Timelapses are hip and cool

I've had a busy week, but the time I did have for Viola I spent on character animations. I made a timelapse to show how a single sprite for an animation gets made!

Click 'Read more' to see a few sprite sheets I've made.

The process for each sprite sheet goes as follows:

• Create a list of animations I'm going to need
• Create a sketch for the key poses in each animation
• Draw over these sketches with sprites
• Use that sprite to create in-betweens

I cheat a lot when it comes to animation. Some of the animations are just a single pose. I use smears to simulate motion, often going from a single anticipation keyframe to the resulting keyframe with just the smear as an in-between. Finally, I often skip small motions when there's a large motion already: I don't animate Momo's scarf when she swings her weapon, as the player's attention will be drawn to the weapon instead.

And of course: it's pixel art at a pretty small scale. There's less room for intense detail. That saves time animating. Still, animation takes a lot of time.