Pixel Art Shortfilms

[ElementZero]

Hi there,

i'm looking for some inspiration for a short film project i am planning (as my final exam at university). Since I was drawn to pixel art personaly my whole life AND my current shortfilm project, which is done in 3D, is a pain in the ass, I consider doing something with pixels next time.

My question: I'm looking for references. Films done in pixelart (like for instance Paul Robertson does) or pixel art games which have nice movie sequences in them or whatsoever. Plus I am looking forward to a possible discussion about this somehow unusual combination of pixel art and movies.

Thank you.

[questseeker]

What style of animation, and therefore what workflow and tool chain, do you plan to use?
Something like Flash might be suitable for controlling many sprites on many layers moving around among fixed scenery and background sprites, but weak at controlling positions pixel by pixel and animating/replacing the sprites themselves.
Drawing individual frames, presumably with the help of lots of copy and paste in different image layers, is more flexible, more time consuming, and suitable for layered image editors like Photoshop.
As a third option, but many other possibilities and combinations exist, you could capture frames from a 2D game engine, e.g. Game Maker, with the advantage of high quality, easily authored but constrained procedural animations, tiling etc.

[ElementZero]

I don't want to go into too much detail on techniques yet, but thought about perhaps using After Effects or Flash on a low resolution. But when I think about it, you are right. It might be problematic to really work pixelwise in those applications. Game Maker would be an option, but would involve a friend of mine who does the coding and making lots of little buttons for me to press (don't know if i can count on his patience though ).

For now I just want to see what people have done regarding this medium. I can also imagine mixing pixel art with something highres, which would eliminate that precision-problem of after effects, etc..

I mean the options are countless. Perhaps mixing pixelart with lowpoly 3D and pixelart textures? Another great inspiration for me was for example http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=14194.msg117172;boardseen#new as an option to transfrom pixel art into something else. I also thought about this topic: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=14034.0 as I feel inspired to really apply pixel art principles to something else OR do it the other way round, making pixel art in a context that is purposely more complex than what pixelart would allow. Just brainstorming, sorry.

[Grundy]

You should ask the guys who made Truckers Delight. They seem to know how to make a video with pixelart animation.

I want to make a pixelart trailer for my upcoming game myself but i cannot share any usefull information other than that im a right now doing tests by making seperate frames/graphics in fotoshop and then composing/layering them in Flash. I find this combination suboptimal. So i'll be sure to follow this topic as well from now on. I might learn something!

[Facet]

Here's a Flash plugin for convenient pixel animation. I remember seeing some fairly nice stuff using it and I think possibly some of the commercial pixel vids like the Junior Senior thing might use it or something similar. I'll have to think on impressive in-game cinematics; most of the time a nice static screen with some suitably bombastic ambience was impressive enough for me .

Very interested in the multi-media angle too. Keep us posted

[rikfuzz]

Could be wrong but I remember reading that the Junior Senior video was done on an actual Amiga with the software of the era (DPaint?).

[Facet]

Some googlin' later and you're totally right Rikfuzz. Damn, that's a massive amount of work

[Grundy]

Does anyone know http://tinyurl.com/cvu5vje then?

[Kasumi]

NSFW: Pretty sure Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle was at least partly made in autodesk animator pro. More points to old animation software.

TVPaint is an option for bitmap animation, which is very capable software.

[mattib]

hello, I am working for a similar project.
I am drawing and animating the single sprites on graphics gale, then my plan would be to put them together in flash.
it would be like a "sprite animation" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6bePmYixaw but with my own pixel art. I am having some issues with transparency of the imported pngs but hopefully i will sort them out. 
the truck video is made with a pixel plug in for flash, which is good but not if you want to recreate a "real" retro feel. This is why those pixels are actually still vectors and in a way are harder to manage.
Apart from the amazing artworks, I would like to know how Paul Robertson puts together his shorts because that would be great.