Well, I finally got this figured out – the hard way, still dont know if theres an easier way, but heres what I did.

I opened up a new Gimp window doing the method you said and got my transparent background, then I copied and pasted my entire character along with a portion of the white background onto that new window.

Then I used the select by color tool to select all of one particular color on screen, in this case being the white background, I hit delete, to the naked eye it appeared to be completely gone, however I tested this first by importing the image and then previewing it in the enemy database setup.

Suuuure enough there was still a little bit of a white outline surrounding the character.

Sooooo I went back to Gimp and zoomed way in and saw still there were other various shades of white pixels and even some not so white but still light colored pixels immediately surrounding the character. IDK how that was since I chose a pure white background to begin with, why there would be other shades of white left over but w/e.

So I proceeded to use the color selection tool again and systematically clicking on each and every (and there were still lots of them) little off-white colored pixel and deleting that group of em, then moving on to the next stray set of pixels still bordering the character I could find and so on and so and every so often saving the pic, then re-importing the revised pic into the database to see how it was looking. And every time, I did notice a slight improvement.

I continued this process a few times until I realized in doing so I was beginning to also delete some of the more subtle light colored pixels mixed in within the character image itself and began to become noticeable and rather aggravating.

Sooooooooo I undid all my previous pixel deletions, took the lasso tool (free select tool) and zoomed way in and excruciatingly clicked around each and every pixel. Pixel by pixel by pixel until about 20-30 mins later I had finaly made a complete circle around the entire image and connected the whole thing. I hit delete, saved the image, imported it again and finally – success. The image finally appeared the way its supposed to – no weird looking white outline anymore.

In the effort of attaining perfection, I still noticed some very slight discoloration, hardly noticeable at all but still noticeable to the eye so I checked it out and somehow there was even some like 90% or so transparent pixels here and there too, cant figure that out either but deleted those and was finally happy with it.

Great except I still dont understand why there was all these other off white and kind of white colored pixels surrounding the image. Why not just the pure white background color I had chosen. Also doing it that way takes so long to do, I still think there has to be an easier and more time efficient manner to do this.

But anyway I at least figured out a way to solve this.

And again thankyou very much for your time and help on this.

Ok well I am by no means an artist by heart but I do feel I have a good eye for it and have actualy learned quite a bit about spriting – I think lol but as for more detailed pics like a battler or a face I have been using the website

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

to generate pre renderd characters and then I use gimp to take a picture of it and then proceed to edit and recolor small peices here and there. At first attempt throughout all this I original used the default background that came with it which was a bluish color with designs all in the background. I somehow missed the part where you can choose a background color so anyway once I captured that image with gimp, I colord in all of the background with a different color blue thinking that when I go to import the image I could set that color to transparent which I did but yeah that weird mess surrounding the character was very noticable anyway.

So then I started all over from scratch on the heromachine website and instead used a white background cuz I was told its much easier to do it that way and should avoid the problem. Well after doing that I captured the image with Gimp again, zoomed way in, edited the picture like I wanted it and used the tool to select a color and all the similar color present as well (the stray pixels surrounding the character) and proceeded to delete all of them I could find.

The end result was Id say about a 75% improvement as opposed to my previous attempt but STILL there was a slight but noticable weird outline affect immediatly surrounding the image. And you know, I look at all the other battlers, hundreds ive come accross and NONE of them have that. They all look completly proffessional and edited 100% perfect…..soooo at that point I really just couldnt take it anymore. BUUUUT, reading over your advice its kind of reinspired me to try again. I believe I did end up deleting the white background and refilling it with a transparent background at one point…I think but dont remember doing it the way you say so Im going to reattempt it carefully trying to go by the methods you suggest and well see.

Thanks again very much for your time on this and Ill be posting back very soon.

Another option would be to use the magic wand tool to select the background color and then hit delete to get rid of it. That might work, but if you have any of the same colors in your sprite as in the background, then you would delete those colors, too. You could change the background color to a color that you’re sure isn’t in your image/sprite and then delete it. If that doesn’t work well, then you’re left with cutting your image out, like I said above.

Did you draw this sprite yourself in GIMP or use another program to create it? In the future, you always want to create sprites on a transparent background (in GIMP you select “File” then “New” and click the “Advanced” plus sign button near the bottom of the window, then in the “Fill With” option you have you select “Transparent”).

I hope that helps. Let me know how it goes.

http://www.rpgmakervx.net/index.php?showtopic=15132

Ive been doing searches all over the place and came across your blog here. Basicly Im using gimp to create character sets, battlers and in turn im cutting and copying from the shoulders up from the battlers to use as faces. All for rpgmvx.

They all look great except when I go to import the battler and face and try to use them in game theres this weird blotch of graphics or sprites you call them? Anyway a bunch of garbled colors directly surrounding the battler and the face I copied and pasted from the battler also.

Im still learning about things so idk what im doing wrong. Idk if its the background I used or if im importing wrong, I dont think so but who knows at this point. I posted my probs over at another site and have yet to get any real answers or help so maybe you could visit my thread there where Ive explined this in a little better detail and also I have some pics posted there to better illustrate what Im talking about.

Any help on this would be great and thankyou in advance for your time .