saint11

Voting Thread

If you have any other theme ideas, please let me know in the comments!

As always, thank you so much for your support! 

<3

Top Down Attack

Here's my take on how I would make a top down attack animation. I only made one direction, and I can try making more in the future, but I don't think it's necessary, just follow the same logic. Imagine a the legs, torso and head as layered stacks and they should slide in the direction of the attack.

Here's some other related t...

Isometric part 1

Here's some tips and tricks about drawing in the isometric perspective, I decided to call this "part 1" because I think this is a really big topic with a lot of room to explore.

Also, check it out this great cheat sheet, it helped me a lot while making this tutorial: 2018-09-25 19:20:20 +0000 UTC View Post

Top Down Walk Cycle

This tutorial is very similar to another tutorial of mine, the Top Down Run Cycle but walking, as you can see has some differences. Also I tried to use this to share some more tips on the subject and how I usually work when making this typ...

How to start making pixel art #3 - A basic Aseprite animation

Finally publishing my incredibly late article on how to make a simple animation on Aseprite!

I focused on people that are really starting out and I'll start focusing on advanced techniques in the future.

Here's the link:

2018-08-27 19:20:37 +0000 UTC View Post

Making Pixel Art #2 - Cluster sketching and painting

I just posted my second article on my in-depth series about how to start learning pixel art! Check out the post on Medium: ht...

Making Pixel Art #1 - An absolute beginner’s guide

I just posted my first article on an in-depth series about how to start learning pixel art I'm planning to make! Check out the first post on Medium: https://medium.com/@saintjust/how-to-start-making-pixel-art-2d1e31a5ceab...

Swords!

This tutorial is a little similar to my second tutorial, about attack, but this time I've focused on swords.

Many of the stances and poses were based on videos by Skallagrim, check his stuff out if you need more info on the subject :)

...

Wood Textures

Here's a little guide on how to draw wood textures!

Wood is not a necessarily hard thing to draw, but if you want to make it detailed it is very time consuming. I always try to focus first on the big shapes and only when I'm happy with it I draw the texture. Otherwise I may waste a lot of time drawing a texture on a shape that...

Resizing Pixel Art

Before anything, sorry for all the text, I always try to keep my tutorias as compact as possible but for this I couldn't think of a way of explaining all that without lots of text.

If you want to resize your pixel art you are in for a rough ride, this is one of the most annoying things about this art style. Most of the automat...

Illumination Techniques

Here's my 70th tutorial!

I had to do a lot of research for this one and leaned a lot in the process. Researching photography techniques is always a good way to learn how to draw and frame subjects.

Other tutorials where I talk about similar subjects:

• 2018-05-15 17:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Gems

This tutorial is about gems, something that I really like drawing, but I never really gave too much though about how it's really made and researching for this tutorial was very fun. The gem cutting process is very interesting and much more artesanal and precise than I expected.

Another reference for this is my very first tutor...

Firearm Design

When designing firearms my main advice is: always have some real world reference. Firearms are very complex mechanical devices and it's very easy for them to look fake or like a toy gun. Having the right details is what sells the realism.

Even though I'm not really into guns (I never even touched one) this was a fun tutorial t...

Holograms/Ghost effect

This tutorial took way longer than I expected, but finally, here it is!

I decided to make a tutorial about ghosts and holograms because they have a lot in common, they both are semi-translucent human shapes. Of course, one has a sci-fi theme the other is usually more macabre, but the effect is very similar. 2018-04-03 20:00:38 +0000 UTC View Post

Defend/Take Hit

And here's another tutorial about getting hit!

Just remember that player feedback is a very important thing and communicating that characters took damage is just as important as if they didn't. Not having a "defend" animation or feedback might confuse the players into thinking that the hit missed and they will...

Top Down Houses

For making houses and other structures in top down I always recommend looking for reference, for example, this tutorial was based on Zelda: Minish Cap art. 

Representing things in top down 2D comes with a very hard perspective problem that's very hard to solve. Here I use one of my favorite methods, fake perspective (fake...

Ice and Snow Tutorial

Here's my ice and snow tutorial! I have to admit that I don't have much experience with snow myself (I live in Brazil) most of what I've learn is from pictures and videos.

My ultimate advice is always search for reference, ice colors can change in weird ways, become over saturated and very glossy. And also check my 2018-02-20 22:35:48 +0000 UTC View Post

Spaceship Design

When designing spaceships I always follow a iterative process and if something doesn't work I can always fall back one step and change things.

I also urge you to read this amazing article by Arne: https://androidarts.com/spaceships/spac...

Slide/Roll/Dash

I decided to group these three animations because they are all variations on the same theme, an abrupt movement for escaping or reaching something.

They all follow the same pattern, a very short or non-existent preparation (especially for player characters) a loop for the duration of the action and a recovery animation, usuall...

Wall Slide / Wall Kick

And we are back with another animation tutorial! It's kinda weird to explain wall slide and kick before explaining jump, but I think it's all about conveying a strong horizontal movement for the kick and the pressing on the wall for the slide.

Although this is how I usually draw my characters I think it's possible to make a mi...

Modern / Indoors

It's been a very intense end of year, but I managed to finish this week's tutorial! It's about modern indoor scenery. The tips here are built around my personal style, so they definitely don't apply to all cases, but can work as a starting point.

On another topic, I'm considering switching to making tutorials every other week,...

Death / Take Hit Tutorial

This week's tutorial is about death and take hit animations. Remember that most of this action can be conveyed through the correct use of easing.

Here some other tutorials that can be useful on this subject:

• Blood and guts...
  2017-12-12 16:34:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Ludum Dare #40!

This week I won't be posting a tutorial because I joined Ludum Dare. If you are not familiar with it, it is a really cool game jam event where you have to make a game in 48 hours by yourself.

I made the game source code, animations and everything else used in the game available for everyone too study, mix, and share under the ...

Sand

I like drawing sand because it's one of those things that I can use some simple tricks to draw and that's basically:

draw wave > make the center thicker > add a shadow > repeat

Also, I'm trying to make my tutorials a little more focused, like I used to do before, a little less text and a little more drawing brea...

Vegetation part 3

After a one week break, here's another vegetation tutorial! I love making those.

In this one I focused on making more realistic textures from photo references and on tropical and jungle vegetation.

If you want, here part 1 and <...

Cuteness

Here's this weeks tutorial and it's about drawing cute stuff!

Drawing cute characters is not really my specialty but I put some guidelines of what I usually think when trying to draw cute characters. Just remember that there are many different ways to achieve this cute effect, this tutorial show only the way I usually work. 2017-11-07 13:40:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Modular Animation

One day late, but here it is! Modular animation :D

Honestly, I don't like making modular animation, I try to use them only for big sprites or other situations where it would save me lots of time. Even with many advantages, like being able to animate procedurally it's still feels stiffer and unnatural than animating frame by fr...

Breaking Objects

Those are some general guidelines for animating breaking objects that I usually use. Just don't forget that different materials have different behaviors!

Some other useful tutorials on this subject:

• Explosion 
2017-10-24 13:01:13 +0000 UTC View Post

Darkness

This is my take on darkness and how to use it in cool ways.

When drawing dark things I like to appeal to the viewers imagination, showing only what I really have to show and letting them complete the image by themselves.

As always, thank you a lot for the support and until next week!

UI: The 9-Slice

I decided to break up the UI theme into several parts and this is the first one. The 9-slice (and the 3-slice) is, in my opinion, the basic element of every UI and a good place to start, since you can reuse it pretty much everywhere.

Here's a quick reference of what I like to call the parts of the 9-slice and the 3-slice