Smiling Frame Misalignment

Hey folks,
New here and new to rom hacking. Thanks to those of you who have posted resources for those like me who are just getting starting. A quick question about a portrait issue I’m running into:

For a personal project of mine, I pallete swapped and changed the eye color of Cath from FE6 (thanks to those who added the blinking frames for FE6 characters by the way!). Here is the portrait:
funkyKatieportrait

However, when I insert, it appears that whenever the character smiles, this happens:
image

I have looked at the image in Usenti and compared it with working portraits, and can’t find an issue. The portrait seems to align with the standards in all of the tutorials/other problem fixes I’ve been able to see, although admittedly, my spatial awareness is generally bad. Can any better trained eyes spot the issue that I can’t? Any help is appreciated!

Are you using FEBuilder?

Yes, for the portrait insertion. Usenti for the eye color edit

You just need to change the mouth x and y in FEBuilder after you insert it

I have tried that. However, when I fix the smiling frames like this, the other frames become messed up.
Example:
image
I adjust the X to align the smiling frames. However, now:
image
The talking frames are misaligned. I’m not sure what the issue is.

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This happened to me to with Cath’s portrait.

If adjusting X/Y-coordinates does not solve the issue, you might need to manually adjust the frames in Usenti instead.
I would recommend turning on the grid to 8x8, copying a 32x16 section where the mouth is on the main portrait and bring it down to the talking frames. If you are not able to align them/they are unaligned rigidly to the grid, then you will have to shift either the main portrait or the mouth frames in whichever direction to make it align grid-wise. Also make sure the smiling and talking frames are aligned.
From a quick glance, the last column of talking frames seems farther to the left than the other frames. Try adjusting either that last column or the two left columns of the talk frames.

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image

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GBA processes images with 8 * 8 tiles.(8 * 8 grid)
Therefore, it is necessary to set the mouth and eyes frames at the coordinates of multiples of 8.
This is the specification of GBAFE.

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Dang, you guys are wizards! @NICKT, thank you for the edit, I now see what was wrong in the alignment. That is a very subtle change. You guys are way better at this than I am! I will leave a before and after for anyone who may run into a similar issue.
For reference:
New version that works talking frames:
image

Old Version that has problems:
image

The difference is subtle, as the flawed version does not align with the grid along the mouth of the full portrait. This is clear when I compare the bad talking frames to the bad smiling frames, as the smiling frames take up far more of the 8x8 grid, and won’t align the same way as the talking frames. Thanks for the help everyone!

GBA can place object anywhere on the screen. The coordinates needn’t be of multiples of 8. The specification of GBAFE here is only a software programming problem. I have fixed that in my portrait engine extension so I was very impressed。

Sprites can be displaced like that, but individual tiles on a background can’t, and the portraits are used on backgrounds instead of as sprites several times in the game.

You are right, and I also fixed the background portrait routines.

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If you’re using FE7 or 8 for this mug, then I should also add that the frames are oriented wrong.
Frames go right to left with the smiling on top and normal on bottom, whereas your frames are oriented vertically by the looks of it.

Huh, thanks for the heads up. Should be easy enough to quickly fix.