Dragonball character tips and tricks volume 1.

Probably the best tip to give is to play the game you are 
doing until you know it well. It is hard to get animations
to something if you don't somewhat know what animations
are there. By playing around with the game you can find
out new things and the more you find out the better you
can do. Another thing is that you need to get very used
to the controls of the games so that you can make the
moves work while also hitting the screenshot button.

Another great tip is DON'T TRY TO RIP SPRITES IN
COMPUTER VS. YOU MODE. Use player vs. player mode if
available because it is way easier. Don't make it any
harder than it needs to be.

First, set up a button strategy for your character.
(Note: mine don't really do this). Decide what 
buttons do what for your character. It makes it
easier if someone knows that all the dashes end
with the b button and the fireballs with the a
button. Or D, DF, F sets up a dash attack and B, F
sets up a fireball or something similar. Makes it
easier to remember how to make moves work when
playing rather than just memorizing the key
strokes only.

Second, in all the DB games if you stand away from the
opponent you get the normal punch or kick moves. When
standing up close to the opponent you get a different
set of animations (well at least one different animation).
I use the far away punch kicks for the a,b punch kick
moves and the up close animations for the x,y punch kicks.
To get most up close animations you'll need to do it
multiple times. Most of the time after several hits the
other character will go to the ground making it easier to
edit the sprites. Also, many of the big attacks have a
smaller attack built in if you stand close also. Many
moves in DBZ work different up close than far away so
try things differently or experiment.

Third, most of the DB games when you crouch kick (trip)
the opponent does the KO type animations (up in the air
then down on their backs). Makes it easier than trying to
wait for a KO when you don't need to. The trip animations
are the same as the KO animations in almost 100% of the
characters out there (probably about 99%).

Fourth, do multiple takes of moves to make sure you got
some good animations to work with. It's a lot easier to
sort through multiple animations than to keep running the
game trying to get that one animation. A lot of moves I
get between 200 and 400 pics to work with. On Hyper Buu's
Candy Munch I know it was over 800 animations that I
took and went through.

Fifth, don't try to do all the moves at once. You'll only
get confused and then give up. Do one move at a time or
a set of animations at a time. Overdoing it means you'll
either miss something or totally mess it up. Do it little
bit by little bit. Saves on brain drain and keeps you
from going "how does that move go again? Was it flip,
kick, flip, kick or kick, flip, kick, flip?". Keep the
move fresh in your mind and your mind fresh.

Sixth, remember what game you are doing. Trying to make 
a character into something they aren't doesn't work too
well with a ripped character. Games are made with a
certain type and kind of sprites and with certain
kinds of moves. Be creative if possible but not too
creative. Also remember gameplay or as it was put to me
my Chairman Kaga once as "Sure you could make Superman
lifelike but he'd be too strong to work in a game" <-
not an actual 100% quote but a rough translation of it.
Try to keep damage values reasonable but also sort of
realistic. Also remember too that most characters are
designed around character traits and specialties. Dabura
wouldn't be Dabura without spitting and turning someone
to stone, Normal Cell not draining people with his tail,
Piccolo without the Makenkansuoppo, Goku without a
KameHameHa, etc. These usually set a character apart
from another character and usually make the character
more fun to play. Try to stay away from 50 multihit
combo type moves. These get kind of boring after a
short while. A couple fine but don't overdo it. Boring
having all these multikick/multipunch velset type
combos as different moves and not much else. Use 
variety. Have some in the air, have some on the 
ground, have some crouching, but not too many and 
definitely not all the same kind.

Seventh, try to keep your character's flat part of
their foot on the stage. So many characters out
there have the front foot (or back foot too) that
is at least 6 or 7 pixels above the stage (mainly
Capcom/Street Fighter characters). Either draw a
box under the flat feet (they are flat because
they are SUPPOSED to be on the stage) or line the
feet up so that they are on the stage. When these
characters walk, they look bad because the foot 
that is supposed to be on the ground is up in the
air twenty miles.

Eighth, don't use old sprites with new sprites. It makes
the old look older and makes the character look bad
usually. Try to use the character's original sprites
or sprites from roughly the same type of game. A Ryu
using Bojack's beam from the Galactic Buster move
looks pretty bad because the sprites don't look well
together same as Hyper Dimension sprites look bad in
Super Butouden 1 characters. Things shouldn't look
too out of place.

Ninth, The palettes from emus are usually not complete.
It is good to do all the projectile moves plus the
special type moves to get all the different colors
needed (explosion clouds, fireballs, laser beams, etc.)
What you do is take a screenshot of the char standing
there and then screenshots of all the other odd color
moves. Take the standing screenshot and reduce the
colors to 256 color (originally when it asks if you 
want to remove the layers say yes).. Don't save the
standing pic though at all. If you save the pic the
colors will be messed up when you reload it. Also
try to use a standing animation with a background to
get more colors too. Also, use a character to play
against with a good color variety also. Next go to the 
other screenshots and pick out the odd colors not in 
the standing pic. Use the eyedropper and move it over
the odd color and write down the number on scrap paper 
and then later add in the color using edit palette 
into the standing pic and then save the palette. After 
saving the palette then just reload the standing pic 
and load the palette on top of it and it will be 
converted to the color palette.

Tenth, the emus I know of have the beam attacks
(KameHameHas, etc.) that don't show up without
leaving the background on. Leave the background on
and take the screenshots that way. Make sure to try
to use an odd colored background to make the sprites
you want stand out. Use the blue spirit & Time room
to rip green Piccolo sprites, etc. Makes it easier.
Also, most backgrounds use different colors than the
sprites so edit the background out first then 
convert the colors to the 256 color palette. Makes
it easier if you use the original palette than a
converted color picture to remove the background.

Eleventh, Paint Shop Pro stuff, Paint Shop Pro is 
most recommended because it has all the features 
in one package. You need to be able to force a 
palette, reduce from 16bit to 256 color, color 
replacement, edit palettes, draw, copy and paste, 
paste new images, paste as transparent image, add 
borders, etc. PSP has it all whereas others are 
missing one or another feature.

Finally, it is really much more fun to figure out how to
code a move yourself. Don't sell yourself short because if
you really do want to you can figure out how to do the
move(s) yourself. I have been coding in BASIC since 1981
so I have a definite advantage over someone who's never
done coding before but also back in early 1981 I was like
most people now. By the end of 4 months I had written
programs in BASIC to keep track of songs on my cassette
tapes and tried coding many different types of games.
After a year (1982) I had written a word based Monopoly
game from scratch but it took over 2 weeks to write and
debug (I was still in school so I had time then - I
never did homework). Good things take time and patience
but the time will be worth it if you stick it out. The
Monopoly game also had to be word based because the
original TRS-80 Color Computer had a whopping 8KB of
RAM (24KB ROM and an 8089 Processor with a whopping
2 or 4 Mhz - can't remember specs exactly now - old age).
Most computers today start out with at least 64MB RAM
and a 500+ Mhz processor (Megabytes (MBs) are millions of
bytes while Kilobytes (KB) are thousands of bytes so
64MB is a ton more than 8KB). Start small and work your
way up. You'd be surprised what you'll eventually find out
along the way.