Speeding up sprite creation

[Niels]

Hi everyone,
I'm making a 64 x64 sprite for my player character in my 2d platformer.

I'm running the game on 60fps and I'm working on the following animations:
-idle stance
-run right
-run left
-jump right
-jump left
-attack right
-attack left
- crouch right
-crouch left
-fall right
-fall left
-shieldblock right
-shield block left
-crouched shield block right
-crouched shieldblock left

I'm drawing my sprites in paint.NET and too be honest its taking FOREVER to draw al frames..

Is there any way to speed it up, or a year software that will help me make it easie

 

[Tim]

Have you tried using free (or shareware) like

Asperite (http://www.aseprite.org/)
Graphics Gale (https://graphicsgale.com/us/)
Pyxel Edit (http://pyxeledit.com/)

We use Photoshop for Boss 101 and it's pretty much our goto pixel art program. It's nice to have all the effects Photoshop has if needed. Mostly though we just draw in layers one pixel at a time. From there we export to Esoteric's Spine program for animation.

Comments or questions welcome.

-Tim

 

[robbertzzz]

In photoshop, it's possible to create an animated gift, where you can copy frames, edit one or two things, and start on the next frame. You can play through your animation at any given time to see what it looks like. Of course, photoshop is an expensive and hard to learn program, but there probably are more programs out there which have these or similar features.

 

[rui.rosario]

Depending on your art style, you can draw all body parts as individual images. Then, you combine them in different layers to create the body stances you want. This makes it easier to adjust a single body part if you want to. Also, chances are that you will be able to reuse stances in several different animations.

 

[bix]

I use Aseprite for my animations, it's fairly simple to use.
You could just draw your sprites all facing right and then code them in game to flip the other direction.

 

[rui.rosario]

I use Aseprite for my animations, it's fairly simple to use.
You could just draw your sprites all facing right and then code them in game to flip the other direction.

There is a problem with that. If you have directional lighting (imagine from the right) and you just flip the image, then the lighting for the sprite in question will seem to come from a different direction as the rest of the game (or the lighting just flipped sides instantly). The best way to keep consisting lighting is by drawing right and left facing images independently (or maybe you could use a shader or another dynamic way to dynamically set the image's shading).

 

[Niels]

Thanks for the replies,
I'm originally a graphic artist so I know my way around photoshop (never made a gif though )
I'm currently using layers to put different body parts in, but when I rotate a part it starts interpolating the pixels (that fall between the pixel frame) and those pixel become transparent.
So I have to redraw the outline of every rotated parts to prevent fuzzynes.

Maybe I should redraw it on a bigger scale and shrink it to pixel art?

 

[nujumkey]

I know it seems tedious, but i found the most effective method to just use photoshop/gimp to animate the individual frames. Messing around with an extra programs makes the process slightly more clunky, and i find it hard to keep track of my work when it's split among 3+ different programs

 

[Niels]

My character has a shield in his left hand that I want in the front when he runs left so I can't mirror my sprite

 

[Niels]

This is my current Base sprite from which I work in paint.net

Will it be easier to draw it on a large scale and shrink it or should I keep drawing on pixel scale?

 

[Tim]

This is my current Base sprite from which I work in paint.net

Will it be easier to draw it on a large scale and shrink it or should I keep drawing on pixel scale?

Your mileage may vary but I always draw 1 to 1. It's the easiest and closest to your final product. Drawing bigger and scaling down might just mean wasted time and effort.

-Tim

 

[Niels]

What do you do to prevent the blurry effect when you rotate a pixelated sprite part?

 

[johnwo]

I suck at animating, but after I found BrashMonkey Spriter, I could animate with ease. I swear by that piece of software.
In addition to being easy to use (once you get the hang of it), with free and skeletal animation, it also has a pixel-art mode which makes animating pixel-art a breeze.

It can be a bit cumbersome when you're starting out, but once you get the hang of it (lots of tutorials on YT), you'll blaze through the animation process!

Cheers!

 

[aamatniekss]

The best thing you can really do, if you're a beginner, to reduce the time it takes to draw everything, is just double down on the resolution. Draw 32x32px sprites instead. 64x64px sprites are considered pretty large, so its best not to tackle that when you're just starting.

 

[Niels]

True, but I had problems with drawing small objects like a sword blade in 32 px mode, thats why I scaled up to 60 px

 

[aamatniekss]

Well, keep the general size(height) of the character inside the 32px canvas, but you can increase the canvas to the sides or top if you need to have a larger sword animation for example or things like that. Just keep the height of the character smaller.

Oh and as for software, I think you should get something that's really made exactly for pixelart -
Graphics Gale,
Aseprite
Pyxel Edit
All are made for pixel art, and have features to make creating pixel art easier than general digital art software like photoshop and others.

 

[Tim]

My character has a shield in his left hand that I want in the front when he runs left so I can't mirror my sprite

What I'm about to say is not to demean your efforts but unless your game deals with player handedness (ie is he right or left handed) then it's pretty unlikely this is a big deal. If you look at many, many games they do this all the time. Players will seemingly switch weapon and shield hands in-game when sprites flip. Mostly this is part of the time saving employed to get the job done.

Just an opinion of course,

-Tim

 

[Niels]

I noticed it with baldurs gate first as soon as you seen it you can't un see it

 

[rui.rosario]

What I'm about to say is not to demean your efforts but unless your game deals with player handedness (ie is he right or left handed) then it's pretty unlikely this is a big deal. If you look at many, many games they do this all the time. Players will seemingly switch weapon and shield hands in-game when sprites flip. Mostly this is part of the time saving employed to get the job done.

Just an opinion of course,

-Tim

I think that's exactly why a detail like not switching hands seamlessly would make your game stand out. Check out the Game Feel thread to see what I mean.

 

[Tim]

I think that's exactly why a detail like not switching hands seamlessly would make your game stand out. Check out the Game Feel thread to see what I mean.

Yep, I already have a post in that thread about feel near the top.

I think the deal here is to use your horsepower wisely. Without knowing all the details of yours or anyone's game development situation I am left assuming we are talking about smaller operations. If you or anyone feel that making left and right handed sprites are a huge deal then by all means go for it. It's only my opinion but if you are worrying about that as a detail in your game there is an implication you have drilled down pretty far in the polish and are looking for the icing on the cake type stuff.

Really though it's like anything, there will always be a group who can debate either side of this subject quite successfully but if you look at the output of most companies (this includes tremendous successes and failures) pixel games tend not to have left or right hand people in situations where it is possible.

-Tim

 

[rui.rosario]

I think the deal here is to use your horsepower wisely.

I agree, I just wanted to point out that if it was something you could spend your time and resources on, then it could help your game stand out.

 

[Niels]

I do agree with you that mirroring will save me a lot of time, and right now I want to finish my animations so I have implent my player sprite and dive into coding my game once more.
I am the only person working on it, so I might to to take a few shortcuts to finish my project (I can always polish it in the end)

 

[Niels]

So redrawing my character in graphicsgale will make it a lot easier/faster to animate?

 

[Tsa05]

The reason that things go blurry on you is that your Free Transform is set to BiCubic. From the options bar, you can change it to Nearest Neighbor, which will use whole pixel approximations instead of blending.

I don't know if that's going to make things faster for ya, though; I'm just explaining why things go blurry. You'll probably notice that with Nearest Neighbor, thin lines disappear or go wonky because the computation to send them rotating around an arc leaves them on a non-exact pixel coordinate. The result is that, in your case, a blend between pixels is used, whereas in Nearest Neighbor a different (neighbor) pixel or even no pixel at all will be used.

A few tips you can try, also:
1) Go into Image > Size and scale to 400% using Nearest Neighbor. Do your transformations, then scale back down.
2) Right-click each layer and convert to Smart Object. Rotating should be less messy.

 

[BLang]

I'm currently using layers to put different body parts in, but when I rotate a part it starts interpolating the pixels (that fall between the pixel frame) and those pixel become transparent.
So I have to redraw the outline of every rotated parts to prevent fuzzynes.

You know there's a way to turn off interpolation when rotating and resizing sprites in paint.net, right?

 

[Niels]

Thanks that will help me a lot
Never knew it was a option you could turn off in paint.net
(I'm more used to vector drawing)

Is aseprite worth the 15 euro's/dollars? It looks like a handy tool for previewing your animations

 

[RangerX]

If you want to reduce time it takes:

1- Look up the previous users suggestions about using other soft. Maybe you can find one with a more suitable environnement that would speed things up. Personally I love Graphic's Gale.
2- Reduce your number of frames. Keep only important key frames that convey the movement and kill the other ones. If your character had like 12 images to walk right, try to keep 6, and so on.
3- Reduce the number of colors. Here again, keep the main colors, reduce gradients, keep it simple. Impose yourself a limit for the number of colors in a sprite. Per example, old 8-bit games had probably some 16 colors limit.
4- Re-use basic frames. Re-use sprite parts when you can. Re-use. Re-use what you re-use.

 

[Snail Man]

In general, there's no "quick fix" to good pixel art. The right program might speed things up a bit, but it won't be life-changing. Also I'd recommend doing all part rotation manually. Even without interpolation and blurring, program-rotated sprites look canned. If you're looking for a minor shortcut, try adding streaks of movement to some faster animations like sword slashing. This gives the illusion of quick movement and motion blur without having to do the actual animation.

 

[Fodderbot]

In photoshop, it's possible to create an animated gift, where you can copy frames, edit one or two things, and start on the next frame. You can play through your animation at any given time to see what it looks like. Of course, photoshop is an expensive and hard to learn program, but there probably are more programs out there which have these or similar features.

If you want the open source alternative to photoshop you could try GIMP.

 

[Fodderbot]

Personaly, I like to create models in Maya and use camera positioning and a little animation know how to render out images that I bring over into photoshop where I touch them up or image manipulate them. Occasionally I'll sculpt things in zbrush, then render in maya and manipulate in photoshop.

If you are looking for alternitives:
Photoshop:
GIMP
Paintshop Pro
Manga Studio (some great tools and much more artsy feel)

Maya:
Blender
MODO

There are also a number of andriod tablet apps that you can get cheaply and run on a desktop using an android emulator. A lot of the drawing apps are free or under 5 bucks. Just make sure they save out to formats that are usable to you or have a program you can convert them with. Some great little apps out there.

 

[Niels]

Thanks for the replies, I bought aseprite last week and it helps me a lot! Love the program and how easy to let's me draw animate, and export my sprites

 

[YanBG]

I'm using blender and small resolution renders would look like pixel art. When you have animated model it will take seconds to produce all the frames.