Please help: information about sprites

Hello, I have an artist who is willing to do some artwork for me on a game I'm wanting to make. He asked a couple questions and I just wanted to make sure I give him the correct information. He is asking what file size the sprites need to be, what file format it should be saved as, and what is the canvas site for you to put your artwork on. Hope I worded that right, anyone that can help with this info I would appreciate greatly... thanks so much! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Hi,

(1) your sprites should preferably be squares (multiples of 4) e.g. 8*8, 16*16, 32*32, 64*64,... 512*512 px.. and so on. It's also advisable not to make single large sprites e.g 2048*2048.. You might want to use tiled background objects instead of sprites in that case where you might want to break this particularly sized image into 16 512*512 images and display them using tiled backgrounds..

(2) concerning the format, go for PNG (its going to help you on your transparencies, most preferable 24bit.. but now if you can save you artwork in 32 bit PNG.. its even better.. but not absolutely..

Hope it helps..

Those questions mostly determine by the game itself. If your game is running at 1980x720, then you want large sprites. If your game is small res say 640,480 then you want smaller.

However you can always scale sprites down. So bigger sprites are better. Then use a progam say GIMP, photoshop, Paint.net to rescale the sprites yourself.

PNG is better most of the time. however if you can get source files to go along with them then that's even better. So if he uses Photoshop ask for the PSD files along with the PNG.

yuv makes a good point. Rendering is best with bit sizes as mentioned.

2048x2048 is the MAXIMUM size of most graphics card. Never have a sprite larger.