Commissioned art to sprites: process?

I have responded to a few classified offers from artists who do characters. However, they do not know how to get the art into rpg maker. I would be grateful for some assistance.

I would not recommend using artists for sprites who do not know the format of RPG Maker's spritesheets.  There are a number of people who have advertised concept art or background art - I would not assume they can also do characters.

If you want to go with them, look at the help file (F1 in the editor) and find the Resource Specifications (I'd give you the exact path to follow but I'm not at my own computer).  There should be a section there on character sprites.  You can also export one of the RTP spritesheets, crop it to a single character, and send to them as a reference - or link them to any of the numerous character sprites that are freely shared in the Resources section.

I foolishly asked the wrong question: I see now what I meant to ask was the process to get art into the faces and picture folders.

@saintivan:

Try this guide. It's for importing tilesets, but the process is the same for characters and faces. Just click on the appropriate folders when importing the art. :)

Thank you Lunarea. I am able to download resources to folders as mentioned in the guide you posted, but my assumption is there must be at least one step in-between importing art into a usable format for the faces and pictures folders to accept, and that is the process that I have no knowledge of.

If the resources are in the RPG Maker format, then all you have to do is import them via the Resource Manager. No extra steps needed.

If you're having issues (didn't import right, or it's behaving in a strange way), a screenshot of the problem would help. Sometimes it's a question of configuration. :)

never mind...

Faces have a preset size, you can look it up in the help file or export an existing face file from the resource manager to compare.
However, most of the artwork from concept artists is used either as busts (NOT as faces) or as battlers, and for either busts or battlers there is no specific limitation other than they need to fit on the screen, and because of that those files do not need to be processed other than a resize to the size YOU want them to be on the screen (which is defined by yourself, not by the program)


If you want a face, then stay with the artists who know how to make a face.


If you want a bust or a battler, then there is not step between, you'll either use a show picture command or a bust script (search for them on the forum) or import them as battler pictures and use them on the enemies in the database.

A member gave me the information I was seeking through a pm: I will post below for others who have a similar question, though my post should have been titled: "Commissioned art to faces: process?". That was my bad. Thanks to all who posted trying to assist.

"As far as using the bust for faces and pictures, that should be no problem. For the face, all you will need to do is use either GIMP or Photoshop (or any other image editing software) and copy the head section of the bust and place it on a sheet (384 x 192 pixels), in one of the 8 available slots, each are 96 x 96 pixels in size - make sure the face is no bigger than 96 x 96 pixels. You can resize images in the software I mentioned."