Help with uploading art for VNs?

[AquaEG]

Hi, guys. I'm Aqua.

And I'm a COMPLETE newbie at creating games or anything of the like. I just love VNs a lot and decided- finally- to make one.
But I'm getting a bit of a problem with the Art part.

I'm good at doing traditional art, but not digitally. The most I could do is coloring, but definitely not line art. Is it possible for me to do line art on paper and then color it on an iPad app or on Sai?

And what dimensions and what type of pic( i.e .jpg etc.) does it need to have to be uploaded on Ren'Py? Because I tried experimenting with an image I had on hand and it ended up saying it was too big or something.

And when uploading a Sprite, can it have a blank background or does it have to have that checkered- looking background that I saw in the game file of Ren'Py tutorial? If so, how can I get that?

... Now that I look back at this, this is mostly me being a complete dummy at using Ren'Py. =.="

But still, could you guys help? ^^" (Below is the pic of Eileen with the checkered background.)

EDIT: The checkered part disappeared... how do you do that?!

[Hellboy]

Yes you can work like that. I always draw traditionally, directly on paper and then color it digitally in Painter and Photoimpact.
You could color it traditionally too if you wanted.

The checkered- looking background is actually the absence of background.
It indicates transparency. You don’t have to do it; it’s just a representation of a hollow space when there’s nothing over it.
That’s why the Eileen image you posted doesn’t have the checkered pattern. She is over the site background now. This is what happens in Ren’py too.
You cut the character and place it alone in a new layer in an image editor, then save as PNG because jpg and other files don’t support transparency.

I’ve been using BMP, JPG AND PNG for my Ren’py tests without any issue. But I’ll leave the dimensions and file types to the experts.

[AquaEG]

Thank you! I sort of get it now!

[Hellboy]

Cool!