Vehicle Sprites Tutorial

Someone once asked how I make these little guys, and for the most part, I make every one from scratch and do not copy/paste parts of them. This keeps them from getting stale and forces me to re-make every part based on the character and not generic bodytypes.

I decided to show the process of making a Vehicle mode. Hopefully people can learn and apply this to animating THIER OWN ORIGINAL WORK. Remember, just because I use a specific style doesn't mean the tips don't work in any style. My goal is to help fellow artists develop their own trade, not simply do the work of drawing/animating my art for me.

I have to say this because people on the internet are ILLITERATE. MAKE YOUR OWN ORIGINAL WORK. Don't simply attempt to make 50x50 Chibi Nick-icons. Anyone who says that they are simply 'similar' are liars because even if the icons are the same scale and same ratios, they can be UNIQUE. Other artists like SKOWL [link] and RHA [link] have proven this fact. Check out thier awesome work.

Onto the tutorial:

Here I have shown a few different vehicles and they are purposefully different. As you can see, some vehicles like Prime, Huffer and Bumblebee and Astrotrain Train are 3/4ths sideviews, while others like Starscream, Astrotrain Shuttle and Springer are 3/4ths view with a perspective added.

You can also see from the 'FRONT' view some are simple front views while others are a perspective overhead.

Why? Simply put, it depends on the vehicle As you can see, Flying vehicles look very bad when they are a direct front or side view. They need the 'erspective' to see the wing details.

Prime has plenty of detail without the perspective.

Springer is very slanty and the perspective allowed me to cheat and add some depth to him. And while Astrotrain Train didn't need an overhead perspective, just a side view.

I am sure half of that did not make sense... I will probably redo-these later with more frame by frame detail.

But I hope this gives some insight on how to make vehicular sprites. They don't gotta be Chibi... That is just what I am doing but the same tricks work for any ratios or scale.