STEP 1: CHARACTER DESIGN

of course, in order to make a character sprite, you have to have an idea of what you want your oc to look like! notice that a lot of the canon characters have uniform modifications and stuff. you can draw your own, or list out the points you want to have, or even use picrew to make reference images (which is truthfully what i did in coming up with an image for arisa).

STEP 2: DOWNLOAD ASSETS

so alchemivich has a google drive folder full of tons of assets from the game. it’s got full body sprites, backgrounds, etc. and what I did was download a few things from there, namely:

(1) some of the live2d texture files - these are all the parts of a certain in-game sprite, separated out. it can look like this (this is riddle’s school uniform one):

like this, you can kind of see how when you layer on these parts, you should be able to “make” a still sprite. that brings us to (2) --

(2) a neutral pose fullbody sprite of riddle. this was so i had a reference to line up the “parts” over. i chose riddle because he has a similar height to arisa and a slighter build than most of the boys, so i wouldn’t have to do as much editing, though it was still quite a bit. also, it might be a bit hard to know what pieces go where...

steps 3, 4, and 5 are ish because you kind of do them all at the same time.

STEP 3ish: ARRANGE

using clip studio paint (any art or editing program that has layering should work though) i cut, pasted, resized, and lined up riddle “parts” from above on top of the riddle fullbody sprite. “isn’t that a lot!?” you might ask. yes, yes it is, since the live2d has so many little parts. that’s just how it’s gonna be if you want to try this method instead of just drawing your own, though...

by the way, arisa’s sprite has several parts from different live2d textures, not just riddle’s, although most of them are from riddle. for example, the white shirt and tie are actually from deuce’s uniform texture, the legs are from epel’s pe uniform texture, and the shoes are from trey’s uniform texture.

STEP 4ish: EDIT

say i wanted to keep the style of riddle’s eye but not the color, i would have to edit that - which i did, and which can be done with a variety of methods, lmk if you want an explanation of that. and i did a bunch of other things, including narrowing the torso, changing the color of the vest from red to gray, and so on. a lot of the editing also involved drawing, which leads us into step 4:

STEP 5ish: DRAW

a lot of the assets have shadows painted on and such, for example, and when you’re mixing and matching assets you have to remedy that yourself by drawing directly on it. or sometimes you have to erase things. for example, since girls have smaller builds, i made the uniform jacket shorter and i had to erase and redraw that myself.

there are also parts that you’ll have to completely do from scratch. this part took the most time for me. in arisa’s case, the main parts that i had to draw make myself were the hair, skirt, and socks. while doing that i used the official sprite art as a reference for coloring style. i did my best to make them look clean and like part of the game. luckily arisa’s bangs are kind of similar to riddle’s so i had something to work off of.

yeah, and that’s basically it...make it how you like it and then you can slap it into anything, really.

whew, that explanation ended up being super long... all in all, it’s a pretty lengthy process not for the weak of heart, but that’s just because i’m a perfectionist lol. in any case, one i had arranged the parts for arisa, i now have a base. i can more easily just move around and edit layers to get different poses and expressions, i don’t have to go through the whole process again if you know what i mean. notice that this definitely isn’t the same thing as a live2d itself.

by the way, using the sprite i made for arisa as a base, i started working on a sprite for another twst oc of mine, Rio, and it’s been going easier since i don’t have to do the whole process from scratch. i just haven’t worked on it for a while so it’s just sitting in my folder as a wip... here’s the progress from the last time i worked on that:

in just a short time i was able to give her a different skintone as well as different eyes (these are ortho’s eyes edited, by the way), a shorter skirt, lack of vest, a different style tie...  rio has parts from even more different texture sets than arisa...there’s even some from jack and cater, if you can tell where those parts are, lol. i’m even planning to edit jamil’s jacket into a cardigan or pullover (but i haven’t gotten too far on it yet, as you can see below, i haven’t edited anything yet.)

anyways, yeah. maaaaaaybe if there’s enough interest in it i can upload what i have as a base psd file so whoever wants to can just skip the tedious parts of step 3, but so far i’ve only shared it to my close friends.