>>35491017I can at least speak for trainer sprites since it's the only thing I've done for the past 6 months. I can tell you that without Photoshop with its layers and its color correction I could never get anything done. My sprites take me around 4 to 6 hours to complete usually spit between 2 days. For the first 5 of the 6 hours the sprite looks like shit, it's during that last hour where the cleanup happens and all the pieces are present that the sprite comes together, so if you spend 1 hour on it and it looks bad don't be deterred spend another hour.
Also look at GFs original sprites of course it won't have a Zulu shield but it can have an arm bent the way you want it that you can work off of. I never do outlines as the first step for a 16 color sprite it's more work, I start by piecing together very crudely what I want sometimes by just shrinking down pngs to 64x64 to get a sense of the scale and the anatomy and work from that.
>>35491057Turns out I can't do green, I will follow my plan with the properly clothed African man.
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The Nigerian "Prince" 