I'm looking for the guy who ripped these Guilty Gear sprites.

[Davy Jones]

Your screens have a serious problem, there is a bar which hides on nearly every screenshot a part of the character.
Additonally, I checked some more savefiles. Only the current character sprites from the moment you created the savefile are viewable. Rest are special effects of both players and the current stage.

If I think about it... every character frame which is covered by a special effect could only be ripped by such a savefile... I think this would be a mess, no fun at ripping. I think I will give this up before I get frustrated, but it also explains why nobody has ripped a complete character sheet of that game so far.

The problem is, I don't know how they were ripped

I'd like tips on how to clean them, ideally I'd like to preserve the Lighting FX as a separate entity while still keeping the frames, as I can always use more Lighting FX.

I think I have for both of your problems some suitable tutorials. I don't know if you still want to try a rip from that game, but here they are:



First, PSX-VRAM (ripping the parts of characters, effects, backgrounds)
Tutorial:
http://www.sprites-inc.co.uk/forum/showt...php?t=6300
Program:
http://www.romhacking.net/utils/442/

Short Explanation in own words:
With F1 you can create a save file, use F2 if you want to switch between your save locations. Got to folder epsxe -> sstates -> now you have a data with the file extension .000-/.001-/.002 or something.

Rename this file extension to .gz and unpack it with Winrar or Winzip. Drag this file and drop it into the PSX-VRAM window.

With the keys W, A, S, D you can navigate your red box, which shows you the current graphics you want to view. Switch between the keys 0 and 9 to view both kinds of graphics (different encryptions).
Now the palette:
With your direction keys, you can navigate a red cross to the coloured bars (palettes) to give your sprites the right colours, hold shift if you want to move 1 pixel instead of 16.

These are a few coordinates I found out:
- Backgrounds: 64/480 to 64/486
- Special attacks: 48/480 to 48/495
- Player: 32/487 to 32/492
- Enemy palettes: 48/490 to 48/495

Example screen, on the left above the statue are your palettes:
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3859/snag0411.png
Now you can make screenshots~



Second, PSP5 aka Paint Shop Pro 5 (cleaning up a sprite character with manipulation of the colour palette)
Program:
http://rapidshare.com/files/288204974/NE..._Pro_5.exe
(freeware, 5 MB or something, no installation)
If you know an English graphic program with the same function, use it instead of this (it's all in German):

Example sheet with a few animations. First, we count the colours, in this case the sheet has 120 of them.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6025/snag0408.png
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7640/snag0409.png
If it's below 256 colours, you can reduce the colour depth without a loss of quality.

Now we reduce the colour depth:
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7029/snag0398.png
This is only the filter which should be used, for 1:1-quality:
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/4171/snag0399.png

With the new colour depth, we can use the manipulation of the colour palette:
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/1131/snag0400.png

This is how it looks:
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/1145/snag0401.png

Use the pipette (in the task bar of Paint Shop Pro 5) and choose the colour you want to delete:
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/5602/snag0402.png

As you can also see in the previous screenshot, the chosen colour is marked with a frame:
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7730/snag0403.png

Here you can see the pipette again, choose a new colour (in this case: green) which replaces the old colour:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/8417/snag0404.png

okay, green for blue/something (I don't know how this colour tone is called). Now we click "OK":
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6673/snag0405.png

yeah, we replaced the other colour tone with green. You can see the result on the left, the old colour from the background is gone. Now repeat this steps until everything except the character is deleted.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/9519/snag0406.png

If you want to cheat a little bit, you can use the lasso and define an area + using the scissor icon:
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7389/snag0407.png
The defined area will be also deleted. Personally, I use a mix between both methods.

Result (example):
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9058/...rsheet.png
yeah, a status bar hid a few pixel of his shoe.