Sprite Animation Practice

January 2023

This is a very unfinished sketch for a walk cycle that I was working on in some free time in January 2023. At the time, I think I wanted to both get back to doing some animation and continue faffing with a proposed direction for my online visual identity, focused on a big, dumb mech. Please excuse the negative space at the top—I was intending on making it kick-out a load of smoke.

While I find the cycle fairly entertaining to look at, it does feel pretty over-animated, particularly with a lot of unnecessary motion in the hands. It’s also very evident that the animation was the result of improvisastion, with a lack of strong keyframes, a lack of impact in the head’s motion and a very inefficient, even use of the in-between frames. I can’t imagine the pain I’d have felt in mapping a full mech design to this skeleton of an animation…

April 2022

Above is a small, low-res walk cycle, which I worked on as a self-portrait (without reference material) in Aseprite for a handful of days in April 2022.

I’m not entirely happy with the motion of the legs, as they feel very stiff and the left one has some jerky motion, and some of the bigger movements could have done with some smearing. Also, while it does suggest more detail than is there, some of the shading on the clothing appears unnaturally noisy. With that said, I think I did an alright job of exaggerating my natural walk_.

August 2021

Here’s a small animation loop of Fennel (from the video game Button City) dancing, which I created in Aseprite over a couple of days in August 2021.

While I find the little dance quite charming, I feel that I didn’t focus enough on having expressive keyframes, so it comes across as pretty stiff. Also, the smearing’s perhaps a bit excessive (considering the relative lack of motion), the loop isn’t clean, and the character’s proportions warp as he moves. It was fun to make, though, and cool to work with someone else’s design and palette.