Appleseed Prototype, Part 2

Ah, you're awake. We've got a fair bit of ground to cover today, so let's not waste any time. We're going to meet our heroes and villains, and there's a fair bit to discuss.

Although I usually compile all animations into .gif files for simple, pain free importing, I've split them all up into a sprite sheet so that you can easily look at each frame. These were all drawn with GraphicsGale and boring old Paint. Paint is free, you all know the program. GraphicsGale is either free or cheap, depending on which version you get, and it makes colour selection easy and helps you animate with cool things like layers, so it's easy to like.

To start off, I draw the standing pose of Appleseed. This was actually a character concept for another game, but ended up not being used there, so I decided to use it here. I always draw the character with a reference to the resolution the game will be in (320x240 in this case) so I get the size right. Being a platform game, I draw a 3/4 view where we see both the front and one side. Because I want the characters to be instantly recognisable from the background, I put a purple outline around the character. This helps it 'pop' out visually the instant we look at the screen.

The next step is to animate. For platform games, I like to keep the character facing in the 3/4 view - I didn't do this in Man Boy and was unhappy with the result, so I switched to this method. I use 6 frames here; we don't need a huge 12 frame walking animation because we have so few pixels to move. Because Appleseed is harmless, I wanted to make her running animation look a bit like a scared chicken running around flapping it's wings. This is a difficult run for a human to physically do in real life (trust me, I went outside and tried it) but it makes me laugh when I look at it, so I love it.

Lastly, we have to do a jumping animation, because it looks quite strange indeed if you character jumps in a standing pose. I use two frames here - one for jumping and one for falling, because our balance (centre of gravity) shifts at the peak of the jump.

Next, we move on to Applecore. I want a similar looking character to Appleseed, as she is meant to be an evolved version. Because she is a fighter, I gave her a uniform colour, making her look more soldier like in appearance. This uniform looks a bit like Xoda's in Noitu Love 2: Devolution (maybe because I have been playing it heaps lately, and have Xoda's image lodged into my subconscious), but I'm sure nobody would confuse my muddled pixels with Joakim Sandberg's incredible animation. I put her hair into a bun and gave her blue goggles to make her look more badass, and we're ready to get animating.

I took a difference approach to this run cycle - rather than being helpless, Applecore is a warrior, so instead of chicken wing flapping, I give her an efficient military fist pumping style. The leg movements are much the same.

I'm a lot happier with this jump animation - the centre of gravity change is shown a lot more clearly, I feel. However, I feel it looks too 'superhero' for Appleseed, so I am reluctant to do her jump in a style like this.

Because we want her to attack, we have to animate an attack. I have fond memories of playing Mega Man Zero on the school bus with a friend's gameboy, so I wanted to do a Z-Sabre style animation, however I wanted more of a whip style effect, so I made it break up towards the end of the cycle. To figure out where the arc should go, I place the character in a circle, and cut segments out.

Lastly, we're going to need a goblin sprite for our game obstacles. I draw a fairly archetypal goblin to make it instantly recognisable. She's female because there we've got an all female cast already - why spoil it?

I keep the walkcycle really simple here with just 4 frames. Because the goblin will be moving slower than our main characters, the pixel increments for each foot can be a bit smaller.

The last thing to do is to make horizontally mirrored versions of these sprites so that we can have them moving in the other direction as well, and they're ready to be loaded into the game.

Wow, that was a fair bit, wasn't it? We've covered quite a lot of ground again today, but we've got an equally long trek to make tomorrow, so we'd best leave it there and get some rest - tomorrow we're going to be exploring the environment our characters are going to have their adventure through!