I need a sprite of a guy in shorts and a few frames to make him run. The sprite is for an isometric game so I figure I ned 8 directions of him that making 5 that are needed to be drawn because three could be made by mirroring. The sprite will only be 32 x 64 so it''s very small. How would you do this? I though that I would need one frame when he stand two when he uses his left leg and two with the right. So five different frames per direction. Maybe I could use something to paint on top of, or? /MindWipe "If it doesn''t fit, force it; if it breaks, it needed replacement anyway."

One suggestion I''ll add is to create a mask for your animation... Creating the odd angles and animations is very hard, but once you have this black and white mask, you can make numerous characters by filling in the white with whatever you want the character to look like. Look at any FF game, you''ll find most of the characters are VERY similar. Here are a few I''ve made off of the same type of frame... (blown up a bit too, so excuse the quality)



Another option I''ve played with is to make each body part on a different layer and make each body part extend more than what shows... (Generally in this order... Legs on body, then arms, head, and then the body on the top layer. Have the legs, arm, and neck extend enough that you can maneuver them around and the body will still be covered) This helps animating a lot! This doesn''t necessarily help with drawing the angles though.

As far as angles go, concentrate on contour drawing - eye the angles and ignore what you think it "should" look like, draw what it looks like Don''t let your left brain kill you. (Read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain some time, great book!)

Generally, sprites aren''t the greatest quality any way. There''s never too much detail in them, so don''t worry about high quality animation. If they move, it generally suffices