Pixelmotion - 8 (Patreon)

Elona Run Cycle

How about some Pixelmotion, Pixelweeklies crossover action! For this month's animated scene I decided to further develop my Xenaqua game mock-up and create a run cycle for the protagonist, who I've named Elona.

I studied several examples and ended up most heavily referencing the good ol' Animator's Survivor Kit. This is probably the most well known book for animation fundamentals. Definitely a must have resource for anyone interested in animation, no matter the medium.  

The run cycle is 12 frames total. This results in a smooth motion, but for most pixel art games you can get away with a more economical sequence of 8 or 6 frames. A lot of NES games got the job done with only 3 frame cycles. These days, technology allows developers to make as smooth of animations as they like. But be warned, smooth animation is time consuming and can be hard to sync with precise gameplay. During gameplay, animations often only get a split second to play, as the player is constantly moving, jumping, changing directions, and so on. Therefore, long framey animations will hardly get a chance to completely play out, unless you're going for the slow methodical gameplay of a Prince of Persia type game. It's possible to make tight gameplay with super smooth animations, it just hard to execute well and can require a lot of extra transitional keyframes to keep things looking smooth. This particular run cycle seems reasonable to work with, but might actually have a better energy in the context of the game with fewer frames.

Frame animation in Photoshop is not the most practical way to to create a parallax motion effect, but it's not terribly difficult once you have a basic formula. I will share my technique with you in an upcoming Pixelblog! As for this month's Pixelblog, I will go more in depth on run/walk cycles.

288 frames
Made in Photoshop