Panda's Half Kazier Torso Tutorial ^_^

[The Panda]

Hey everyone! Panda here with my first tutorial in which I'll teach you how to sprite a simple shirt on the Half Kaizer template! I've seen bunches of people asking for this so hopefully it should help y'all out a bit ^_^ (This is a beginners tutorial. If you've been spriting HKs for awhile then chances are you won't get anything out of this).
Here's what you'll need:
1. A spriting program. Paint works just fine but I HIGHLY recommend GraphicsGale. It's free and it's specifically made for spriting!
You can find it here:
http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/
2. The template of course! Here's the first frame of the male template so you don't have to go digging through the HKCP for it:

3.The Palette. The colors you'll use when making your sprites! Here it is so you don't have to go digging through the HKCP for it:

Now that that's out of the way let's get started!
I'll separate this up into several little parts, just for the sake of organization.

Spoiler: Part 1. A short anatomy lesson

I figured I'd include this just because all too often I see Half Kaizers with shirts up to their jaws, short sleeve shirts down to their forearms, and jeans up to their knees.

Green: The collar bone
Red: Elbows
Pink: Wrists
Yellow: Waist
Cyan: Knees
Keep in mind where I've labeled these things when spriting, that way you won't get the lengths of pieces of your clothes screwed up and have to restart!
On to Step 2 ^_^

Spoiler: Part 2. The outline

Now we're finally going to get started! First thing you're gonna do is design your shirt! Draw an outline of what the shirt's gonna look like over top of the template.
DO NOT DO THIS:

What's wrong with this? These things:
1. Look at the outline, see how it hugs the outline of the template? That's not good. Clothes don't stick right to people's skin(unless it's a shirt made of gum or something but let's assume that it's not). It's okay to draw over the outline a little bit but you shouldn't JUST trace the template.
2. Look at the arms and waist. See how the lines are straight? This is bad. People's body's are round, not flat! So make sure that all of your lines are at least slightly rounded.
3. Lastly look at the collar. Just because it's called the collar bone doesn't mean the collar goes RIGHT on it. Look at the collar on the shirt you're wearing right now(or don't.. because unless you're a giraffe you can't see your collar bone and you're just gonna make yourself look stupid), it's either slightly above or slightly below your collar bone, so make sure you do the same when you sprite!

Something like this would be better:

Only problem with this one is that the lines aren't so smooth but don't worry so much about that because we'll be refining the outline later! But try to make it at least decent, if your rounded edges have points then you have a problem.

Look at all Showkaizers beautiful template...all of that shading on it's chest must have taken forever! Let's erase it! :D
I want you to take the second lightest color on the palette you're using and completely cover all of the chest that's within your outline.

Got that down? Good, now let's move on to shading.
shading the shirt already?!
No silly, shading the outline! Just because it's an outline doesn't mean it's not getting any light!
Take a look:

What you're going to do is take the 2nd darkest color and shade the outlines where the light would hit the sprite coming from the upper left(the upper left is always the light source when spriting). It's not hard at all, cross reference with mine when you're done to see if they're similar. If not, fix it ^_^

That upper shoulder's all the way up there on the upper left, right next to the light source! So it'd make more sense to shade it a lihter color right? Right. Because it's closer to the light you're gonna make it lighter! So Shade that shoulder with your middle color.

Lookin pretty snazzy. You may not see it now, but shading that outline is actually VERY important. If yours is similar to mine then good job! Let's move on to Step 3! ^_^

 

[The Panda]

Spoiler: Part 3. Shading!

Yay! Shading! Now that we've got the annoying basic stuff out of the way let's have some fun!
First thing you need to do is take your second darkest color and lay down some markers for shading(or at least that's what I like to call them). Basically you're gonna put these at the darkest parts of the sprites, such as the starts of shirt wrinkles, around the breasts to make them more defined, in little 1 pixel nooks in the sprite, and in some corners. Take a look so you can understand what I mean better:


Next part is simple, take your paint bucket tool and replace your current filled in color with the lightest color!


Now you're probably wondering, "why's he call them shading markers?"
Well because that's exactly what they are! Using these little pixels you just placed like little marks, shade between them. Take your 2nd lightest color and just shade between the darker pixels you have placed already.
WARNING!
You will probably come dangerously close to pillowshading so BE CAREFUL!
make sure you're not shading around the template, just near those markers and a few edges to give the sprite a more rounded feel and to define little wrinkles and the breasts a little more.
Take a look at mine to see where you should and where you shouldn't shade and to see how you can do this without pillowshading if that's what's keeping you stuck!


Now zoom out and take a look. Like it? If you've followed the steps and examples precisely you should have a decent basic HK shirt right there! ^___^

Spoiler: There's more

THERE'S MORE?!
Well yeah! Sure that shirt's fine for a beginner but it's never gonna make it into the HKCP! It's much too simple!
What I suggest you do now is refine your sprite. Look for little errors and un-smooth outlines and fix them up before even attempting to add details.
Next thing you do is just that. Details. Whether it's adding wrinkles, a design, or using a more stylish color palette, it's all gonna help! The more detail your sprite has, the better it'll look. And it's those good quality, detailed sprites that we're looking for here on RMXP.ORG!
Once you have your details the last thing you should do is shade your skin where the shirt is gonna shadow it. which shouldn't be too hard, chances are you already know how to do that and if not just compare my example to the original template. It's should take you all but 2 seconds to figure out.

I tried to give the shirt a tighter look and gave it a more stylish palette. Looks much better hmm?

That's it! Hopefully you did well and I didn't completely fail with this tutorial or lose you half way through xD
If you have any questions feel free to PM me or post here and I'll be more than glad to help!
Last thing: How'd I do? This is the first tutorial I've ever writen up so I'd like to know if it was okay ^_^