Other Art How to make a Shimeji

ppowersteef

Paladin
Some people were asking for it, so let's do it.

--How to make a shimeji--
how to make a shimejiee.PNG


First of all, what is it?
It's pretty much what you see above, an desktop mascotte that walks and climbs around your screen and mess with your active windows sometimes.
I found them adorable looking, and decided to make one by myself. after that, others were asking If I could make a guide for it, so here it is.

Disclaimer and Credits first:
I'm only taking Credit of making the one on the far right (Helena) and making this guide.
The other two (Haqu and Link) are made by Suweeka and Alasurth Respectively
I don't know the owner of the program, nor have I asked for permission of this guide either, but I've decided to make this guide to help more people out.

Now, what have I used to make this:
Paint.NET for drawing.
Suweeka's Shimejiee to trace the sprites.
And Reference images.

NOTE: it's a quite big thing, so be prepared that you'll be busy for some time.
I'm also NOT saying that my way of drawing will be the best way, but it's a method that can be used.


Step 1: Downloading a template.

This is an optional step, but can be really helpful nonetheless.
You can look for an existing shimejiee and download it to trace it. or look up for an template.
By myself, I used Haqu's sprite sheet to make Helena. for the following steps, I'll use Helena instead.
Beware if you're looking on your own for shimejiees, not all of them looks as save as you think, malware is easily found in them.

To open up the images, you go to the place where you've downloaded them, extract the ZIP.file, then go to shimejiee>img>the folder you want to edit.
inside that folder, you'll find 46 different images. and you've to edit all of them in order to let the shimejiee work properly.

Step 2: Making the first sprite.

This might even be the most important step, as you've to draw what it should look like, and animate it too.
there are various ways to do it, Pixel art might eventually work too, but that's too hard for me to do it. I'm only explaining my method:

Open up the first sprite template in your edit program (I use Paint.net)
base 1.PNG


make a new layer and make the other layer more transparent, so you can see the difference between your lines and the template lines.
base 2.PNG


Start with tracing the lineout of the body and the face:
I use the brush tool with 1 thickness and anti-alias.
base 3.PNG


Add some slight detail on it, you can't edit mirrored sprites, so make sure they look symmetrical
(unless you don't mind if they're looking unsymmetrical).
base 4.PNG


I rather want to keep the eyes similair to the template. But it's your preference in how you want them.
same goes with the hair, depending on how you want them.
base 5.PNG


For coloring, if you've used the lines with anti-alias, then don't use the fill in tool, I've tried it before and that cause only more work to fix it.
So instead, make a new layer (a new layer for every color is recommended) and color the parts with the brush (with a around 3-12 thickness)
base 6.PNG


now it's time to remove the colors with the eraser so the outlines looks much better.
base 7.PNG


and add some extra detail with the brush tool.
base 8.PNG

Take a big note of the amount of detail you put in, more detail = more work to animate everything.
I don't recommend shading, especially on a character with already much detail in lineart.

Now remove the background sprite layer you've used for tracing, and save it as a PNG file under shime1.png
(Take note that you shouldn't change the name of the file, else the program can't read it anymore)

And there you go, the first sprite is created.

Step 3: Editing the main sprite in the other sprites

Now you need to edit the main sprite in all other 46 other sprites. I'm only going to show the second:

Pick up the sprite you're going to edit. (in this case, sprite 2) and make it semi-transparent
walk 1.PNG


make a second layer and set the first sprite in it. and make it semi-transparent too.
walk 2.PNG


Make a thirth layer and copy the things you're not going to change.
(in this case, only the limbs will move, so the head and torso will be copied.
walk 3.PNG

In most cases, the head needs often to be copied, but you may change the face's expression to make it more fun, depends on what you want.

Then, for the parts that aren't copied, you need to match your characters pose to the one in the template.
You can do that to repeat step 1 over and over again.
walk 4.PNG


After that, you can remove the first two layers and leave it with the third, final layer.
walk 5.PNG

And that's so far the second sprite. make sure it's saved by the name of the template you've edited.

So far, you can do the same thing to all the other sprites, but it's more fun to make your own twist to some of the sprites, in the hint below you can see where all the sprites are needed in the animation.

A helpful tip in the animations:

here I'll show you where all the sprites are needed in the animations, and how often you'll see them:

-(common) sprite 1 is the basic idle sprite.

-(common)sprite 1, 2 and 3 is the walking animation. it loops from 1 > 2 > 1 > 3 > 1

-(common) sprite 4 is the falling sprite.

-(uncommon)sprite 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are used when you drag the shimejiee and shake it around, 9 and 10 happens when you shake fast, so you may give it extra expression there.

-(common) sprite 11 is the sitting sprite.

-(common) sprite 12, 13 and 14 is the climbing animation, which loops from 12 > 13 > 14 > 13 > 12.

-(rare) sprite 15, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28 and 29 is a sitting animation, which are optimal, If you don't need it, then you can copy sprite 11 to all of them. the way how it animate through the sprites are kinda odd, but it goes through 26 > 15 > 27 > 16 > 28 > 17 > 29. I don't know why it's in this order either.

-(common) sprite 18 and 19 is the landing animation, which animate from 4 > 18 > 19 > 1

-(uncommon) sprite 20 and 21 is a crawling animation, looping through the two sprites.

-(uncommon) sprite 22 is when the shimeji is jumping from the ground to a wall to hang on.

-(common) sprite 23, 24 and 25 is the ceiling animation, when it reached the top of the screen and then starts crawling on the ceiling

-(rare) sprite 30, 31, 32 and 33 is another sitting animation where it sits down with the knees in front of the taskbar

-(uncommon) sprite 34, 35 and 36 are used when it grabs a window and walks with it. sprite 37 often follows after this.

-(uncommon) sprite 37 is used to throw away the window it. rarely happens (but really annoying when it happens)

-(uncommon) sprite 38, 39, 40 and 41 is the first multiply animation, where it's going to pull up another shimeji of the same kind. a single animation that goes through the same way.

-(uncommon) finally sprite 42, 43, 44, 45 and 46 are the second multiply animation, this one animates faster than the first multiply.

If you like to test the shimeji before it's completely finished, then I recommend to work on the common ones first.

Also, you can use an online gifmaker, or run the program itself to see if the animation and detail works as it's supposed to be.

In order to run the Shimejiee, make sure you've the latest version of Java, extract the downloaded ZIP, and open Shimeji-ee.jar

Downloads:
Related to this guide:
Helena Shimeji Download -By me
Toon Link Shimeji Download -By Alasurt
Haqu Shimeji Download -By Suweeka

Terraria Related:
Lunatic Cultist Download -By Loony Cultist

Shimeji's shared on this thread:
Darthmorf Shimeji Download -by darthmorf
Nageru Shimeji Download -by me
Helena Shimeji v2 Download -by Milt69466

Thanks for reading this guide.
If there are any questions, I like to hear them.
 
Last edited:
Sorry for doublepost, but I wanted to upload my finished one in case anyone wanted a male un-armoured template.
 

Attachments

  • darthmorf's shimejiee.zip
    1.9 MB · Views: 427
Back
Top Bottom