ANIMATION IS MY FORTE! I am regularly animating pixel art!
It is fun and challenging especially as pixel art in itself is some what limited but with these limitations it helps me get creative to do work arounds for various challenges that come up and for any ambitious designs.
Animation is some of the most fun I have with pixel art, I love brining designs to life. Initially starting with stop motion animation then evolving my digital skills to 2D art and now beyond, animation is at the core of most of my work.
Animation also has a variety of styles which enhance the type of feeling you want your work to convey, be it smooth and clean, exaggerated and cartoony or anything in between, I like to nail down a style that best suits the artwork and vibe of the project but also balance the time and budget to produce the best possible result.
I have lots of experience with animation and I am often asked to create animated characters for games. Animation can be very time consuming and sometimes monotonous but is a great skill to have and has allowed me to develop further as an artist. I have gathered lots of knowledge on anatomy and key framing over the years.
Yes, I do create animated pieces. I have worked on character sprites, environment animations, and animated shots. One of the main challenges for animation is timing, and figuring out the best fps for your project. Sometimes, a client will want really smooth animation (around 12-24 fps), other times they will want something more retro (around 8-10fps). For pieces at a lower frame rate, the challenge comes in expressing a lot of movement within a single frame. Usually action lines come in handy, but as you have less frames to play with, you do have to get creative! Another challenge is shading. For still image pieces, it is easy to create intricately detailed pieces with a beautiful render. Keeping this consistent during animation is very difficult! I usually find the best way to do this is break things down into layers, so that you can easily manipulate things and have a greater degree of control.
I am very comfortable with animated pixel art sequences. Whether it be an animation or a scene. Compared to static pieces the challenge with animation is balancing how much detail can reasonably be maintained throughout the animation.
The key to working with animation is figuring out what style will best suit the complexity you're going to be providing. Generally, it's best to (especially if it's a small team of animators) keep the art style simpler if you want to provide smoother more complex animation. Otherwise, the process will take far longer.
Most of my commissioned work comprises animations, which come with unique challenges compared to single sprites. Each animation frame requires meticulous drawing and cleanup to ensure smooth transitions between frames, often taking several hours or even a day or two for a high-quality animation.
Yes, I do animations. I offer 8 frame animations for characters. Frames can increase or decrease depending on the animation complexity. I also do background animations for games and Twitter banners etc.
Currently, I'm focusing more on static pixel art. However, I do offer 2 frame animations. The main challenges that I've had with animating is managing layers, and timing.