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Does anyone have any advice on animating?

A topic by Jonii created 59 days ago Views: 240 Replies: 6

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Hello, my name's Jonii - I'm a solo game dev and I'm struggling with animating a sprite, and well, animating practically anything and everything to be fair; I'm designing a 2D pixel game - think like, Undertale, Stardew Valley kinda style - and I started animating but it never looks quite right, my sprites limbs look weird when animating and it's frustrating because I keep getting stuck on this and I feel like I won't really make any progress.

To be fair being a solo dev is difficult because I'm having to teach myself everything - so any advice would be appreciated.

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Magicsofa59 days ago(+1)

Well, here's one solution... don't animate! If you hate animation and don't really want to learn it, maybe you should look for ways to create a game without having to animate a character. If you really do want to learn it, well, you're gonna have to spend years practicing just like every other good pixel artist. You've reminded me of this very nice video from Indie Game Clinic (specifically the first few minutes):

Being a solo dev who does everything is kind of insane. You need to look at the skills you already have and think about what you can make with those skills. Of course you can learn new things too, but if you try to learn everything at once then your game will take forever and most of the individual components will be low quality since you're just learning them.

Another way to get around animating would be to use someone else's assets, there's a lot of cool pixel art for sale here on Itch, and buying here means more money goes directly to the creators.

I'm also wondering about your specific art style... you mentioned two games with completely different animation styles. The walking animations in Undertale are very simple, whereas in Stardew they are more complex... but keep in mind Stardew took FOUR YEARS to develop. The amount of effort required to make your walking animations will depend heavily on the initial complexity of your sprite, and the overall level of detail that you expect to have in the animation. Final Fantasy got away with just 2 frames for walking around the overworld!

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Jonii59 days ago

Thank you so much - I appreciate your advice, honestly I wish I WASN'T a solo dev but finding people to make a game with me is hard because I'm so socially awkward lol, especially as I can't exactly pay anyone due to my current lack of finances.

I'll look into ways without animating but if I can't figure it out I'll probably just have to grin and bare it but I just worry I'll burn out.

Again, I appreciate your reply, it means a lot. Thank you.

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Magicsofa58 days ago

Ha, I understand... I also have a tendency to shut myself in my cave and not talk to anyone, and really have only managed to break out of that in the last few years...

One strategy you could use, is to try focusing on the other aspects of your game for now, and just use placeholders and/or crappy animations... then you can share it as a demo or prototype and see if any artists want to jump on board. It is easier to find collaborators when you actually have a foundation that they can work on. It can be tough though as you'll be staring at your junky placeholders imagining how pretty they could be while forcing yourself to work on the rest of it ^.^

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Hoiby50 days ago

You could try making a help wanted post in the Help Wanted topic if you want to work with a pixel artist. To make it paid, you just set up a revenue share system. It might be hard to get people to join you because rev shares are kind of risky, but it's still something.

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A Fals Fiction58 days ago (1 edit)

Itch.io creators offer several free pixel art asset packs with walking animation that are listed as copyright free for derivatives. You pick one or more that matches the motions you’re going for in roughly the resolution you’re using. Then you can open the files in your drawing program and draw your characters on top, using the premade assets as a base.

Two more tips:

☆ Don’t look too closely! If your sprites will be scaled 100% to 400%, then don’t analyze how they looks at 800%. Pixel art animations feel funky when viewed at too large a size.

☆ Simplify! I’ve been told my the pixel art sprites I’ve made while experimenting with 3D visual effects are reminiscent of Stardew Valley and Terraria. I don’t animate those beyond very simple turns, because they’re too complex. The more frames you need, the simpler the color palette and the simpler the shapes should be when working alone.

Maybe the most common mistake(*) I’ve noticed in the animated assets I’ve downloaded is the orginal artist tried to put in too much detail in each frame. The more unique pixels you use, the trickier it is to keep track of the impression it’s giving— especially once the sprite is against a moving background.

(* Tho, for a variety of reasons, they might do this on purpose for free assets.)

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Evolutionary Games58 days ago

There's software that will animate for you.

Two packages I've used myself are Crazy Talk Animator and Moho Studio. How this software works is you place "bones" in your character and then can animate it by just pulling its leg left or right. You also only need to animate the first and last frames. The software fills in the gaps - but you can tweak the animations.

They include animations (like walk, jump) that you can apply to a rigged character and easy ways of creating a character directly in the software.

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