Pixel Animation Tool?

[Plastiware]

Howdy, Blocklanders.  Does anyone know of any tools for making pixel-based animations?  Not something for individual sprites, which I can already animate just fine.  I'm talking something that can make anything up to and including animated short films.  Something on the scale of Flash, but pixel-based instead of vector-based, preferably with options to export to either GIF or video formats.  Does anything like this exist?  If so, is it cheap?

[Ad Bot]

[Regulith]

considering how delicate figures on such a small scale would be I can't imagine it being practical to have a tween-based animator for them like flash

that leaves frame-by-frame which any simple image editor can do, I would recommend GIMP since you can create each frame on a separate layer and then save it as a GIF

[Plastiware]

I appreciate the suggestion, but that's exactly what I want to avoid having to do.  Even something as simple as a 5-second animation of a character running across a screen would be tedious as hell.  For each individual frame, I would have to grab the appropriate running frame and paste it in just the right place.  In Flash, the same could be done with a movie clip walk cycle, two keyframes, and a tween.  However, I specifically don't want to use Flash or any other vector-based animation utility.  I want to avoid things like misaligned or out-of-proportion pixels.

[Plastiware]

Also have I mentioned that these forums are the worst place to ask for advice?

[Wheatley]

Also have I mentioned that these forums are the worst place to ask for advice?

No, but I'm glad you realized that. Don't forget to fill out the customer satisfaction survey!

OT: I'd like an answer as well

[Regulith]

I appreciate the suggestion, but that's exactly what I want to avoid having to do.  Even something as simple as a 5-second animation of a character running across a screen would be tedious as hell.  For each individual frame, I would have to grab the appropriate running frame and paste it in just the right place.  In Flash, the same could be done with a movie clip walk cycle, two keyframes, and a tween.  However, I specifically don't want to use Flash or any other vector-based animation utility.  I want to avoid things like misaligned or out-of-proportion pixels.

pixel animation requires detailed tweaks to various parts of a figure to look proper, it's the type of thing where you can't really take any shortcuts

I don't think anyone has created a pixel animator that doesn't use frame-by-frame animation for exactly that reason

think of it this way: have you ever tried to rotate a very small object in an image editor?



blech

in fact a few moderately thorough google searches for programs recommended by people who do this type of stuff for a living or just as a dedicated hobby yields hundreds of thousands of results for ones that do frame-by-frame editing and are recommended by multiple people, including graphics gale, jasc animation shop, pixen if you're on iOS, and pro motion, as well as the aforementioned GIMP and even photoshop

in all of the message board posts I sifted through not one of them mentioned the type of thing you're looking for, which leads me to believe it either doesn't exist or if it does no one wants to use it because the results are undesirable

Also have I mentioned that these forums are the worst place to ask for advice?

just because one of the few thousand active members here can't answer your incredibly specific question in under 6 hours doesn't make this "the worst place to ask for advice"

[Plastiware]

Except if such a pixel animation program was made properly, you could still take shortcuts.  It's not the process of automatically moving a sprite itself that's ugly, it's the fact that many image editors use interpolation, which is supposed to look better, but looks horrid on smaller graphics.

If it doesn't exist, well... that's a shame.  Guess I'm sticking with crappy-screen-cam-recorded Game Maker for now.

just because one of the few thousand active members here can't answer your incredibly specific question in under 6 hours doesn't make this "the worst place to ask for advice"

I wasn't referring to you, specifically.  No offense, really!  I just meant in general, these forums are not the best place to seek help with stuff, which I decided to convey through a thread bump rather than just saying "bump".  Thanks anyway.

[Cucumber!]

Photoshop has a little animating window...could that work?

[Kingdaro]

I appreciate the suggestion, but that's exactly what I want to avoid having to do.  Even something as simple as a 5-second animation of a character running across a screen would be tedious as hell.

this is what animation is, take it or leave it.

if you want a decent product, you have to put some work into it. tools can help you, but not do it for you in an efficient manner.

[Plastiware]

this is what animation is, take it or leave it.

if you want a decent product, you have to put some work into it. tools can help you, but not do it for you in an efficient manner.

I understand that animation is time-consuming work, but in my case I've already pre-animated or can easily animate a bunch of character sprites.  I'd just like to know if there's a way to move them around the screen without having to reposition them for every single frame, 30 times for every single second of animation.  Flash works, technically, but it may give you things like misaligned or improperly-sized pixels.  Game Maker works, too, but recording the result to a usable video format is easier said than done.

[Doomonkey]

Make the animations in a regular image editing program, then import them into flash and do a high quality vector tracing. Then you can just have it play a run animation and use a tween to move it all over.

[NalNalas]

MS PAINT