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Following the resurgence in popularity of retro and indie games I created this set of animated characters. I was Inspired by the art style and overall tone of games like Party House published by Mossmouth.
This collection of characters represents different types of characters you might encounter in a video game world. Using their outfit design, expressions, and idle animations I was able to give personality to each one.
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I first created written descriptions of different types of characters that would fit into this collection. Then I began creating one still image of each character in Procreate. I also create pixel art using software like Photoshop or Aesprite, but for this project I wanted to put Procreate to the test since it isn’t typically used for this type of art.
I also used Procreate to animate these characters using its “animation assist” mode. This lets you convert the layers to frames and used features like ‘onion skin’. I sometimes import these layers into Procreate Dreams to animate, but since these character animations are only 3 - 4 frames long I left them in Procreate.
To set up these sprites to export into a game development engine I created a sprite sheet. This sheet lays out every frame of each character in an organized grid with each character taking up a 32 × 32 pixel box. This is done so the video game engine can switch between frames identifying them by their exact pixel-coordinates on the image.
Sprite Sheet - Frame by frame
The pink and yellow squares above represent the pixel grid that a game development engine might use.
