For fast-moving games with many complex animations, sprite sheets can quickly become a maintenance and memory problem.Įnter Spine, the easy-to-use and well-designed software by Esoteric Software.

Second, you might want to content-scale that sprite sheet so that it looks good on retina screens, so you will need a version of it, using even more memory. First, you will need a copy of each element of your animation embedded into your sprite sheet, there might be dozens of images packed into a. One mistake and the animation looks jerky and “unreal”.Īdditionally, sprite sheets consume a certain amount of texture memory in your app. First, they are difficult to edit and maintain, as to change any element of the sprite sheet means precisely replacing all elements of a sprite sheet. Sprite sheets, however, present some problems for mobile apps if they are at all complicated. Many turn to sprite sheets, using software such as Texture Packer to turn a series of drawings into a ‘moving picture’ much like the Disney animators did, frame by frame with each sprite moving slightly to give an illusion of a moving figure when played in sequence, like an old-fashioned flip book. “drawings that appear to think and make decisions and act of their own volition.”Īnimation, especially of living things, seems like a major hurdle for the mobile app developer who needs to create people, insects, birds, and lifelike plants to bring their mobile games to life. In the classic book by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, “ The Illusion of Life”, the art of character animation is described as crafting,

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