Transition to skeletal animations?

[Ian]

Im looking for something to save the hassle of frame by frame animations through graphics gale even though its not terrible but when i get to bigger sprites it can be a headache.

Was wondering if anybody has used something like spine w/ pixel art and if you have any advice/work to show for it.

Deaths Gambit supposedly has some animations using spine and all their stuff looks amazing.

My animations arent too complex either:

Thats just some and just started doing bigger sprites and animating isnt being as productive as my other work. Just dont want to spend too much time animating.

Thanks for the read, any advice is great!

 

[Ethanicus]

Well if you do end up doing that, I'd recommend looking at this thread: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/free-skeletal-software.7793/
They talk about free alternatives to Spine and such.

 

[Ian]

So i guess my new question is: Has anybody used dragon bones editor on pixel art and how good is it?

 

[gamedev4life]

dont do it! although more labor intensive, hand drawn, frame by frame animation, is way cooler than skeletal anim XD

 

[Ian]

dont do it! although more labor intensive, hand drawn, frame by frame animation, is way cooler than skeletal anim XD

Thats what i thought too but the higher res gets ridiculous. I probably would only use it for big stuff and cmon you cant tell me that this isnt cool:

Edit:
They also have some more to showcase

 

[Strawbry_jam]

Personally I feel the easiest way to go would be using spine and if you want the feel of frame by frame, export the animation as a sprite strip and clean it up. I believe that's what they did with Death's Gambit. Although using pixel art in spine and using just the json export works well too.
Run animation
Made this animation in about 20 min. Not exactly pixel art. I considered doing what I said above but the style fits my current game.

My advice is to create everything in spine larger than what you plan on using and scaling down after exporting. Especially if you plan on using sprite strips and cleaning up. Really helps with subtle movements. Bone animation in general allows you to focus on the whole animation rather than each individual pixel which really helps speed up the process.