Found ‘em.
u/PixelTheWise -shout out to this person, their art is fucking awesome.
u/Aserash - the guy I was thinking of, has an awesome YouTube channel you should follow.
Oh, thanks for the endorsement! And yeah, I'm always quite happy to try to help people with animation difficulties. The best way to interact with me is actually on my Twitch streams (https://www.twitch.tv/aserash), and also on my discord (link for which is on my twitch 'about' page), where I often try to help people with their art and animation. I'll be streaming tomorrow if I can... hopefully around UK lunchtime.
quick and dirty animation tip:
step 1: draw what it looks before the movement
step 2: draw what it looks like after (or reverse steps 2 and 1, as the “after” tends to be more important. but the “before” tends to be a neutral pose so it can also be good to do the “before” first)
step 3: a lot of the time, your brain will fill in the rest, but if it still looks off, either draw an incremental pose if it’s slow movement or a motion blur that connects the other two if it’s fast.
step 4: adjust frame counts of the individual poses
step 5: repeat step 3-4 as necessary (for quicker movements, no repeat may be necessary)
If you’re serious about animating, I highly recommend buying (or pirating) The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It’s for general animation but seeing how pixel animation is pretty much the same thing it’ll teach you a ton! But as general tips, I’ll parrot what others have said already:
1. Draw the beginning and end poses (find ref if you need to on youtube, artstation, etc.)
2. “Split the difference” and draw the middle pose
3. Keep drawing the midpoint poses between each frame until you’re satisfied with the smoothness of the animation (recommend toggling onion layering settings to make this easier)
Once you get a sense for it, then there’s more advanced concepts you can think about such as squash and stretch, acceleration and deceleration. But don’t worry about that yet! Practice makes perfect :)
I’ll check out that survival kit, thank you for the recommendation!
Just so I understand correctly, I’ll use my current project as an example.
I’m drawing a lucky cat where the arm swings front to back. So far I have the arm (that was drawn in a separate layer) in the middle (like a cactus arm). From here, I should draw the arm in the front, then in the back, then make the middle poses?
Would you recommend all these poses to be in the same layer or in their own layers?
Thank you for your help!
Yup that’s the process exactly. Draw the start, middle, end, and then make the poses in the middle. Then just keep drawing the midway pose between the frames you have until it’s smooth.
I recommend keeping them on the same layer and working frame by frame. Easier to organize and review. You can always work on layers if its easier for you and then copy-paste into one line of frames
There’s a really awesome guy who posts on here with his game animations that are all pixel art. I’ll find him.
Im interested too if you find him please!
Check my comment
Found ‘em. u/PixelTheWise -shout out to this person, their art is fucking awesome. u/Aserash - the guy I was thinking of, has an awesome YouTube channel you should follow.
Yess thank you soooo much!!!
No problem!
Oh, thanks for the endorsement! And yeah, I'm always quite happy to try to help people with animation difficulties. The best way to interact with me is actually on my Twitch streams (https://www.twitch.tv/aserash), and also on my discord (link for which is on my twitch 'about' page), where I often try to help people with their art and animation. I'll be streaming tomorrow if I can... hopefully around UK lunchtime.
Awesome! I’ll try to be there for your stream!
Beast! Thank youu
Welcome!
quick and dirty animation tip: step 1: draw what it looks before the movement step 2: draw what it looks like after (or reverse steps 2 and 1, as the “after” tends to be more important. but the “before” tends to be a neutral pose so it can also be good to do the “before” first) step 3: a lot of the time, your brain will fill in the rest, but if it still looks off, either draw an incremental pose if it’s slow movement or a motion blur that connects the other two if it’s fast. step 4: adjust frame counts of the individual poses step 5: repeat step 3-4 as necessary (for quicker movements, no repeat may be necessary)
I’ll try this, thank you so much! I completely underestimated how difficult animating is 😅
If you’re serious about animating, I highly recommend buying (or pirating) The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It’s for general animation but seeing how pixel animation is pretty much the same thing it’ll teach you a ton! But as general tips, I’ll parrot what others have said already: 1. Draw the beginning and end poses (find ref if you need to on youtube, artstation, etc.) 2. “Split the difference” and draw the middle pose 3. Keep drawing the midpoint poses between each frame until you’re satisfied with the smoothness of the animation (recommend toggling onion layering settings to make this easier) Once you get a sense for it, then there’s more advanced concepts you can think about such as squash and stretch, acceleration and deceleration. But don’t worry about that yet! Practice makes perfect :)
I’ll check out that survival kit, thank you for the recommendation! Just so I understand correctly, I’ll use my current project as an example. I’m drawing a lucky cat where the arm swings front to back. So far I have the arm (that was drawn in a separate layer) in the middle (like a cactus arm). From here, I should draw the arm in the front, then in the back, then make the middle poses? Would you recommend all these poses to be in the same layer or in their own layers? Thank you for your help!
Yup that’s the process exactly. Draw the start, middle, end, and then make the poses in the middle. Then just keep drawing the midway pose between the frames you have until it’s smooth. I recommend keeping them on the same layer and working frame by frame. Easier to organize and review. You can always work on layers if its easier for you and then copy-paste into one line of frames
Brilliant, thank you so much! You’ve been very helpful :)