PIXEL ART TUTORIAL 3

Here we will animate a basic sprite to have an idle animation/pose. Requirements: A layered sprite/well-defined sprite with a Head, Body, and Arms.

Below is the sprite I've made for the tutorial.

First, we'll have to make about 5 frames. Name the section "In" as we are moving the sprite idle animation "inwards". Move the head down about (increasingly) 1 pixel on the next 3 frames after the second. Do the same with the body and arms until you feel like the movement is smooth. Don't be afraid to play with how much you move it down! The more dramatic the movement, the more chunky the sprite will end up.

For precise movements (in pixels) down for each frame:

Head: 0, 1, 4, 5, 7

Body: 0, 1, 3, Torso only 4, 5

Arms: 0, 0, 1, 2 (Arms Bend inwards here), 3

After that, we need to make an "Out" — for the sprite to move outwards as opposed to inwards. Simply copy, paste, and drag the frame (from descending order) to make an "Out". Do this for all 4 frames except for the 5th — last frame. You will end up with a relatively smooth animation. Flow is all you really want in an idle animation.

Now for some touchups. I'm completely redrawing (adding the in-between) frame 5's arms to make it flow better. I'm just eyeballing it here, but it looks much better. There are times when the sprite actually should flow without a redraw, but it just comes down to personal preference. Once you're done with the basic flow of "In" and "Out", animation in-betweens become your best friend for a nice-looking and personalized finish.

Here's the end result of doing in-betweens for some of the frames! Takes some time and practice, but always keep on learning something new.

And voila! Here's the end sprite! Very nice. I still need to improve on my flames animations, going to practice them at a later time. It seems like it's just one frame of the flames being too

small. I'll improve it later.

Improvements! Still have a lot to learn about flames and gases, but otherwise good!

And done! With a background and all!

Now animated in Godot too, using Physics Process Sine Waves!