Art

2D Graphics explanation

Since me and Katy have been ahead of schedule, we already made our sprites and now we have started to animate them, we are using a bit map which is made up of 64 by 64 coloured squares to create a graphic these can't be too detailed because of the limitations of pixel art, but then created an effective picture for a game, bit maps was used in games when they first started because consoles were not as advanced as our modern day technologies. 
 

But even though we have 3D games today, the 2D graphic are still used (often in indie games because they are cheap and easy to make) today. When using applications to create our sprite we decided to use Gimp because it's easier to use and free so we both access to it at home, even though Photoshop gave us the option to create 2D sprites, it's very expensive to obtain, but with gimp it is a free download and we easily made our sprites, then copying the image frames we created into Photoshop with the same size canvas we used in gimp (64px by 64px) and we could easily animate the sprite though Photoshop’s easy to use animation feature. 
 
When animating the Sprite, Katy rubbed out the legs and arms then drew on several other frames different points in the arms and legs animations, she then made certain parts visible together on a frame to make the frame of the animation. In completion she managed to make it look like the sprite was stepping forward using only the eight different frames   

 
 
  that were previously made in gimp. Once the process of putting the animation together in Photoshop was complete, we had to save it as a gif file. It took us a while to figure out how to get this right; we hadn't realised we had to save through other means. To save the animation as a moving Gif file, you have to go into File > Save for web and devices. Obviously bits where she rubbed out to put in new stature there was blank bits or the shading was in the wrong place. When colouring our sprites, we created gradients of colours using the colour select. We selected the main colour of the gradient then changed the S and V settings on the colour changer in 10 point intervals to create an even gradient for us to use on our sprites. Creating these gradients gave our sprites a more professional look, with even shading and colour.

 

(Colour gradient example for what we did on our sprites)