tool is that you can pick a point,
03:05hold shift and then create a straight line anywhere here on the canvas.
03:11You can do the same thing with the line tool which is here at the bottom.
03:16You can just hold and create straight lines.
03:18So those are the two main ways where how you can create straight lines.
03:22Okay moving on.
03:23Now I want to go back to the marquee tool to show you what it actually does.
03:27So if I have a certain shape over here and I pick this tool you have a few different options.
03:34You have the rectangular marquee tool, you have the elliptical, you have the lasso tool, polygonal
03:39and magic wand tool.
03:42When you go to the rectangle you can see that it automatically selects in a form of a rectangle.
03:50And here we have our selection and then we can move it around as we want to.
03:58The elliptical tool is pretty much the same except it selects an ellipse or you can select
04:05like circles, lasso tool is used for like custom selections, something like this.
04:16You have the polygonal lasso tool.
04:18This is pretty much like lasso tool but you can actually drag and click to select certain
04:25polygonal shapes.
04:27And the last one is magic wand tool.
04:29This one is really cool because it selects one color that is on your canvas.
04:36But for each of these tools over here you have a certain properties of each of these tools.
04:44So you can see they change depending on which tool you choose.
04:47And the most important one for the magic wand tool is the tolerance.
04:52You want to keep that on zero because if you increase it, it will catch other colors aside
04:59from the one that you've chosen.
05:01But the most important part is the contiguous.
05:04If I have different spots, let's say red spots over here and here at the side.
05:16Now if I use the magic wand tool and if the contiguous is turned on, that means that we will
05:22select the color all the way until it ends.
05:25So it will select only this part.
05:28It will not select this outer part because the contiguous is still on.
05:33However, if we were to uncheck contiguous, it will select this color and this entire layer.
05:41Really useful for selecting colors.
05:44Now let's go to the next tool.
05:47This is the eyedropper tool which, well, as you can know, it selects a certain color on
05:52your canvas.
05:53This is quite useful when you're trying to draw, but honestly, you can just, when you
05:57are using the brush tool, you can just hold alt and it will automatically prop up and you
06:03can use it immediately, temporary.
06:05And when you release alt, you go straight back to the brush tool, which is the pencil tool,
06:10which is quite, quite useful.
06:12The next one is zoom tool.
06:13I don't zoom in with the Z, even though you actually can.
06:18I use always my mouse wheel.
06:21You can hold space bar to move your canvas around, which is the move tool.
06:26And here we have the move tool itself, so we can actually move our entire layer.
06:33The next one is paint bucket tool.
06:36You can see the gradient tool with or without dithering.
06:41So this is very, very nice to have, especially for pixel artists.
06:45But when you go to the paint bucket tool, you will notice that tolerance is again zero and
06:50contiguous is turned on.
06:51So if I were to keep this contiguous and paint bucket, I will have to go each and every separate
06:58spot by themselves, but if I turn it off, I can simply paint over everything very quickly.
07:06Now if you go over here at the gradient tool, you can see that it creates this deterring effect.
07:12Now this can be used in certain gains that combine high resolution with low resolution, but I suggest
07:20you don't try to take anything like that until you have a few big projects behind you.
07:27Now, deterring is very nice.
07:30I will be explained what deterring is in certain lessons, but essentially it is a gradient between
07:35two colors.
07:38Next one I already covered, which is the line tool.
07:40We have the rectangle tool and we have four different ones.
07:44We have the empty rectangle tool, the filled one, and same goes for the ellipse, ellipse empty
07:50and filled ellipse.
07:52Now if I were to create a square, you can see it's empty.
07:55Obviously there is no fill whatsoever.
07:57However, if I check the filled one, it will fill in the color inside as well.
08:04The ellipse tool is pretty much the same except it creates ellipses.
08:09If you hold shift while picking, you will create a rounded circle.
08:14And again, for the filled one, it will create a filled circle.
08:19All right, so here we have a contour tool, which honestly I don't use much, but essentially
08:26you draw a line and wherever you end your point, it will automatically connect it with
08:31the first point and fill in the rest of the image.
08:35And the polygon tool is the same except you keep clicking until you get what you want.
08:43And we have the blur tool.
08:45Please stay away from this one.
08:48Quite easily, the jumble tool, you can use it to jumble around well, but it's too chaotic.
08:56And the blur tool creates anti-alias, which we do not want in our pixel art, at least for
09:03the first year until you become really high level.
09:07All right, so these are the main tools over here.
09:10So let's jump here on the left side.
09:12We have our color palette, which we can increase or decrease.
09:16So if I were to, if I were to want to import my color palette or hide this one, I
09:24can do
09:25that, which is very, very useful.
09:28And essentially, if you keep creating different, different color palettes, that is really, really,
09:37useful.
09:37So let me show you how, how we can create a certain color palette.
09:41So if I were to pick a few colors, just few random ones, I'm not worried too much about
09:51anything.
09:52And we go over here, we have, we can, we can actually edit the palette itself, but right
09:59now we can go and create palette from the current, from the current sprite.
10:03Right.
10:03This means a sprite will take whatever colors we have here on canvas and it will create
10:10palette from those colors.
10:12So you can click OK.
10:14And as you can see, those three colors are over here.
10:18Yes, we have the black one over here, but we can simply delete it if we wanted to.
10:23This is very, very nice because you can very easily create your own color palettes or if
10:29you already have a finished work and you want to know what is a color palette for that image,
10:35if you have an artist that you like, you can just import that image in a sprite and click
10:40here and see what type of color palette he or she used.
10:44Next.
10:46Very nice.
10:47Now we get to the fun part and that's the animation.
10:52So we have the option of creating multiple layers and multiple frames.
10:57We can add frames over here on the bottom.
11:02Or we can simply use the shortcut which is Alt plus N.
11:09You can also create new layers if you want to, which is Shift N when it comes to the shortcut.
11:15We can create as many layers as we want.
11:18This is really important when it comes to animation and this is why I love, love a sprite.
11:24So let me just erase these layers.
11:26You can also switch layers when you click on them.
11:29You have this move tool that pops up and then I can switch the layers around if I want
11:34to.
11:35I'll just erase all of them for now.
11:39You can also select more of them as you can see, but let's create a simple animation.
11:47And you can also delete the frames themselves.
11:54And let's go and create something really, really fast.
11:57So here I have a simple shape.
12:01And if I go to the next layer, to the next frame, you can already see it disappears.
12:07Now the preview over here shows also our animation if we click this playback button.
12:14However, as you can see, it automatically playbacks our entire timeline.
12:19If you want to limit this timeline and allow me to show you how this would actually work.
12:25If I create a few different shapes in different colors, you can see it goes through all of
12:38these colors.
12:39However, if you want to specify which frames you want to show here in the playback, you
12:45can select them over here, right click and click new tag.
12:49You can name the tag over here, let's say example.
12:53You can choose the animation direction which is the forward, reverse or ping pong when it
12:59goes from one point to another and then it reverses it.
13:02We will keep the forward for now.
13:04And you can see, if I reset our playback and start playing it over here, you can only see
13:12it goes between these two.
13:13It doesn't go through all of the four.
13:16If you want to delete the tag, you can just right click and delete the tag.
13:22Very cool.
13:23Now, one very, very, very nice thing about our animation in a sprite is using the onion
13:30skin tool.
13:31So I will just go and explain what this actually is.
13:39Let's say on first and third frame, I have few different shapes and I want something in
13:46the middle.
13:46So I want to create an in-between, something in between these two shapes.
13:50Instead of trying to eyeball it, I can use the onion skill tool.
13:56So if I were to click over here, I can immediately see where is the first frame and the next
14:06frame.
14:06So the previous one and the next one.
14:08Now I can easily draw in between.
14:11And if I turn it off, you can see that I successfully created an in-between onion skill tool is
14:18really
14:18a key feature when it comes to animation.
14:21I can't stress how important this is.
14:25So please do keep that in mind.
14:27One thing for beginners, I would like to say for the pencil tool is that you have this option
14:32pixel perfect.
14:34When it's turned off, you can see you can create these jacked lines.
14:39However, if you turn it on, it will automatically correct your lines.
14:44However, it won't be 100% correct.
14:46So I suggest you avoid it until you can create curved lines by yourself, which are the first
14:53few lessons of this course.
14:54So just hang on to that.
14:57OK, so what do we have left?
15:00Well, we still need to cover the tiles.
15:02So if we go over here in the view, you can see the tiled mode option.
15:08And usually when I create tiles, I want to click here tile in both axes.
15:14Now what this happens?
15:16It takes the original position of our tile and then it generates the same tile around
15:26it.
15:27So similar to what we can do in pixel edit, except with less flexibility.
15:31But essentially we can now create tile without any seams.
15:36Now I'm just scribbling around, but yes, this is one very, very nice option.
15:41And once you are done with your tile, you can just go back to the view.
15:47And you can just turn it off.
15:50So we go to the tile mode and click none.
15:52And here we have our tile.
15:54Now this isn't something that you can use for let's say tile sets, but for creating a
15:59singular tiles, it's really, really nice.
16:02Personally I use a sprites for animation and designing characters.
16:06But when it comes to tiling, I prefer to tile in pixel edit.
16:12Okay so this is it and this is everything you need to know about a sprite.
16:16Now once again I will repeat, I didn't cover 100% features of a sprite because that would
16:21take at least two hours.
16:23But I covered all the basic ones that you actually need to start doing pixel art.
16:28And when we move on to the advanced stuff, you can again research something from their
16:33official website if you think you actually need to use a certain feature.
16:37But in my opinion, you really don't need anything.
16:40I even showed you a little bit of extras.
16:43Okay, this is it for this video.
16:45I will see you in the next one.
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