Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: DasPixelArtistBen on March 26, 2017, 10:36:22 am

Title: Sprite Sheet Progress ((Deadly Arms))
Post by: DasPixelArtistBen on March 26, 2017, 10:36:22 am
 :)Currently Working On This Sprite, Problem Is I Would'nt Know How To Animate It, Would Any Of You Guys Know About How To Go About Animating This? Especially The Walking  PS: Its A Dungeon Crawler 
(http://i.imgur.com/U6eruij.png) ???
Title: Re: Sprite Sheet Progress ((Deadly Arms))
Post by: Skaz on March 26, 2017, 11:18:41 am
First thing I'd say, if you plan on animating anything you will have to use another software, Paint won't get you this far. If you don't know any other software, I cannot recommend to use photoshop because I only do so out of professional habits, but look in the direction of Aseprite for example. I don't use it that much, but it's powerful and pretty cheap:  Aseprite site (https://www.aseprite.org/).

Second thing, if you never animated a sprite, don't start with a sprite around 128 pixels high! It's going to prove wayyyyy to complex and time consuming. My advice: try to draw your character as small as possible, and see which size is good enough so you can put all the details you want in the sprite. But if it's over 32*32 pixel for a beginner, you should make it smaller. Don't worry about details at this stage, do thing in order: animate the skeleton, the global shape, then ultimately add the details.

As far as animation goes, I myself started many years ago with stick men fighting each other with rocket launchers on paint shop pro if I recall correctly. Having a good fun. Don't put the bar to high and have fun!

Try to animate the bare skeleton of your characters, to have well balanced animations with accelerations and slow downs. It's a vast and complicated subject, look in the direction of animation theory. Making a small pixel character walking convincingly is not different at all to making a Disney character when you want it to look right. The same principles applies.

And most of all: practice. We all started making thing we no longer are proud of, so keep up! Practice may not make perfect, but it also may make you damn good it you stick to it!

- Skaz