FADE is very useful, but you may want to use SPCOLOR and BGCOLOR instead based on what effect you want. Think of SPCOLOR as changing the color of the "light" that "shines" on the sprite. If you have a pure red surface and shine a pure blue light on it, it absorbs all the light. SPCOLOR is the same way. If a sprite is pure red and you set the SPCOLOR to blue, it's black.