This needs to be updated (maybe with some images) but it'll do for now.
Spriting Glossary
GENERAL TERMS
Spriting Glossary
GENERAL TERMS
- Sprite: A pixellated graphic used as a part of something bigger, such as a character or object in a game or animation
- Pixel art: ANY pixellated graphic, usually done by hand. Sprites are pixel art; pixel arts are not necessarily sprites!
- Spriter: Someone who works with sprites.
- Spriting: The whole process of working (and playing) with sprites.
- Ripper: Someone who rips sprites.
- Ripping: the act of taking sprites from a game and organizing them into a format that other people can use.
- Palette: The range of colors used in a particular sprite. Will vary depending on the intended use of the sprites. For example, most console game sprites have 16 colors or less. A custom sprite can have as large or small a palette as the spriter chooses. The amount of colors used can be a factor in "style spriting".
- Style: Sprite styles are usually based on the "rules" of a certain game's sprites, such as proportions, colors, and shading.
- Shading: The use of multiple levels of brightness to create an illusion of depth
- Antialiasing: A shading technique where midtones are used to make outlines appear smoother.
- Hue Shift: The use of a certain color warmth as a base for your darkest shade, with your brighter shades using a smaller amount of said colors. Hue shift is one of the most important things in picking a color choice for your palette. (Example of hue shift; a green base, with each darker shade having a bluish hue)
- Dithering: A type of shading that uses a checkerboard pattern to mesh shades together.
- Rip: A sprite taken directly from a game via screenshots, tile viewing, or other methods. Some people call rips done by screenshot "captures". Whatever.
- Recolor: A sprite that is identical to a rip, but with its colors changed.
- Edit: A sprite that is modified from a rip or some sort of base, with differences beyond the colors.
- Custom: Also known as a "scratch sprite", a sprite made with no base from the ground up.
- 8-bit / 16-bit / 32-bit: Refers to the power of game console hardware, and therefore the level of detail sprites could have on that hardware. Often used informally
- Paint - AKA MSPaint, the default "image editor" included with every version of Windows. Gets the job done but is probably part of the reason why some people think spriting is so hard.
- Photoshop - Super powerful image editor that can be used for spriting with some tweaks.
- Flash - Powerful, professional-grade animation program that can be used to make, well, animations.
- Paint Shop Pro - Another good graphics program which I use personally. Like photoshop, it needs some tweaking, but has lots of great features.
- Emulator: a program for personal computers that simulates the processing of a video game console. Essentially, a virtual console.
- ROM: a file that acts as a virtual game cartridge or disc, emulators are used to run them. Requesting ROMs is against the forum rules!
- Tile Molester: a program that can be used to view sprite data inside roms without having to play them. Two versions are available SDB's resources page.
- Tahaxan: a program specifically made to view data inside DS roms.
- Animget: a program that takes screenshots very quickly and saves them; when used in conjunction with a running emulator, it's a powerful tool for sprite ripping.
- Screenshot: a still image of your computer screen or a specific program in that screen. You can take screenshots by hitting the PrntScrn key on your keyboard, or just the active program by hitting Alt-PrntScrn. Obviously very useful for ripping.