(crossposted from my blog and my newsletter)
Back when I was a programmer on big budget pixel art games (or at least big budget by pixel art standards), I was always shocked at how few animation frames the pixel artists needed to make a movement look smooth. One inbetween frame was often enough for a great-looking "quickly move from pose A to pose B in a smooth way" transition animation.
I was reminded of this on Wednesday when I released a small patch to my game Ducky's Delivery Service, which adds a couple of small pieces of visual polish.
First off, the propeller now rotates clockwise regardless of which way you're facing. The sprites used to be flipped when you turned to face left, which made it look like the propeller was rotating in the opposite direction, but now it always rotates the same way. It makes a big difference!
The other change, and the one that prompted me to write this post, is that I added a single-frame turning animation when you turn from left to right (or vice-versa). Previously, the game just snapped you from the left-facing sprite to the right-facing sprite with nothing between. If you compare the video below to the one above (ideally at 60fps), hopefully you can see the added smoothness:
The animation plays very quickly because I wanted the controls to continue to feel responsive and snappy, but I think it makes things feel more polished all the same.
Here's the new animation frame, if you're curious. It looks pretty weird because some cartoon characters simply aren't meant to look directly at the camera, but it's fine in motion:
I had to add variations of this animation frame depending on whether you're flying or on the ground, and whether your arms are up or down or carrying a present. But I think it's worth it.
I'm personally a big fan of low budget unpolished games, so I don't want to encourage everyone to waste lots of time making everything in their games beautifully animated. But if your game has an important sprite like the player character and you're wondering how much extra animation you need to add to make them look smooth, it might only be one frame!
My game Ducky's Delivery Service is out now on Nintendo Switch and Steam and itch.io. If you're interested in smoothly animated propeller ducks, you might like it!
