So, some of you may remember this thread I made a few years ago, and some talented people made some edited fat sprites of the Moemon characters from the popular Pokémon rom hack Moemon. I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while now, and I’m kinda posting this on a whim, but I’d be interested in making a rom hack (or just editing the existing rom hack) of a Moemon style rom hack but with fat sprites. The only small problem is, as the title suggests, I have literally zero experience in rom hacking, or sprite editing. I’d definitely say I’m tech savvy, but I’m no artist. So I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of learning these skills? I’d like to work on this project in my spare time, but I don’t even know where to start. I don’t want to get too ambitious with this project, it would literally just be Pokémon but with edited sprites. I’d even say I’d only edit final evolutions of the Moemon sprites to lower the workload. Feel free to discuss and give me suggestions on where to start! Thank you 
Edit 7/18/23: I figured out how to create a rom for Pokémon crystal. As @GellyCannon said, after I got everything set up, I realized that replacing the sprites really is as easy as swapping out some png files. I’m not an artist at all, so I can’t really be of any help there. BUT I can now edit code of the game and make changes to the game (i.e. adding new types, moves, changing systems etc.). It would take a lot of learning and fiddling around with the code, but I can do it.
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If you want to mod a pokemon game from scratch, i suggest picking one of the earlier titles (Gen 1-2 i personally recommend, gen 3 should also be decently viable). The GB pokemon games have disassemblies, so basically reverse engineered blueprints of the entire code, which makes it (ultimately) easier on you when it comes to putting in new visuals.
The Gen 3 games on the GBA also have disassemblies, but they have less accessible tutorials and more complicated code. There’s tools to edit the ROM visuals directly though (much simpler than gen 3 disassemblies imo), so editing an already completed Moemon hack is very possible too.
I don’t know very much about editing gen 4-5, but hacks for them have been going up in frequency the last few years, so I like to think it’s more accessible than it seems. (The bw battle sprites rotate a lot though, so that will probably look jarring without going the extra mile for the whole dex or at least everything obtainable in-game.)
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Interesting. I do love gen 2 so i might be able to start there. Thank you for the info!
After doing a bit of research into gb disassembly, the basics are making my head spin. I can’t seem to find any tutorials either.
Best way to start is at the git page for the disassembly, and this video tutorial to set it up. (it says it’s for red, but this is the one i used to set up all of the games. iirc you can literally just replace “red” with “crystal” when downloading, and it’s identical)
GB assembly is complicated, but the stuff for a lot of the data as presented in the disassembly is a lot easier to read! For just sprites, the biggest hurdle is setting the thing up, it’s basically just plopping a .png in the right folder after that. Tutorials on things after it’s been setup can be found here.
I have the most experience with Gen 2 hacking myself, so I could probably help out with most things that are confusing from any point.
I linked to crystal since it’s what I personally use, and it has the most tutorials. It does also have animations on the front sprites, but they can be removed/disabled if it’s decided it would be more economical to only have sprites that don’t move. (or you could even just use gold)
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Thank you so much! I’ll absolutely be checking this out in my spare time. Once I learn the basics I’m going to see if I can work on sprite creation/editing so I can make a fat centric rom hack.
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