Tpbhbpbhbphbpbh Nope Nope Nope Nope No oh! Oh, how about this one. I feel like doing
this one.
Have a look. It’s the opening sequence to the game Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Watching this makes me want to play the game again. Um… give me a few minutes.
The opening video and all the cut scenes for the game are great examples of how you can
make an animated sequence without doing any real animation per se, and still make it look
really good. You’ll notice that in the intro, everything is still images moving around,
or in the case of the beating heart, being scaled to different sizes. It’s more like…
good motion choreography than animation.
In this shot with Cadence and the NecroDancer, there are five separate pieces of art that
are moving. The bones, the magic wisps, Cadence, the NecroDancer, and the background. Each
set of art moves at a different speed than the other. The things that are closer to you
move faster - so the bones are the fastest, the NecroDancer is the slowest, and the background
doesn’t move at all. It’s the same as riding in a car and looking out the window.
The things that are far away barely move. So by making the layers of art move at different
speeds, the animation becomes more lifelike and looks better. Because it has lots of layers.
Like an onion. And also an ogre.
That’s all this is. Moving perspective pictures. A storybook on steroids.
This animation technique has some sweet advantages. Since you are using only still images, you
don’t need to redraw much and you can focus on making the art detailed. Even though we
don’t see it as clearly here with Crypt of the NecroDancer because it’s pixel art,
there are more animations like this that use incredibly detailed still images to build
moving scenes and characters.
It’s also usually faster to make this type of animation than a fully animated piece.
So at the expense of detail in motion, you get detail in artwork and save time and money.
A pretty good deal, I’d say!
As for the game animation, the pixel art is very well done. Very well done. Good colors,
good character designs, good sprite animations. Pixel art is challenging because there’s
not much room for error, especially with tiny sprites like these. You find yourself fiddling
with one single pixel on the frames of your sprites, and if you get it wrong your animation
looks choppy, if you can even tell what it’s supposed to be in the first place.
Or it’s not bouncy enough. C’mon, bounce dangit! Ah, that’s better.
If you don’t know the first thing about video game animations, for a 2D game like
this it’s really simple. There are sheets for each character with the frames of the
animation on them, and the game references different parts of the sheet to make the animation
you see on screen. These sheets are called sprite sheets. So yeah, if you thought video
game animations had a timeline like a cartoon does, surprise! It’s all one flat PNG file.
For 2D games anyway.
If you can find the game’s sprite sheets, you can replace them with whatever you want
as long as it is the same dimensions as the original!
There you have it. You can play Crypt of the NecroDancer as Scribbles now. The mod is on
Steam.
Ok, let’s check the mail!
David Wabissa writes, “Mummy, look! I drew a picture of a wolf
with blue ears!”
Get down or I’ll shoot you with my C&D gun!
My latest raid brought in a big stash of wolves with blue ears. Such as this accurate depiction
of the majesty of eating a bowl of scribbles with clover garnish. By Keyframe Creations,
who also happens to be a professional artist. Also, I recently discovered a crown, as you
can see in this mini animation by EmojiGummyBears. And here’s a traditional portrait of me
by - oh, oh my gosh, where’s my body?? I’m just a head? IrisPrismMLP what have you done?
Haha, no, I’m joking. Fan art is the best.
Has anybody seen my legs? Is there a drawing of just a body around here? No?... Anybody?
Hello?