Pixelation
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Krumbs on October 16, 2008, 10:56:12 am
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Hello everyone, I am making a small game with a friend and have some sprites finished. But I was wondering what software you use to make run animations ect? I had a search on here but couldn't find much help, so I decided to post a topic. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
I'm also using a Mac and have made the sprites in Photoshop.
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You should use Graphics Gale!
http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/
Use it for make glorious animation! Download the full version and you can use it for 30 days and save with gifs! It's awesome.
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Thanks, but can you get it for Mac? Sorry my fault, I forgot to mention that :S
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Mac doesn't have much in the way of good pixelling/animation software. Generally I'll just boot my Mac in windows and use Graphics Gale if I have to do any pixelling. Photoshop/Image Ready works in a pinch but I really don't like the way Photoshop's animation system works.
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Oh deary me. I guess I will have to leave the animations up to my counterpart :)
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I really don't like hate the way Photoshop's animation system works.
Edited to show my opinion.
(what's whith me and replying to/quoting ben all the time lately? Heh)
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Hmmm, I'll just have to wait till I have saved up enough pennies to buy a computer. The next PC gamer (which should be coming soon seeing how Edge was just delivered) has good computers for under £100. But I want to save up for one around the £400 line to rival my brothers ;D
Here I am going on about my life story again!
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For a mac? Pixen isn't bad. Its no graphicsgale but it gets the job done. Plus its free.
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I downloaded it, unarchived it. Then double clicked on the icon, it briefly pops up in the thingamajig (the bar at the bottom :S) then disappears with nothing happening.
Better consult paw.
Edit: Crap, Pixen can only tun on v10.4, I have v10.3!
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Is it so weird that I love using Photoshop/Imageready for animating sprites?
I received a lot of strange responses at an indie developer meet recently because of this. I've never had any problems with it though, and I'm pretty excited about getting CS4 at work some time in the future, as it has some cool new animation features.
I use PC and Mac (PC laptop, PC at work, and Mac as main desktop PC), so being cross-platform suits me too.
Pixen is pretty much unusable, IMO. It has too many faults, it's really not practical to use. Don't do it, kids!
You could probably use Graphics Gale via VMware Fusion though (especially in Unity mode), if you wanted to use something other than Photoshop on a mac.
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Is it so weird that I love using Photoshop/Imageready for animating sprites?
I received a lot of strange responses at an indie developer meet recently because of this. I've never had any problems with it though, and I'm pretty excited about getting CS4 at work some time in the future, as it has some cool new animation features.
I use PC and Mac (PC laptop, PC at work, and Mac as main desktop PC), so being cross-platform suits me too.
Pixen is pretty much unusable, IMO. It has too many faults, it's really not practical to use. Don't do it, kids!
You could probably use Graphics Gale via VMware Fusion though (especially in Unity mode), if you wanted to use something other than Photoshop on a mac.
It either means you're a lousy animator, an awesome animator or a crippled animator.
The first if you don't care about your end product and thus don't need a smooth workflow
The second if you do all the good animation in your head and thus don't need a smooth workflow.
The third if you ACTUALLY would benefit from easy flipping-through frames, not meddling with showing/hiding layers on and off all the time, onion skin, etc, thus DO need a smoother workflow : D
Jus kidding though, you're probably just used to it. But yes, for me it's weird because I feel crippled when I try it; I'm no photoshop junkie in the first place, so everything just feels awkward. Actually having to click my way through frames and trying to keep track of which layer is which frame makes me go more or less mad. But if that's part of your workflow, you're cool : D
But it does seem weird to me!
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It either means you're a lousy animator, an awesome animator or a crippled animator.
The first if you don't care about your end product and thus don't need a smooth workflow
The second if you do all the good animation in your head and thus don't need a smooth workflow.
The third if you ACTUALLY would benefit from easy flipping-through frames, not meddling with showing/hiding layers on and off all the time, onion skin, etc, thus DO need a smoother workflow : D
Jus kidding though, you're probably just used to it. But yes, for me it's weird because I feel crippled when I try it; I'm no photoshop junkie in the first place, so everything just feels awkward. Actually having to click my way through frames and trying to keep track of which layer is which frame makes me go more or less mad. But if that's part of your workflow, you're cool : D
But it does seem weird to me!
It's pretty likely that I'm not doing enough sprite work to feel crippled by Photoshop. I don't do sprite stuff very often, and I'm pretty handy with photoshop so I find other 2D software a bit of a nuisance to get around unless I'm committed to it (like Manga Studio, for example)!
I suspect that I could work faster, and sometimes I do hate some things about imageready. For example, to click through animation frames I actually have an 'action' setup so that my F6 and F7 keys act as 'previous frame' and 'next frame', and that's not perfect because it doesn't select the correct layer for editing. So yeah, I suppose I am crippled in this respect.
That said, there is plenty that I do love about photoshop's animation system. I like that I can move layers around to quickly test new objects (such as quickly create a static hat layer, and nudge it so that it bobs with the head). I also like that it supports anti-aliasing, as this is often important for stuff I do.
It's not like I do pixels every day though, like you guys! ^_^