Star Child Dev Log #25
Jay Ingle - lead developer, designer, and artist:
Hello, this week I will show you a deer. This is a deer that will run back and forth, pausing occasionally. If it detects the player, it will rear up, form a ball of energy between its antlers, and then fire a laser beam at you. I want to make this a small deer, a bit unassuming, with quite a powerful attack. I want the animations to be good, but to not be too natural. Not aiming for organic perfection, or too much cartoonish gesturing. The vibe should be 8 or 16-bit low frame count, and a bit awkward, slightly unusual.
This is Pyxel Edit which I use for my basic pixel art, tilesets, and animations. I use Aseprite when I need to use more powerful features, but Pyxel Edit works great for most simple things.
Step 1 for creating deer animations is to look at a deer running. I found a 9-frame deer running animation sheet. I chose 4 keyframes out of these, the most important frames during the run, needed to fully express the motion. I drew the deer himself, I always start with two-tone as you see here. A medium base color, and a darker color to indicate the limbs that are further away from your view. After a good bit of fiddling with it, here is our result. I am content with the basic animation flow.
Our deer needs a sort of idle animation, this will occur whenever the deer stops running for a moment, and perhaps also as a cooldown after firing his laser. Gives him a little personality, a little variation, and gives the player some timing.
And finally, attacking. Deer rears up and fires a laser at you. Deers don't rear much, like this anyway. This is no ordinary deer.
Stay tuned, next time I will show the finished graphics, and soon after, the deer in-game, in-action, in-all its glory.
Hello, this week I will show you a deer. This is a deer that will run back and forth, pausing occasionally. If it detects the player, it will rear up, form a ball of energy between its antlers, and then fire a laser beam at you. I want to make this a small deer, a bit unassuming, with quite a powerful attack. I want the animations to be good, but to not be too natural. Not aiming for organic perfection, or too much cartoonish gesturing. The vibe should be 8 or 16-bit low frame count, and a bit awkward, slightly unusual.
This is Pyxel Edit which I use for my basic pixel art, tilesets, and animations. I use Aseprite when I need to use more powerful features, but Pyxel Edit works great for most simple things.
Step 1 for creating deer animations is to look at a deer running. I found a 9-frame deer running animation sheet. I chose 4 keyframes out of these, the most important frames during the run, needed to fully express the motion. I drew the deer himself, I always start with two-tone as you see here. A medium base color, and a darker color to indicate the limbs that are further away from your view. After a good bit of fiddling with it, here is our result. I am content with the basic animation flow.
Our deer needs a sort of idle animation, this will occur whenever the deer stops running for a moment, and perhaps also as a cooldown after firing his laser. Gives him a little personality, a little variation, and gives the player some timing.
And finally, attacking. Deer rears up and fires a laser at you. Deers don't rear much, like this anyway. This is no ordinary deer.
Stay tuned, next time I will show the finished graphics, and soon after, the deer in-game, in-action, in-all its glory.