Introduction

Okay new week and for this week I wanted to try animation, as I was happy with my walk animation but want to do more as I feel it could use alot of improvement. To do this I challenged myself to make a sprite sheet for my character and enemies for a game I am going to be making, it will be alot bigger than my prototypes because I’m giving myself more time. So working on the art while learning animation will be very useful

Sprite sheet

Okay so due to me using Ibix I can’t just make multiple canvas like in photoshop so I had to think of an alternative, which I did quite fast as I actually experimented with it before joining this course. How to get around it is to make a 33 x 33, make a black line along the last pixel on the right and bottom like this:

Then you copy this onto a bigger canvas, I am making pixel art of 32 x 32 (hence why the border is 33 x 33) so I made the bigger 320 x 192 as this gives me a 10 by 6 grid, and as I want to store the flipped versions too that means I have room for atleast 3 long animations with flipped. Then on this canvas paste our outline, make sure the border is just touching the outside and repeat, making this:

Yes this is could be off but I’m only using it for sorting as again I can’t save the images in the grid individually, so I will have to take them out to save them, so my process was do the line art in the grid, copy it to a new 32 x 32, do the color (and shading if that piece needed it), then save it as a transparent, copy it and put it back in its slot.

Plan

Okay so my character is going to be for a platformer, I wanted to try something more simple as so my character is a slime girl, as slimes are squishy, I like them and making them smaller means less room to mess it up. Due to them being in a platformer I want a walk, idle and crouch (I do end up adding a crouch later down the line due to game mechanics but you can read the game’s design document if you want to know why).

Then for the enemies I wanted something more complex than a slime, so I am making a wolf and crow, the wolf will have a walk and attack animation, the crow will have just an attack as it doesn’t move unless it is swooping at the player.

Slime Girl

Okay so I started with the player first as they were the main focus and were going to be the hardest, due to the amount of animations I wanted and due to them being humanoid, which is a problem as I’m still getting used to anatomy even after last week sadly. However, I fix this by following bases, which lets me get what I want and edit it to exactly what I want, not all use bases, which was because I didn’t want to rely on them entirely to try to challenge myself more.

Bases

Okay so for this character I used a base for just the walk, I did reference one for the jump but it wasn’t copied, more so just looked at so I wasn’t lost, the walking base is this:

To use it I removed the background, copied them into the grid, making sure they are small enough to fit in a box and used the lasso and cut tool to paste them in a box each, making this:

Now that I had my only base set I can move onto the line art (I made them smaller before line art as it is going to be pixel art, so I wanted to start the process at the correct size (I also did all the line art in the grid so I can compare them in the grid to make sure they aren’t changing proportions which did happen and I fixed due to this thankfully))

Line Art

Okay due to how many animations I made line art for I am just going to show the process covering them all, this is also because the line art had different stages where I was just making sure it was accurate with each one. The first being this:

As you can see I used the base and copied the flipped just by selecting all the finished, flipping it and pasting it, this is because I go over it in the next stage, meaning this was just for making that easier. This is good but as you can probably tell, one the flipped aren’t in the correct order, two the line art does change abit from each, which is why I decided to do the next stage, which used these:

To make sure they are the same shape I took the outline of the first two walks (as one has hair pushed back, the other hair on dress) and put them over the base, this way I can copy the proportions but change the pose, this way I can keep the shape, which lead this this:

I removed the flipped as I can just flip the canvas as I am putting them on individual canvas to do them anyways, which is why they are missing, then the jump isn’t touched as I checked it and it keeps the proportions, so I left it (I made it once I started using the line art bases which is why they are like this if you are wondering). With these finally done I can start coloring them all

Color

Okay so like I said before there are so many so I will show the process for them all, however I am going to show what I meant before for my coloring process with one just so I can make sure your following right. So we copy the line art we want from the grid, make a new 32 x 32 canvas, paste it on there like so:

Then we of course add the color which I actually made the same for all color by saving them on my color palette so I can just grab them in each canvas so the colors are consistent. Make sure the bucket has only 0.5 expansion (check this by going on it, then pressing on it again to bring up the menu), due to how strong it can be and our outlines being only 0.5 pixels thick to get more detail it can leak out sometimes, to fix this I just used a 1 pixel brush to fill the spaces and cleaned it up after. One you fill it, it should look like so:

Then once it is like this we take off the outline and fill in the gaps, I found that I needed to make the hair and dress bigger mostly all the time, but most parts tend to need a little bit just to get their true shape. Then you should be left with this:

Then we copy that and put it back in our grid, we can also duplicate it and flip that copy to get the flipped too, repeat that and then we are left with:

This, which is the finished grid for our character.

Enemies

They actually followed the exact same process in making, they just have less animations as the crow just sits in a tree waiting for you, then swoops down at the player, then the wolf walks, runs and then attacks.

Bases

Okay so for the crow I actually didn’t use a base, this is because they aren’t that hard and just from using a side on picture I got a pretty good idea of how they look. However for the wolf, this literally got my walk animation problem, and doubled it, meaning I needed a base for walking, running, I did what I did before and cut them out, putting them on the grid so I can then use then, so I thought for simplicity sake I would just put them all together like this:

I put the running ones above so I can try challenge myself to only use it instead of outlining it, which did work and I liked the extra challenge

Line Art

Okay so next is line art, and I will admit I messed up my process abit with these, it will be alot more obvious once I show you:

Okay so only the first crow has a line art as the rest were made from it just in th coloring stage, which yes saved time and helped keep the anatomy, but does mean I’m literally just winging it. I did this also for the wolf attack animation too, mostly because I didn’t want to try to find an animation for it after how hard it was to find for the first two. Then the ones under them don’t have it as they are literally just the colored versions flipped, oh and the attack has the first walk animation because I started with it as a base just so I had something to start with.

Color

Okay now lastly is color, and due to the line art before, here is where most of the art is actually shown, and here it is to show that:

Weirdly I actually had less room in the than the main character, probably because I was doing two enemies in the same grid. I would say they went pretty well. I’m not going to cover the process again as I did before for the main character, especially as I kinda broke it and went free hand with half of these, the crow also has so many at the bottom as I wanted them to flap their wings as they went towards the player, since that is how birds work, yeah that’s it.

Conclusion

These were quite hard to do but I am happy I have them all down as now I can focus on the environment, knowing my characters are all done. I also feel that I made a good bit of progress with getting a feel for animation as well, especially given each were different body types, making this a week I definitely enjoyed and benefited from.