Exclusive materials. Behind the Scenes

Greetings!

As I've mentioned before — sprites eat up most of the development time: animations and artwork. In ideal conditions, the process is linear: Idea → Sketch → Pixel art. But in practice, things don't always go according to plan.

Here's what different situations and stages of work look like, using Morrigan as an example.

Unexpected Variables

Some elements seem simple at first glance but end up massively complicating the process. With Morrigan, that element was the tail. Its role as a supporting element for conveying the character's emotions, and for this I had to create a bunch of separate variations, animate each one, and check how they work together with the rest of her movements.

Pixel Perfect

Before development even started, I made the decision to follow the pixel perfect principle. This means every pixel in the game is genuine: they're always the same size, never distorted, and strictly tied to the screen resolution.

It all sounds great, but it comes with serious limitations. Take items, for instance: it's not enough to just draw one large version and scale it down. Instead, several separate versions have to be created — a small icon, a regular sprite (how the object appears in the game world — decor), and a large icon.

Otherwise it ends up looking like this ↓

Software

Sketches — Adobe Photoshop / Procreate. Everything pixel-related, including animations — Aseprite. In the early stages I tried using PixelOver and Smack Studio, but the results were just bad.

Bonus