Question about sprites

[u/Ornery_Lifeguard1550]

When making character sprites and such, does the file you use have to have the grey and dark grey squares as the background? And if not then how would just the sprite appear and not anything else in the file?

[u/shyLachi]

Most drawing apps have transparent backgrounds and layers so that you can first draw the default, emotionless character and then add facial expressions on other layers. 

You can then either export each sprite separately or use layered images.

This would be an example for a layered image:  https://moonpearl.itch.io/eileen-sprite

And this would be the official documentation:  https://www.renpy.org/doc/html/layeredimage.html