Sprite comic
Sprite comics are web comics that use video game sprites and backgrounds for their artwork. Sprites are pixelated renditions of video game characters that are taken from ROMs, through computer emulators. Sprite comics are mainly used by creative people who cannot draw, or do not wish to draw, but want to express their creativity visually. While the ease of creation (just slap some sprites made by someone else on a background, and add text bubbles) allows many low quality sprite comics to be made, there are many that show consistent high visual quality, both in use of custom sprites and graphic editing tools such as Photoshop. The format of such comics varies, from single panel, to four panels across, to comic book-like full page spreads. There are even animated sprite comics, where each 'strip' is a separate mini-movie, some utilizing Flash for enhanced effects, for example Secret of Mana Theater.
The first sprite comic was which began as a spin off feature from "Super Mario Headquarters" a Mario fansite. It was never able to reach the same level of popularity as Bob and George. Because of this many people (mainly members of the Bob and George community) do not accept it as the first sprite comic.
Bob and George is mistakenly recognized as the first "true" sprite comic. Originally planned to be a regular online comic, the creator started off with Megaman sprites as filler. When he finally got around to the real comics, he found the MegaMan sprite comics were more popular, and he reverted back.
Most sprite comics fall into two categories, those using Mega Man series sprites (such as Bob and George) and those using Final Fantasy series sprites (such as 8-Bit Theater). The main reason for this is the wide variety of poses the sprites from these games have, and the ease with which they can be edited into new sprites. Another such way to categorise them would be to place them in the categories of "serious" and "humorous". "Bob and George" and "Silver Koopa and Friends" are perfect examples of humorous sprite comics, while "Warriors of the Net" is an example of serious sprite comics.
There are, however, many sprite comics that use a combination of several spriting techniques and styles. Comics like How to Make a Sprite Comic in Eight Easy Bits use a combination of original and ripped sprites while comics like Shagy Comics use ripped sprites from several different games.
Sprite comics also influenced the forming of the Internet's spriting community.
One form of webcomic similar to sprite comics are Pixel Art Comics. The major difference is that in pixel art comics the sprites used are wholly or mostly created for the comic, rather than being pulled from video games. Two good examples are "A Modest Destiny" and "Kid Radd", the latter being a good example of using html creatively to save on bandwidth.
Sprite Comics
