6 Animating Pixels Blobbing Away Break It Down Keyframes and Tweening 134 Life Has Pointless Movements 126 132 141 7 Special Effects for Animation Flame Effects 146 Lasers for Blasters Trip Wires and More Making It Glow Blowing It Up 152 Damaged Goods A Little Science Before the Fall Revise Revisit Reuse Research 148 151 157 166 166 8 Where to Go from Here Review Your Work Once a Year Make a Plan Use the Tools You Have Sharing Your Work 171 Recommended Reading Thank You 169 170 175 177 168 163 Contents
Acknowledgments There are a handful of people who made this book possible they are Serena Yang Janelle Ludowise and of course Bill Pollock There’s also everyone else at No Starch Press who worked behind the scenes to make this publication happen It took exactly two emails for No Starch to see the potential in this book and to come on board and for that we are very grateful Also we must thank David Capello the author of Aseprite Aseprite His continued efforts to improve the software and give both new and professional artists an affordable option for creating pixel art are very much appreciated There are a variety of pixel art tools out there but none come close to Aseprite in our opinion Then there’s the community of aspiring artists both young and old who are very eager to become pixel artists but have found little in the way of resources to help them It’s these people who inspired us to write the first draft of this book and then to carry on improving it Thank you for your questions your encouragement and hopefully a place on your bookshelf I think we also owe each other a pat on the back Through writer’s block and artist fatigue we supported each other and struggled through the lows and celebrated celebrated the highs together
Preface I lived in the Arctic for the first few years of my life where there wasn’t much to do Then in 1986 my dad thankfully invested in a computer It was love at first sight As I watched my dad make elaborate drawings of cars and monsters using Micro soft Paint I realized art wasn’t just something to be consumed You could learn to create it and with practice get really good at it
