When you are making graphics for your Mugen character, you have to think in advance for when you make your palette. The problem you might encounter is that you make share common colours between your main character and other elements such as FX and helpers.

After looking through a Japanese graphics magazine I noticed that from the development sprites they made for Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear, they made parts of him odd colours (notice the hair).

I was wondering why they did this but then I realised that this was for better colour management. It can be a nightmare playing around with palette to make new colours for your character unless everything is clean and easy to see.

So, when you develop your character and want work more easily with your palette, you need to use odd colours. Then when you add new sprites like hitsparks or helpers, each set of colours should be unique. The palette you make from all the elements of your character then becomes your 'working' palette. Below are a few examples of what I mean.

Now, you don't have to worry about the odd colours at the moment because, later, what you do is adjust the palette and save the new one out as a copy with your correct colours but keeping your old palette to work with. I know this may seem weird when working like this but it will make your life easier later.

One more thing before I finish, though. When you start your character, make yourself a small image file with all your planned palette colours so that if you get lost while working on your character, you have something as reference to load up and work from.

I hope this little tip/tutorial has been useful.

Revanto

PS: Thanks to Dark Dez for the use of his sprite