Creating Usable Sprites

[9sholmes]

I tried creating an animated sprite using a Robocop video game image, but it failed. What is the best advice for creating sprites?
   

[Barack Obama]

- Create a 3D model, animate it and capture its frames to create a sprite animation. Examples for this are Donkey Kong Country 1-3.
- Or you create parts of a sprite, like legs, arms, body, head, etc. and then use the parts to animate the whole thing. Bosses in Super Metroid like Ridley or Mother Brain use this.
- You can also do the whole thing in one go, but if you want to make corrections, you have to redo or scrap the whole sprite.

I would do this:
- Fancy sprites with a lot of details: Parts or 3D
- Complicated movements: Parts
- Big sprites: Parts
- Small Sprites: All in one go, use a graphics software of your choice and start drawing.