Pixel Art Class - Making Pixel Art Worth Animating

Heya Pals!

Today I've got a good chunk of content for you all about preparing your pixel art (and yourself) for the animation process. I initially was just going to cover some basics for sprite design, but ended up going down the rabbit hole on animation methodologies too, so I hope you enjoy the ramble haha.

Let me know what you'd like me to cover next!
Thanks!

- Adam

Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:33 - What not to do
7:42 - Visual Semantics and Motion
14:13 - The Challenge of Animating Pixels
16:27 - Personal Animation Examples
19:52 - Keyframing vs Straight Ahead
23:06 - Straight Ahead Process Demo
29:48 - Keyframe Process Demo
35:35 - Creating Animation-Ready Sprites
40:36 - Conclusion
40:58 - Outro

Music:

"Disney Animation" Footage:
AaronBlaiseArt

"Anime" Footage:
Dragon Ball Z - Akira Toriyama & Toei Animation

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This video features clips from my stream. Catch it live: Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri 1-6pm AEST.

Later, pals!

[eboatwright_]

Me: "Hey, can I watch you make your pixel art, to see your technique?"
Adam: "Yeah, sure"
Me: "Ah yes. His technique is being way better than me."

[alexeykosogov]

I have the same technique as you, and I use copy-paste in simple animations like breathing. You gave me so much motivation by showing that you spend a lot of time on your animations just like me. But you working non-stop, no matter what! Now im so tired Im not even open Aseprite for 2 weeks. But today, im gonna show that pixels, whos the boss! Thank you so much. I love you, man.

[apoxfox]

Those spider animations are insane, always feel so inspired after watching one of your videos

[Dumbunny]

Just spent five hours making all angles of my character sprite, then made the idle animations, then started with the walking, and realized the legs were so hard to try an animate, went back and changed so much that I hated my sprite, and now I'm remaking the entire sprite, so 10 hours total were wasted on something that I no longer even have but I'm going to continue to convince myself the practice was worth it

[vnmd]

It's a pity that people who are not specifically interested in pixelart miss out on all your clear understanding of semiotics/semantics. What you point out in all of your videos between the lines, so nicely illustrated by pixelart, matters for all design and art related departments, or even put further, matters for everything regarding communication and lastly our whole perception of reality.
Your content is never just a cheap trick, your genuine understanding of the matter is a promise always kept, and if one wants to, one can learn a lot more than pixelart from this. Thank you Adam!

[dailyshadow]

Damn the difference between your earlier sprite and the newer one is huge. At first I thought the animation was really good for the older one (which it still is) but then it’s really clear what you’re saying with using shapes to make animations more traceable.

God I want to be this good someday.

[The_Crucifix]

Literally best man in the world. The amount of invaluable, essential pixelart information you provide is staggering. I always sit down to draw after your videos, because they are very inspiring and put my own practical ideas in place. I'm sure your videos will grow a lot of good pixelart artists

[JumbaJumby]

The tip about using separate layers is pretty huge. I already started with the most defining motion and built everything to support that with contrasting colors, but using separate layers for quick iteration is a game changer. I don't know why I didn't think of that lol.

[pn]

Your comments at the beginning reminded me of the “ligne claire” style developed by Hergé, the creator of Tintin and one of the most renown Franco-Belgian comic books author of the XXth century

[Pockeywn]

your intro does what an intro should. i clicked in a video about animating pixel art and immediately saw well animated pixel art and knew i was in the right place

[Jhakaro]

Great video but just want to point out for others watching that Keyframe animation has absolutely nothing to do with copy and pasting aspects or holding frames for longer with only minor altercations. That's called limited animation and is animated on 2's or 3's or even higher sometimes, meaning, every 2 or 3 frames of actual on screen time, only one new drawing is made. In anime, due to time constraints, most studios will generally try to keep certain elements static as much as possible, only moving what is necessary to convey the emotion or movement. This is also true for even high budget movies like Klaus made by expert animators in "the west" where characters in the background will be stuck in place and unmoving as the main focus is on the foreground characters. Most won't even notice as their eye is drawn to the movement up front.

Keyframe animation is done for multiple reasons and was and IS used WIDELY in western animation. 1) it helps keep the volume of an object or creature consistent. You plot out the basic structure of the movement, beginning, middle, end essentially and as long as those volumes are all the same, then you go in, add breakdowns, which are basically minor keyframes to accentuate specific main keyframes you've drawn. After that movement is looking solid, you then go and do in-between animation which is to smooth out the movement. The in-betweens use the keyframes and breakdowns to transition smoothly between the main points of action and using the breakdowns, you know which parts of a movement to favour in your in-betweens. If you in-between everything evenly, you'll get a bland uninteresting animation. This is often called slow in and slow out, where we slow down the action as we enter it or exit it.

2) in many studios, the keyframe animator is different than the breakdown artist or the in-betweener. Keyframes are the most vital drawings that set up the entire movement and flow for the others to follow so the idea is that the senior and more experienced animators keyframe the main movement, make the big decisions. Then lower down artists handle the breakdowns based off of their keys and then junior animators often worked on the in-betweens which have the least amount of responsibility or artistic choice/decision making (though still a very important skill in and of itself), all in order to save on time so keyframe artists can work on more keyframes rather than doing an entire scene from beginning to end. This aspect of not doing an entire scene yourself, however, varies greatly from movie or movie, project or project. In many Disney movies a scene might be mostly just one artist that handled everything but even then, most of the time they still used keyframes to keep the sense of volume the same and sketch out the movement first.

Straight ahead animation is less technical and more flowy. Free. Feel it out. But the main issue with it is that often you might start an animation and spend days or weeks working on it only to realise that the movement you made isn't quite what you wanted or the volumes are inconsistent, off-model etc. the character grows from frame 1 to frame 110 without you realising (especially when on paper as you can only roll about 5-6 pieces of paper at a time on a light desk). And if that happens, you now have dozens or even hundreds of frames wasted that you need to fix or redo entirely. For small, simple animations straight ahead can work well but for very long or complex scenes, keyframes are often nearly a requirement.

Both have their uses and often honestly, it just comes down to the animator themselves and studio workflow

[stonecoat_art]

hey adam, im lucky enough to work as a pixel artist and animator. I gotta say that your videos were instrumental in getting my career off the ground, and i still revisit videos like this one when i feel myself slipping a bit with my art.

thanks for everything man

[collin]

Woah, those animations are super smooth! I'm making my own game right now and trying to keep the visuals as basic as possible, but I'd love to make a Metroidvania with pixel art like yours one day when I have more experience. Anywho, thanks for making such high quality videos! They're very helpful for newbies like me lol

[NoFaceDev]

I don't know why your new videos does not hit the 100k views cause you are doing a lot of work 🥺

[msv]

Thank you for putting so much effort into your tutorials. Your videos really help understand complex concepts and are so motivating

[pottingsoil]

Just in time for my morning coffee. Thank you Adam, this was exactly the animation help I've been needing lately. ☕👍

[Microbex]

Uhmm yes, the spider and staircase animations are particularly great.
Great masterclass! 👍☺️

[jerrygreenest]

AdamCYounis: Don't do this while making animated pixel art
Me: I never intended to. I'm not even a pixel artist. Just having pleasure to see a professional in work.

[yaSumi]

I am so glad I subscribed to this channel, it's the best pixel art channel I've ever found:)

[alejandrovelezsainz]

Wonderful job!! A great workflow video for indie devs and graphic designers