Pixelblog 63: designing sprites for a horizontal shmup
In Pixelblog 63, Raymond Schlitter turns to the horizontal shoot 'em up and builds a set of assets around WW2 aircraft battling over a natural landscape. After earlier features on vertical shmups, this is his first take on the horizontal kind, where bullet patterns come across the screen rather than down it.
He starts with the player plane, because it sets the tone and the resolution for everything else. At roughly 48x32 pixels there is room for detail without becoming expensive to animate. The plane is modelled on the P-51 Mustang. A point I found interesting is that he animates roll rather than pitch for vertical movement. The nose stays level so the bullets always leave straight ahead, and rotation at such a low resolution tends to leave noisy clusters of pixels anyway. In summary, roll keeps the sprite clean and looks good.
The animation uses five orientations: one neutral frame and two roll positions each for up and down, plus a constantly spinning propeller. He also gives a design rule for how it should feel in play: a tap shows only the first degree of roll, holding shows the fully banked pose, and releasing passes back through the shallow pose to neutral. He advises against adding inertia to movement in a genre built on precise reactions.
Options, the little pods that orbit the ship, are covered as well. Beyond their gameplay use, he argues they add screen presence, which helps you feel where your ship is while your eyes follow bullet paths.
The enemies are German aircraft and a Hummel artillery vehicle. His workflow is a template made of a few blocked-out colours, then proper colours and basic detail, then lighting and fine detail, and outlining last. A palette swap lets the propeller animation be reused across planes, and he suggests spending extra frames only where the behaviour justifies it. It is a practical lesson in economy.
Source: SLYNYRD
He starts with the player plane, because it sets the tone and the resolution for everything else. At roughly 48x32 pixels there is room for detail without becoming expensive to animate. The plane is modelled on the P-51 Mustang. A point I found interesting is that he animates roll rather than pitch for vertical movement. The nose stays level so the bullets always leave straight ahead, and rotation at such a low resolution tends to leave noisy clusters of pixels anyway. In summary, roll keeps the sprite clean and looks good.
The animation uses five orientations: one neutral frame and two roll positions each for up and down, plus a constantly spinning propeller. He also gives a design rule for how it should feel in play: a tap shows only the first degree of roll, holding shows the fully banked pose, and releasing passes back through the shallow pose to neutral. He advises against adding inertia to movement in a genre built on precise reactions.
Options, the little pods that orbit the ship, are covered as well. Beyond their gameplay use, he argues they add screen presence, which helps you feel where your ship is while your eyes follow bullet paths.
The enemies are German aircraft and a Hummel artillery vehicle. His workflow is a template made of a few blocked-out colours, then proper colours and basic detail, then lighting and fine detail, and outlining last. A palette swap lets the propeller animation be reused across planes, and he suggests spending extra frames only where the behaviour justifies it. It is a practical lesson in economy.
Source: SLYNYRD
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