How to Invert Recolor (Paint)

This tutorial will focus on how to achieve an invert recolor. This type of recolor means that the sprite's original colors are inverted around, making some interesting and sometimes wacky color combinations.

 

The thing you'll want to know how to do is to actually recolor something, as while you'll be using the invert color function within Paint you still will need to actually recolor the sprite itself. If you need a refresher on how to do this then check out the recoloring tutorial here.
 

Step 1.
Get your sprite up, you can find Pokemon sprites online by Google searching.
 


 

In this tutorial I'll be using an easier sprite, Chansey, and then a harder sprite, Hydreigon.

 

In this first step you'll want to get your color palletes and place them off to the side with the eyedropper tool like this:

 


 

You'll notice that I put my background as a light purple. This is only because I noticed that the lightest shade on Chansey's egg was the regular background white of Paint, which is going to be messy later on if I just leave the background the same.

 

Make sure that you get each color and shade on the sprite, you don't need to get the black or the eye colors however. And leave the mouth alone, that would probably just look extremely weird otherwise.

 

Step 2.
You'll want to select the entire sprite and a little bit around the sprite itself as well to make sure you get all of it selected. So like this:


 

Now the next step is very important. Right-click over the image that you now have selected, a window will pop up.

 


 

You see at the very bottom there? "Invert Color". You'll want to click that and woah what happened to our sprite!?

 


 

Well... this isn't good. Or is it? Actually it is, this is exactly what you want to happen with your sprite. This isn't the end result, so never have this as your invert. It is not the invert.

 

Step 3.
For this step you'll be using the eyedropper once more and selecting the shades, start from the lightest shade to the darkest. Ignore the white shade on the outline, you aren't going to be using it there. You don't want to replace your original outline with white, that's just not going to look good.

 

Now we have our inverted pallete placed by our original pallete.

 


 

We're doing well on this so far. For this next part you'll want to select around your palletes, only the palletes, and copy them. You can accomplish this through right-clicking or doing cntrl + c.

 


 

Step 4.
This may seem a little silly but for this next step I'd like you to just hit the Cntrl + Z, or undo, command. Continuing undoing what you've just done until you're back to your original sprite.

 


 

"What is the point of this!? What was all that work for?" you might complain, but aha, remember that you have your new pallete on your copy. Now you're going to want to do cntrl + v, or the paste, command and move your new pallete over the old one.

 


 

There we go, now that is the reason why you did all that work. Makes it easy on you, doesn't it?

 

Step 5.
This is probably the simplest step. Just simply go through your pallete and recolor the sprite as you would with a normal pallete.

 

The end result is:

 


 

But... something about this looks wrong... Wait, I know!

 


 

The egg pouch and the feet are supposed to be the blue colors, not this funky green! Sometimes things like this happen. When it does that means you need to go in and use the pencil tool to color over the mistakes so it looks right. If you don't have a correct shade on the inverted pallete then don't be afraid to make your own. Simply eyedrop the shade you're wanting to use to make your own and then go to custom colors, from there simply move the slider to where you want it, darker or lighter for whichever is necessary.

 


 

Now that I've gone and done that our real result is:

 


 


 

 

And that's it for how to invert Pokemon sprites!

 

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I'll give an image-based example of the steps for a somewhat harder sprite, Hydreigon.

 


 


 

(Yeesh, those colors are so blinding aren't they?)

 


 


 

(I'm going to avoid the mouth and the insides of the eyes, including on the mini heads, because I like the eye and the mouth color.)

 


 


 

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If there are any questions that you have about the process, feel free to either PM me or post about it on here.