One of the reasons Roshambo ended up derailing originally was that trying to animate a sprite in Photoshop is like placing your testicles on a desk covered in rusty nails and broken glass, then smashing them to a bloody pulp with a lump hammer.

I’m not kidding, Photoshop CS3 will allow you to animate frame by frame, but there is no onion skinning and skipping back and fourth between the frames was a chore, I spent most of my time guessing rather than observing the next frame, it was frustrating and in the end i gave up.

Well the other day by chance i discovered a free sprite animating software called Pixen by Open Sword, it’s pretty damn good, I can onion skin (only the previous layer but better than nothing) and skip back and forth between frames using keyboard shortcuts, meaning i can see what i’m trying to achieve easier.

Now it’s not perfect, it does crash a lot, but so far i haven’t lost anything important, while getting to grips with this program and learning the shortcuts, layout, etc, i’ve developed the frequent cmd-s habit. Also for some reason certain layers seem to darken or lighten slightly, i’m not sure why yet and as the Pixen forum is down i cannot ask why or for a solution, oh well.

Still, it’s free and has allowed me to throw together a rough breathe animation for my guy here, so i can’t complain, i’ll be able to flesh him out in Pixen easily then colour correct as needed in Photoshop afterwards, things are looking up!

Not perfect i know, the knees are floating all over the shop and the muscles are not convincing yet but as you can see this is just the rough, and i’m one hell of a messy artist, next time you see this he’ll be tightened up and looking sharp. Stay Tuned!