Beginner here, help?

[Struggleton!]

So I'd like to begin creating sprites, so where should I start? Help is appreciated!

[Joxon]

Well, if you wanna start spriting, it might be best to start off with sometjing you know. Make a custom sprite of you favorite game character for practice. At least that's how I got started.

[E-Man]

It also wouldn't hurt to edit already existing sprites for practice. Just don't expect anything big from simple recolors, though.

[~Axis~]

You could actually try drawing sprite-sized in MS paint and then improve from there.

[DragonDePlatino]

It also wouldn't hurt to edit already existing sprites for practice. Just don't expect anything big from simple recolors, though.

Do not do this.

Yes, you can learn how to draw pixel art by editing sprites, but the fact of the matter is that you'll learn 10x faster if you draw your own art. Sure, your early art will look terrible compared to edits,  but you'll quickly outpace the artists who learn by editing sprites. I never edited any sprites while learning pixel art, and years later I don't regret that decision.

With that being said, I got my start in pixel art by reading Derek Yu's Pixel Art Tutorial. And after I drew a few pictures, I took a look at the PixelJoint Pixel Art Tutorial to learn more of the advanced techniques. When I started out I used MS Paint but recently I've been using ASEprite so I can work with indexed palettes, transparency, animation and layers. Older versions of ASEprite are free.

[Gors]

You could start something that's 100% from scratch, this way you'll learn faster, see Dragon's post.

extra motivational text

Spriting is like drawing. It can or can not be art. It heavily depends on your effort at it and how much you're willing to spend your time.

Spriting, like drawing, is something that can only be mastered within time, and I've been spriting since 2006 or so. That's eight years of spriting. Yikes!

However, don't feel intimidated with the time I spent - Better yet, the term for this is 'invested'. Anything you learn and practice, you need to invest time on it. You aren't wasting time, you are making something out from it. And it's rare for someone to make something with their time.

Your success at spriting will depend on the amount of your commitment at it and what you consider 'success': if you just want to know it quickly, you could churn out simple works within a month or two, and that may be okay if that's what you want. However if you really delve into it, if you want to learn more, you'll be able to produce even better crafts.

Here in tVGR we try teaching people pixelart, however their goals are wildly different and I acknowledge if a member doesn't want to go deeper into it. But if you're really interested, we'll be glad to lend you a hand: you learn from us and we learn from you. It's an exchange of experiences and we're glad to know that you're willing to try.

We will not hesitate in giving blunt criticism but that's because the world works like this (and even worse in some cases). No one gets anywhere with sugarcoating so if you feel offended by any eventual criticism, go breath outside a little and try again: we aren't assholes, but we aren't fairy godmothers either.

Anyway, I kinda made this long and I don't want to scare you away with this text wall. Just take your time, have fun pushing pixels and we'll try steering you to quality.