Finding My Rhythm (Always The Hard Way)

Hey everyone. After much trial and tribulation, I think I'm finally finding my rhythm with this sprite conversion. Definitely prefer sizing up to sizing down, but at least with downsizing I've found a different kind of rhythm. 

The Breakthrough 💪

So here's what's working: I've sized the sprites to 32 in Unity, but in Aseprite I'm shrinking them by section instead of all at once. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone else, but when I tried to just "size down" 50% on an entire sprite, the pixels Aseprite chose to keep were kind of... random-ish? Like one eye would look fine while the other eye looked like something from an alien.

But by NOT sizing the entire sprite at once and by choosing which pixels to keep myself, section by section, I'm able to better preserve the details that actually matter. It's tedious, but it works.

The Height Advantage 📏

It also helps that I don't need to size down the full 50% since I actually like having tall, 1x2 sized sprites. So as long as I can make the sprite skinnier, it works pretty well. The proportions end up feeling right even if they're not exactly "standard" 32x32 squares.

I know over time I'll be doing lots of tweaking to these sprite sheets, but at least I have a method now.

Almost Gave Up 😮‍💨

I was SO discouraged earlier. I almost gave up completely and tried finding all new sprites. The whole "just use CraftPix bases" plan was literally me throwing in the towel. But somehow I managed to stick with it, and I'm glad I did.

There's something satisfying about solving a problem you thought was impossible a few hours ago. Even if the solution is tedious and manual, at least it's A solution.

What I've Learned 📚

• Automated resizing is great for upscaling, terrible for downscaling
• Manual, section-by-section editing gives you control over what details survive
• Sometimes sprites don't need to be perfectly square - tall sprites can work too
• When you're about to give up is usually when you're closest to a breakthrough

Current Status 🎮

I'm slowly working through my character sprites, doing this manual section-by-section downsize. It's not fast, it's not elegant, but it's working. My wizard is starting to look like a wizard again, just... smaller and more selective about which pixels matter.

I don't even have a screenshot today because everything just feels so half done - I don't know what to show. Some sprites are downsized, some aren't, some are halfway through being edited. It's that messy middle stage where nothing looks presentable.

Though I did start working on how eventually I'll have interchangeable parts on the sprites to change out clothes and hair. Setting up the layers in Aseprite, thinking about how they'll stack in Unity. But that's also in the planning stage, nothing visual to share yet.

This is probably going to take a few more days than I originally planned. But at least I'm not starting from scratch with completely new assets. My original vision is still there, just... compressed. Like a jpeg of my dreams, but hey, at least it's still recognizable.