How I animate a simple GIF Sprite

in #art7 years ago

title

I have always had a little spot in my heart for sprite animation in my heart, I love how the simpleness of a few pixel dots can translate so much with so little colors and information. I mainly developed this admiration from my endless hours spent on videogames, whether it was playing classic NES games when I was younger or whenever I play a new indie title these days that embraces nostalgic pixel aesthetics.

This is by no means a step by step tutorial as I suck at teaching or even sharing knowledge with others, but I will will walk you through my creative process in a brief manner. A little background of this sprite that I drew and animated in under an hour, done on Adobe Photoshop of course, he's a misunderstood grunt that works for the evil army of the 9th dimension. He is unsatisfied with how others perceive him as an instrument of his darklord, so I tried to translate that frustration through his pose.

1

I begin by drawing his torso, with a huge menacing skull being the chestpiece of his armor so to speak.

2

Next up I make a rough estimate of where the main light source should be coming from, then I start adding a few layers of colors to create the illusion of depth and shadow, as well as a sharp highlight.

3

I chose a warm red hue for his armor's gaps to create a sense of contrast and additional depth.

4

Next up I draw his chubby arm, nothing too fancy here, he is a simpleton grunt afterall. I duplicate the arm and flip it horizontally to create the other arm.

5

Is the head too menacing? probably why people jump quick to assume he is just another mindless grunt of the darklord.

6

getting lazy with the legs so what's better to say lazy artist than a pair of mantis claws for legs?

7

I make a few subtle changes to the limbs, heads and the torso to create the illusion of awesome animation

8

And witness the final product, give him a name will you lads?

Follow me here and on instagram here if you wanna see more! Let me know what you think!

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