DKC Atlas Forum

Hey guys, sorry if I'm bugging too much but i really want to know which program is good for making sprites and animations. i would appreciate it alot! :3 I wanna do Donkey Kong animations and maybe other characters as well.

Making sprites from scratch... that's tough. You basically have to do it pixel by pixel. I suggested (in the DKC related animations section) paint.net.

Have you ever used photoshop and do you have photoshop? If not, paint.net is similar and I think video tutorials will work for both. Video tutorials are a great way to learn a new program.

*EDIT* rotsprite is a FANTASTIC program to rotate sprites. You can't in programs like photoshop, because the image blurs. The only downside is that there is no visual to help you out. I usually rotate it first in photoshop to see what angle I need. I don't save the photoshop rotation, of course, I just remember the degrees. Then you plug in the number to rotate the sprite. It works WONDERFULLY! No blurring!

I use MS Paint + GIF Movie Gear for any and all animations. The latter is incredibly reliable. It's not free, though Googling "gif movie gear serial" will lead you to a user/pass on a forum page which then helps you out forever.

For sprite work in general, I'll occasionally I'll use GIMP for rotating sprites, changing the lightning/color balance of sprites and the opacity settings. But in general I stick to MSPaint for anything and everything and only use GIF Movie Gear to animate each frame.

Edit:
Name: www.piaodown.com
Serial: mg37xaj5423

^ the GIF Movie Gear thing

Phyreburnz wrote:Making sprites from scratch... that's tough. You basically have to do it pixel by pixel. I suggested (in the DKC related animations section) paint.net.

Have you ever used photoshop and do you have photoshop? If not, paint.net is similar and I think video tutorials will work for both. Video tutorials are a great way to learn a new program.

*EDIT* rotsprite is a FANTASTIC program to rotate sprites. You can't in programs like photoshop, because the image blurs. The only downside is that there is no visual to help you out. I usually rotate it first in photoshop to see what angle I need. I don't save the photoshop rotation, of course, I just remember the degrees. Then you plug in the number to rotate the sprite. It works WONDERFULLY! No blurring!

okay, thanks! well I'm going to try later on today and see what I can do! thanks for your help by the way! I really want to make a King K' Rool animation since I don't see a lot of him! no I don't have photoshop! I wish I did though and your right! It looks pretty tough to do and I'm going to try my best at this. I'm going to look fit video tutorials probably later sometime.

Cody wrote:I use MS Paint + GIF Movie Gear for any and all animations. The latter is incredibly reliable. It's not free, though Googling "gif movie gear serial" will lead you to a user/pass on a forum page which then helps you out forever.

For sprite work in general, I'll occasionally I'll use GIMP for rotating sprites, changing the lightning/color balance of sprites and the opacity settings. But in general I stick to MSPaint for anything and everything and only use GIF Movie Gear to animate each frame.

I think maybe I will try that out as well! mostly all programs aren't free anymore which sucks.

I forgot! You should probably start out with just animating sprites before you try editing them. That's how I started, and I think it helped a lot. How has your progress been, by the way?

Phyreburnz wrote:I forgot! You should probably start out with just animating sprites before you try editing them. That's how I started, and I think it helped a lot. How has your progress been, by the way?

I think I could try that! I'm still confused lol, how do you actually animate sprites when they are like frozen?
I haven't begun the progress on it really, I'm having trouble finding programs that are good.:3

Just so you know, you don't have to quote posts right above you. Here is what I'd do if I didn't have photoshop: I would probably download paint.net and learn that program (like how to use layers and stuff), figure out if the program is capable of animation (which I think it is), and watch videos of people animating sprites. They'll show you how to do it step by step. And I have no idea what you mean by "frozen." It would be too difficult for me to explain everything because I don't use paint.net and therefore don't know how it is set up.

Basically, you would have each frame on a different layer. In photoshop, you hit window> animate. That will show you the animation timeline at the bottom of the screen. You have to make a new slide for every layer of the animation. You can change the amount of time for each frame. That is basically how to animate with a similar program to photoshop. I bet that was hard to follow... but that's why you should look up videos on YouTube.

With Paint.NET you need a special plugin for animated GIFs, I believe. Never tried it before.

Do a search for Ulead GIF Animator 2.0. It's about 15 years old, but it does the trick. Most of my animated GIFs of the unused sprites were made using this.

MSpaint is great for making just standalone sprites, but I use Photoshop to compile them. At least, that's what I think.

Hmm... might have to check out this rotsprite programme.