Just thought of something. May be time consuming but what if you made a pack of cosmetics. When people buy the assets they can simply load the cosmetics over the player animations. I've seen this done by 1 person and I think it's a pretty cool idea.
I'm good at pixel art but I can't animate them. I want to animate like you do. I also like the style. Can you give me some tips on animating the way you do? It'd be really helpful to bring some character I've made to life.
That’s awesome, I’d love to see some of your art if you’re open to sharing.
While I’m far from great, I’d be happy to share some tips that helped me.
Firstly, I would suggest learning the 12 principles of animation. These really come in handy almost all the time while animating.
For pixel art specifically, I like to block out the animations first as simply as possible to get the motion right. For a character, this might mean animating each limb separately using only separately colored lines for the body parts. This allows you to get the motion as smooth as you can without committing too much to the final result and allows you to experiment and easily change things drastically because it’s just a few blobs on the screen.
Then, I create a new layer and animate the final form over the blocked out animation, not worrying about perfection yet.
The final step is going through all the frames and polishing it, looking for stray pixels or places where pixel movement feels off etc.
I hope this is somewhat helpful :)
If not, I’d be happy to elaborate further.
I appreciate the tips! There is not much more I could ask for except a little more detail about the process and maybe some things to think about while doing it. Honestly you gave a pretty good tip that I've never tried before. Thanks man. :)
Thanks! That’s some awesome art. I love your work!
So a bit more about my specific process is:
I use Aseprite which is great for pixel art animation (which you probably already know).
Some random tips I picked up and that I usually keep in mind:
Play around with different timing for frames. Sometimes changing the length of one frame can make the animation.
Utilize anticipation (the part before the action of a move, for example moving the characters arm back before a punch).
Smear frames (used sparingly) can improve an animation so much, especially for really quick actions.
Setup shortcuts to easily go back to the previous frame, the next frame and to switch between tags (if using Aseprite), this will speed up the process a lot.
Depends on how you work, but I prefer sometimes first drawing the main keyframes of the animations (these are essentially the frames that are the start, end and any frames in between that would be essential to the animation. The keyframes are the ones that explain the motion completely and should be understandable just from these few frames. From there I create frames in between to flesh out the animation further.
Don’t make the character too detailed as that will be a nightmare to animate everything. Keep it simple at first, you can always add small details and items once you’ve finished finding the motion of the animation.
For characters specifically, I like to start with the head - drawing it in the first frame, then copying it to the other frames and move it around to get the basic motion of the head. I find it provides a good reference point for everything else. Then I do the feet to make sure the base of the character is correct and makes sense. Everything else can then be filled in more easily from there.
Use onion skinning.
Use references.
These are the things I can think of off the top of my head - but if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.
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I don’t have PayPal in my country, any suggestion how can I buy this pack?
Just thought of something. May be time consuming but what if you made a pack of cosmetics. When people buy the assets they can simply load the cosmetics over the player animations. I've seen this done by 1 person and I think it's a pretty cool idea.
That’s such an awesome idea, definitely writing that down to do once I get the time. Thanks for the suggestion.
No problem!
I'm good at pixel art but I can't animate them. I want to animate like you do. I also like the style. Can you give me some tips on animating the way you do? It'd be really helpful to bring some character I've made to life.
That’s awesome, I’d love to see some of your art if you’re open to sharing.
While I’m far from great, I’d be happy to share some tips that helped me.
Firstly, I would suggest learning the 12 principles of animation. These really come in handy almost all the time while animating.
For pixel art specifically, I like to block out the animations first as simply as possible to get the motion right. For a character, this might mean animating each limb separately using only separately colored lines for the body parts. This allows you to get the motion as smooth as you can without committing too much to the final result and allows you to experiment and easily change things drastically because it’s just a few blobs on the screen.
Then, I create a new layer and animate the final form over the blocked out animation, not worrying about perfection yet. The final step is going through all the frames and polishing it, looking for stray pixels or places where pixel movement feels off etc.
I hope this is somewhat helpful :) If not, I’d be happy to elaborate further.
You can find my pixel art here: https://www.pixilart.com/8-BitOsborne
I appreciate the tips! There is not much more I could ask for except a little more detail about the process and maybe some things to think about while doing it. Honestly you gave a pretty good tip that I've never tried before. Thanks man. :)
Thanks! That’s some awesome art. I love your work! So a bit more about my specific process is: I use Aseprite which is great for pixel art animation (which you probably already know).
Some random tips I picked up and that I usually keep in mind:
These are the things I can think of off the top of my head - but if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.
Thanks boss, you're the goat.