How to creatively increase the resolution of a image sprite in 5 steps!
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This is probably the most important part of the entire process. Not only do you need to find a cool image sprite, but you need to be able to visualize what it could look like with more detials. In my case, I made a sword for my Mystical Ore mod a while back and I'm going to be using that for the tutorial. So Here is the full size of my starting image:

This is one of the easy parts. Open your image in a image editor (I STRONGLY recommend Greenfish Icon Editor [GFIE].) and for GFIE double click on the page on the side and double the height and width of the image.
STEP 3: Produce Color Palette
STEP 4: Smooth Image and Shade
Once you have your color palette, I recommend selecting the 2nd darkest color and filling in the entire section you will be working on. Then use the pencil and eraser tools to smooth out the lines of the sprite while using your mind to envision if the lines should be slight curves or of curves should be arcs and so on. Once you've done that, start with the lightest color and produce similar shading on the higher res image as is on the lower res one. Do this with all sections and (in my case) will come up with something like this:

You can see that I didn't have a full palette and I didn't add many details other than curves. The next time I added more colors however:

STEP 5: Add Detail

After your have added all details possible you wanted to the image for that resolution, Go back and repeat STEPS 2-5. Improving detail as you increase resolution. Here is what I did from start to finish:
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For my sword, I only went to a resolution of 128x128px and it took me about a week to get it where it is now. Also, you can see the color palettes I was using in the corners of my pictures, as I didn't want to remove them yet.
Additional Details
| Tags: | Res, Resolution, Blue, Orange, Amazing, Color, Palette, Detail, Increase, Sword, Pixels, Pixel, Shape, Shading, Shade, Vision, Envision, Draw, Paint, Erase, Greenfish, Green, Fish, Icon, Editor, Curves, Arcs, Lines, Pencil, Average, Smooth, Size, Mod, Image, Sprite, Creativity, Tutorial |
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DarkFusion
Level 30
Artisan Pixel Painter
September 28, 2012, 10:49 am
2. save as a high resolution :3 lol
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marioben33
Level 1
New Warrior
August 17, 2012, 4:17 pm
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spike43884
Level 11
Journeyman Taco
August 8, 2012, 3:26 am
becuase just making it smaller completely rips apart the image
i edit in paint get transparency elsewhere
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Kickflip147
Level 59
Grandmaster Geek
August 8, 2012, 7:43 am
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spike43884
Level 11
Journeyman Taco
August 8, 2012, 8:06 am
oh could you possibly make just a download for the default minecraft texturepack (i cant find it anywhere :/)
and 1 thing i do say about that sword - im think the low-res 1 looks abit better the sword just looks abit curly in high res and looks like it has a sort of star in it :/ :/ :/ :? :/ :/ :/
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Kickflip147
Level 59
Grandmaster Geek
August 8, 2012, 1:58 pm
and the thing about the low-res looking better. What i did to increase resolution was completely my creativity and so if you don't like my creativity then that's fine.
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spike43884
Level 11
Journeyman Taco
August 14, 2012, 2:30 am
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Frostgeneral2k
Level 45
Master Technomancer
August 8, 2012, 3:19 am
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heartshapedBox
Chat Moderator
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Master Pirate
August 5, 2012, 10:37 am
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Lord_Andre
Level 20
Expert Pirate
August 20, 2012, 2:30 am