[GIMP & Flash CS-X] - Animate a Fakemon, B/W Style!

[Magicsaur]

A Pokemon Black and White Sprite Animation Tutorial
For Fakemon!

Do not use the above sprites in your game. They are © me.

This community seems really big on making pixel game in the style of pre-B/W games, with the addition of a bunch of interesting new fakemons. But I've only seen one game so far to actually use B/W style animated sprites, which are from the actual games.

So with this tutorial, I'm going to present an easy way of making B/W fakemon sprites that look official, for use in a game!

You will need:
- GIMP https://www.gimp.org/ (Photoshop works too!)
- Flash CSX

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You will need GIMP for its .gif saving features, and open as layers feature. Some version of Flash is needed to actually build the animation itself. I use CS4. If you don't have Flash, you can use a trial version, available here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flash&loc=en


To begin, we first need to make a static, motionless sprite in the Black/White art style. Here are my steps.
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Now that we have a final sprite, rip it apart into parts that will be animated.

Save each piece as an individual png file, cropping them so there's as little blank space as possible. They must all be transparent.

Now to Flash! Create a 96x96px Flash size. That's the size it'll be when you export the animation frames. Hopefully you saved all your parts in one folder, because now you need to import them to the Flash library.

Now drag each piece onto the stage, and make sure it's on its own layer. Pay attention to layer order!

Now move all the parts around on the stage, until it is positioned exactly as it was on the original static sprite.

Now you're ready to animate! I insert new keyframes and rotate parts as I see fit, in order to animate, and I animate at 24fps. Use your imagination! When you're done, your timeline will look something like this, if your animation is pretty complex.

Once pleased with your results, export all your frames of animation to a folder somewhere. To do that, go to File > Export > Export Movie. A window will appear. Make sure you save as type PNG sequence, so it stays transparent. Make sure you have no dithering, that the resolution is the same as the original sprite, and that smooth is off. Include Full Document Size, as well, or it won't turn out right.

Once you've done that, open up GIMP again. Create a new picture, and delete the first layer. Go to File>Open As Layers, and navigate to the folder where you exported the frames of your animation to, selecting all the frames. After it loads, Save As .gif and check the appropriate options- save as animation and make sure that frame replace is on.

If you have done everything correctly, you will have made your first B/W fakemon style animation!

If you have any questions, please ask. And show me if you make anything! <3
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