Dino's new animations #6

Some insight into the way I work with animation sheets.

Iterating with an artist over a sprite sheet can be really hard if you don't have a proper methodology in place. At first I used to incorporate the new animations myself because I haven't proposed any structure to the game sheets.

Bear in mind that the order of each animation is important because that is translated into a JSON file and then fed to the game's logic. If you switch or misplace by 1 pixel something then it will look weird on the canvas.

The key take-away here is to setup and agree a workflow that is easy for you and the artist(s) to iterate.
You could:

• provide a template with placeholders (eg. Idle animations 6 frames of 64x64)

• provide guidelines about maximum width and height a sprite can be

• specify if the shadow of the character needs to be separately (or on a separate layer)

• leave the artist free to self-organize, don't micromanage as the changes can prove to be costly (time, money, effort)

Here is the full game dev video log: