Sometimes, you will run into annoying little problems when ripping sprites. Here is an example of what I'm talking about.

See? Sonic's covered by that annoying little smoke cloud. If you WANT the smoke cloud, it's not a problem. But what if you don't?

1) Firstly, pause the game. Actually, pause the emulator, using Ctrl-P. Now, the game is frozen in this position. Now, go into the "Tools" menu and choose "OAM Viewer".

2) The OAM Viewer shows the sprites that are currently on the screen. Often, they are divided into different parts. I think this is because of the way the graphics are stored in the game's data or something.

In this case, the first item (#0) is part of the smoke cloud. Nice, but not what we're here for. Click the little arrow under the number to scroll through the graphics pieces. You should see many little things, like parts of the health bar or things like that. Once you find what you're looking for, it might be in pieces. This is the case for our blue friend here.

See what mean? Don't worry though. The solution is simple. The front half of Sonic is number 14, and the back should be right after it in position 15. See?

Now, just use the Print Screen key on the keyboard (located next to F12) to take a screenshot of what you see in the OAM viewer. Next, copy the screenshot into your graphics program. Then, do the same to the other parts if necessary, and paste the parts together. The box shape around them should give you a good idea of how exactly to position them.

3) The next frame in the animation might also be covered in smoke though! OH NO! Actually, it's not a big deal; with the emulator still paused, use Ctrl-N to move the game forward one frame. One frame is an incredibly small amount, so you may have to hit it many times. Keep hitting it (don't hold it down or you may go right past what you're looking for) until the frame changes. If it's something new, repeat the process until you've got 'em all.

4) Another utility VBA has is the Map Viewer. This thing doesn't always work, but when it does it can make your life pretty easy. It's in the tools menu, near the OAM Viewer. Here's a look at it.

As you can see, you can use it to look at all 4 of the GBA's different BG layers. BG0 contains the health bar, enemies health bar, etc. We don't need that.

I checked BG1; it was empty. So, I moved on to BG2. BG2 contains the foreground your character stands on in this area of "Dragonball Advance Adventure". If you switch to BG3, you'll see this:

This is the background. Copy the foreground part over the BG part, like this. Ideally they'll fit perfectly.

That's a neat little BG there, no? Now, ordinarily, it would be easier to simply disable the sprite layer and take a screenshot, but I used this because it was one of the easiest examples I could find. Other games might be more do-it-yourself (like Shining Soul) but this should give you a basic idea of how to work it. Hope this has helped you.