After creating the background I moved on to creating the main character of the game, shown here in my concept drawings:
I started out creating the walking cycle, which was a completely new thing to me as I had never animated a person however I jumped straight into it as I've been eager to learn animation for some time now. The timelapse below is the complete process of me creating the sprite:
I started by creating a guideline for myself by making 3D models on a separate app to my drawing one. I often use this app to create custom references with 3D models, so I made a selection of images of walking. I then used these as a base to draw over and add in unique facial features, clothing, hair and so on.
As I progress along this walk cycle, I often copy and paste certain areas of the previous frame, especially around the face and then I adjust parts of that previous frame's linework or colouring to fit the next. I do this to keep every frame consistent. If there was too many major differences between each frame, the animation would appear unnatural.
Once I had finished the linework and then also the coding, I copy and pasted each frame onto a different canvas intended for animation. I did this to test out how smooth the animation was, and if anything stuck out that I needed to adjust.
After I had completed the walk cycle, I noticed that I had not created the idle sprite yet with the character just standing still, and so that was the last thing I completed for this character.
While the animation was far from perfectly smooth and entirely consistent, I am still very happy with it for my first time animating. However, I do think I spent far too long on this, as creating this sprite and walking cycle took me a few days to get it to a point that I was satisfied with while the deadline was already fast approaching.
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