Having to learn about the pixel animation world is one to enjoy with pain and suffering. In other words, while you may like doing animation for a while, it gets banal and tedious in the long run. So, this tutorial will demonstrate how that may become to fruition.

So the first thing that you want to do is open a new file. Decide on your layer settings and whatnot. If you don’t know what about layer settings, I made a tutorial/guidelines for it.

Once you have your clean open canvas, you have an option to start out fresh with your sprite or have some sort of reference. You can easily paste a reference image by using the standard CTR+ C and CTR + V. The other option is using a reference layer. In my opinion, I can’t find a better use for the reference layer other than it creates a layer with the reference image for you. So, I just stick to the old standard CTR way.

Once you have a reference layer, or not, you going to start making your line of actions using the layers on the bottom. Again, if you do not know what are the layers/frames on the bottom do… look at the guidelines.

Line of action is the movement of your sprite in the simplest form.  Usually, this step can be done with lines, but if you’re an advanced animator, you’re going to use more than just a few lines with more fluid frames.

Once you start having your first line of action, you are going to need a new frame by pressing ALT+N.

Once you did create a new frame, it will actually duplicate the frame you used before. I’m not sure about any other methods that can make me create a clean frame instead of a duplicated frame, but this will have to do. You can easily fix this by clicking on the frame and deleting the frame layer.

Now, you going to need to draw the second frame of your animation. But you don’t need to have to go back and forth layers to see what you have done last time, because Aseprite has the onion skin feature!

The onion skin will give you the advantage of seeing the past frame and the next frame. You have the option to make it the default black or make it red & blue. Personally, I use the red and blue because it gives a better contrast to which one was the past and the other one is in the future. You are going to use this until every frame is finished to the end.

I’ve ended up with a mere 7 frames. Even though there is barely any animations, the motion itself is too quick to count.

As you can see, the blue indicates the future frame and red indicates the past frame in a very quick motion. This animation indicates the monster is digging into the ground.

Once you finished your set of lines of action, the next step is to color it in! Coloring it is somewhat the most difficult part of the animation. After all, you’re doing this frame.by.frame. So, you have no choice but to tolerate it. The only shortcut you may do is duplicating frames and do a little bit of transforming.

This is the method I tend to do time to time, depending on the condition, because it saves A LOT of time.

Since I also do outlining, I have to do this step with every frame and cannot copy and paste the lines because each frame is different. Everything is due process… Fortunately, using the mouse with the line tool essentially helps me with the outlining so I don’t have trouble with the technicalities. Rather, its an abundance of being annoying.

Aaaaaaannnnd that’s about it! Fortunately for this current sprite, I didn’t have to do much besides outlining and transforming here and there.

As you can see, I do label each limb so I can get a better view of what needs to be moved and how it needs to be moved. If you look at the “Ground” layer, Frame 1 to 3 is using the stable frame option. I use this because the ground didn’t change until frame 4. So, if I need to have the ground changed, I can do it with no hassle besides Frame 4 to 8.

Also to note: Frame 1 to 7 lasts 50 milliseconds while Frame 8 lasts 500 milliseconds. I did this to give a better understanding that it can stay underground and it quickly digs when I present this sprite. If you don’t remember how to change the frame duration, just right-click the frame and click frame properties. You will see it there.

That’s about it from this tutorial! I hope you have learned that Aseprite is not a complicated program. Rather, it is a more simple tool created with the purpose of making pixellated art. By no means that I am saying that pixel art is easy and simple to do; It can be possible to make pixel art very beautiful if you can make it that way.

Good luck with your sprites!

Tony