How I animate a simple GIF Sprite

I have always had a little spot in my heart for sprite animation in my heart, I love how the simpleness of a few pixel dots can translate so much with so little colors and information. I mainly developed this admiration from my endless hours spent on videogames, whether it was playing classic NES games when I was younger or whenever I play a new indie title these days that embraces nostalgic pixel aesthetics.

This is by no means a step by step tutorial as I suck at teaching or even sharing knowledge with others, but I will will walk you through my creative process in a brief manner. A little background of this sprite that I drew and animated in under an hour, done on Adobe Photoshop of course, he's a misunderstood grunt that works for the evil army of the 9th dimension. He is unsatisfied with how others perceive him as an instrument of his darklord, so I tried to translate that frustration through his pose.

I begin by drawing his torso, with a huge menacing skull being the chestpiece of his armor so to speak.

Next up I make a rough estimate of where the main light source should be coming from, then I start adding a few layers of colors to create the illusion of depth and shadow, as well as a sharp highlight.

I chose a warm red hue for his armor's gaps to create a sense of contrast and additional depth.

Next up I draw his chubby arm, nothing too fancy here, he is a simpleton grunt afterall. I duplicate the arm and flip it horizontally to create the other arm.

Is the head too menacing? probably why people jump quick to assume he is just another mindless grunt of the darklord.

getting lazy with the legs so what's better to say lazy artist than a pair of mantis claws for legs?

I make a few subtle changes to the limbs, heads and the torso to create the illusion of awesome animation

And witness the final product, give him a name will you lads?

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