Hello, I doubt you know me,
I'm a sprite Animator that recently started making sprites from scratch.

I stumbled on some sprite making methods,
I've been looking for some sprite making tutorials, but most recommend making sprites with drawing by hand with a tablet, shrinking it, retracing it and then coloring it in. The problem with me is I can't draw, it's damn near impossible, and all that trial-and-error you'll go through is atrocious to me! Another one is to making everything through just the pencil tool in paint, again, too much trail-and-error. And the most common one is to just find a sprite sheet from a game and edit that; but that simply won't do! So, I've come up with some methods to make sprites, so far there going well, I'm still testing out their limits; but thanks to these methods I can save loads of time! These methods are very hard to explain; so no, I can't tell you how just yet.

Why I haven't been online very often,
I've been gone for awhile because my computer had a serious worm in it (worm.autorun.win32.dll, or something like that). So, my step dad had his friend give me a format disk for the same model as my computer, but then it didn't have most of the drivers I needed, like the internet driver, and if that wasn't the worst of it, it doesn't work at all now (You know that light that blinks when your computer is processing? Mine doesn't do that anymore...). So, right now I'm working on getting a Dell inspiron 530, I know it's probably going to be a pitiful excuse for a computer (what with vista home basic and it only being $279), but I'm going to try to get some upgrades in hardware shortly after getting it. Just an added bonus to this event, my new Sony 8 GB Flash Drive had to format itself, so now I have to remake everything! But, I've become less of a perfectionist now, so, I've been making thing a lot faster now, I might even have something to show soon! >:3

I won't be able to go back into full swing until summer kicks in, but even then, I see no guarantees... Because, I am working with my father to build websites and then sell them. As for now, I've been playing a LOT of SSBB online, I don't even play for fun anymore, I just grind the evenings away. So, if you played against an orange Luigi, blue Falco, Captain Falcon (Blood Hawk outfit), Lucas (Claus outfit), old Ganondorf, or light blue Marth recently, it might of been me. I can't say I'm good at dealing with the lag online, but I usually come in second place.

More sprites for the web on the way and why you'll hate them,
That's right; I'm making sprites for everyone again, but thanks to having that old Smash Ball sprite sheet being hosted on a site without my permission, and had it used in "Smash Kingdom Lost Levels" and received no credit; I'm now have an "Agreement" on every sprite sheet to come. It's clear, it's long, and it's a legal ass whippin' you read! You won't need my permission, but informing me that you might use a sprite sheet would be nice, you do NOT need to tell me how, in what way, or what they're used for, or wait for me to responded to your message for that matter. Just a simple "Hello, I'm going to use "this" sprite sheet" is all that is needed.

The true meaning of the word sprite and its misconception (Ranting, sort of...),
Sprite: A 2-D/3-D image or animation intergraded into a larger scene; Meaning, if you make a background in PhotoShop, then put it into Flash, that's technically a sprite! If you made a high-resolution character running, frame by frame, in an art drawing program, then put it in an animating program, that's a sprite!
Now if only you people could realize the difference between Stolen Video Games sprites, A.K.A. hardware sprites, meaning they came from some sort of console and ones made from the COMPLETE scratch; and no, they are NOT one and the same! You wouldn't say a Stick figure animated frame-by-frame and a detailed frame-by-frame fighting animation the same, would you? Of course not! Hardware sprite animations are just a process of finding a sprite you like and using it, and the other is making your sprites movements, backgrounds, effects, and etc completely by yourself and to be your own! The vast misconception of the word "sprite" is too great for me to stand by and let the entire style become a disgrace to all other Animators!

So, let's end this misconception of the general word "sprite" once and for all by separating sprites into these categories.

-Hardware sprites
Original (Straight out of its console)
Edited (modified in some way from its original)
Recolor (Replacing the original colors with other ones)

-Self-made sprites
Custom original (Your own character, items, etc)
Custom unoriginal (Based off of characters, items, etc you didn't make up),

-Assisted
Hardware assisted (Sprites mainly custom, but has parts of sprites featured from some kind of console)
Custom assisted (Sprites assisted by another spriter, or made from parts of another custom sprite)

I hope people will start going by this, so we can make up rankings for one another, and an example of how this can be useful could be when a new Collab starts the leader could possibly say "No Hardware sprites, but all Self-made sprites are accepted"; or if someone is looking for a spriter, this can help pick a specific one you're looking for. I haven't seen any rankings like this for sprites; if someone else has made one like this one, please let me know.

Other ways to contact me,
Myspace.com/mr_listen (I don't use it a lot, so that's why it sucks. I mainly make up fake achievements for the XBOX 360 in the status box)
Youtube.com/mrlistenng (Don't care too much about it either.)
Skype: Mr_Listen (If you need some help with sprites or Flash, I won't mind giving you a hand)
The Spriters Resource: MrListen (I thought the forum was pretty cool, but all they ever really talk about are Video Game related sprites I grew bored of it, and the fact that I can't seem to login anymore...)
These are all the sites I've registered to that I care to remember, I'll add more to this list if I can remember them.

Wrapping this up with some questions,
I found out that you can make the background color transparent in a sprite sheet through PowerPoint 2003; this is a good idea to do, instead of tracing the bitmap, right?
In CS3, I can turn tweens into individual frames and keep easing in tacked, with this help reduce lag in any way?
What type of gradient causes the least amount of lag? One from an art program or one made with the linear/radial thing when making a square?
Whenever I make a Flash and test it on spamtheweb.com or megaswf.com it comes out a lot slower than it should be, it's not at a certain point, just the whole thing is lagging regardless of how many layers there are, how many tweens or even if the FPS is at 60, it goes down to this odd fixed FPS. Can someone give me an idea of why so I can try avoiding it?
I never heavily messed around with masks, but I'm probably going to use them extensively at some point; what problems can masking cause?

That's all I have to say for now, but I'll update this page if something comes up.

Thank you for reading, and good luck.
Mr. Listen.