Can you explain the process of animating?I make all the sprites, dialogue and backgrounds in Photoshop. I create tiny files and zoom way in, so every block the characters are made of is actually the size of one pixel and I don’t have to bother drawing a grid.To animate them, I use Flash’s ability to nest timelines within one another. So for example there’s what’s called a “movie clip” of Walking Ledo, which is nested into the larger timeline of the scene. I can give her blocking — places and times to start and stop walking — and Flash will just repeat the images of her walk cycle until I replace that clip, for instance with Standing Ledo. (Ledo has a three-part walk cycle, Ix a two-part one.)Sometimes I describe the film as 8-bit, but the look of the film is often more 16-bit. I try to limit my palate but I draw the characters and backgrounds in a full RGB environment, so even if I only use maybe 32 colors in a scene, they’d probably all be impossible in the 48-color palette of 8-bit game systems like the NES.
The Adventures of Ledo and IX
Filmmaker Emily Jane Carmichael's philosophical homage to early video game graphics (think original Zelda).