First thing's first. Getting the proportions down. Block out your character with a rough lineart of what pose and items (if any) your sprite is going to be carrying. Proportions are the hardest part to emulate due to their highly exaggerated nature, so take as much time as you need in this step to get it right, because it will make the rest of the process a breeze if you do!

• First thing to note is the general proportions of the usual chibi characters used in the popular Pocket/Gem Fighter series. The head is the most important part, as it portrays the most emotion throughout the body, relative to its area of course. So in any case, The average male body should stand around 70 pixels tall, the head of which takes around 30-32 pixels both in height and in width. Yes, it is important to make the head wide as well. In fact, our whole sprite is going to resemble a horizontally stretched human figure, to a very severe degree. Following the head, the waist should be about midway through the sprite's body, if not slightly below that centerline. Because the head takes up so much realestate, if you do not make the body hang a bit lower than the centerline of the sprite, the torso might appear too short, but that is sort of an individual character/sprite issue. Also, our arms should be rather large and long compared to the rest of our body, much longer and fatter than an arm of normal proportion! Just to give you an idea as to how big, the fingers are going to be about 2-3 pixels wide per finger! so make sure you block yourself in ample hand room when roughing out your sprite.

Speaking of which, the first step is all about gettin the basic form of your sprite down. Ive started with a sort of sketched out silhouette with a tiny bit of detail lines drawn in. Youre most likely going to edit the hell out of this to get the proportions right, so dont feel bad if your silhouette blockout stage doesnt perfectly resemble your final sprite. Okay, next step, we are basically just defining detail by roughin in areas of color. St0ven usually has that damned orange hat thing going on, and we should repeat that probably in the shogun pants. Check out the sword he sports. If youre going to give your chibi character an item of some sort, note that the item should also be oddly larger in proportion than the rest of the sprite's body. This is what gives it the cute and small illusion, to some extent. no use giving him a realistically proportioned katana when his head is the size of his torso, right?

Just blocking out colors! throwing in a bit of lineart in there as well. Facial expressions are very important, and might be good to block them out early. Check out how the eyebrows stick out of the hat as if they werent attached to the head at all! classic chibi feature, the floating eyebrow... remember that ;).

• Our next step is basically just blocking in more color, we've added st0ven's signature blueish tone to his gi, which will be useful to repeat in the swordblade, since an orange blade would be rediculous, so lets go ahead and block all that in. Also at this time it would be cute to block out some sort of facial expression. remember this face is going to be the defining point of your sprite, so make sure it really shines through with alot of emotion!

Now that weve got our character roughly blocked in with all the hues we wish to use, its time to go ahead and finalize the lineart by adding detail with shades of each area's respective hue. Begin to AA some of your details to smooth them out, but be careful here. we want to keep an anime/cell shaded look, which means that we want alot more flat shaded areas than normal. Notice his back arm and shoulder for instance. It is completely unshaded, it has one flat color, with a slightly darker color to illustrate some lineart for clothfolds around the armpit. If you wanted to be fancy detailed, you might be inclined to throw a highlight on the shoulder to give it some more roundness to it, but fight that urge! keep it flat, and keep it basic. This is whats going to give you the cute anime style. The main point here is to get the lineart down.

Add some highlights to give form to your hues that you previously blocked out. If you have any objects overlapping the main body, detail those first, in case you have to move it, no background work will be ruined... or just work on more than one layer ^_^. Start AAing out all of your lineart to get it nice and smooth. Also, remember, light pulls out, dark pushes back. Use this truth to create areas of depth using flat areas of tones. Dont add too much depth or you'll lose your anime quality to your sprite!

• Now its time to give our st0ven a bit of form. Using some new highlight tones, I've made his shoulder and chest stick out a bit in the foreground. Also using even lighter blues, we gave him fun socks! the lightest color is damn near white, which will come in handy for when we do the sword! Also, watch as the back shoulder gets pushed even further into the background in these two different versions as we introduce a new shadow tone. This depth trick of color is a great weapon to have in your arsenal, and is especially necessary to create depth in a sprite style that stresses minimal shading.

I have detailed the sword quite a bit at this point. It is a good habit to detail those objects in the foreground if your images first. If the foreground objects needed to be moved around, it would be a shame to have to ruin any nice detail youve placed in the background in the process. A solution to this is to just use more than one layer, but that would make your job easier, and what fun is that!

Furthermore, adding smaller details to decorate your character is a good thing to get started. Not happy with your anatomy? Well you should have fixed that long ago, but this is your last chance to do so. Your sprite should almost pass as finished at this point.

And our final step, as usual, is to smooth out everything, and add the last bit of detail, such as embroidery, tattoos, markings, extra highlights needed to detail key features, etc. Note the absence of heavy outlining, which helps to maintain the cel shaded style. St0ven makes for a great character study!

• Lastly, we are adding the extra goodies ontop. Introduced our last few palette entries, including some orange highlight colors which double as skin highlights. We use an even lighter orange to help pull the left leg into the foreground, just as we pushed the shoulder back in the previous step with darkness, we are pulling the leg into the foreground with lightness. Also our arm needs a bit more form at this point, so we have a new skin highlight which will bring out the lower lit areas of the face, the left forearm, and the right hand's knuckles. Also its time to put on the finishing details such as the embroidery on the hat or whatever clothing your character may be wearing. Just to add a bit of flair to the face, ive put on some neat little warpaint/scar patterns down his left cheek to make him super cool!

And now we are finished. The hardest points of the chibi sprite are getting the proportions correct. If you are trying to emulate Capcom's Gem/Pocket fighter sprites and are doing so insuccessfully despite this tutorial example, know that they have a distinct style of lineart that is very hard for even experienced artists to reproduce. Its not a bad thing that your chibi sprite doesnt fit into Gem/Pocket fighter if that is the case, the important thing is that it fits into your game, and that your technique and color usage is sound. Other than that, your sprite is going to be heavily influenced by your own drawing style, so dont be surprised if it looks like everything else that you draw. And of course, the MOST important thing is that youre having fun!