by Roger Tober

These are some templates that I made using Hash animation master to help make a painted or drawn animation in all directions. You will see by the numbers, that each direction contains 11 frames numbered from 0 to 5, and from ll to 15. This is enough to make a good looking 20 frame animation. You can view one I painted by opening the example .gif in these files with your internet browser.

Download Walk Templates (672 KB)

I've included the templates for all eight directions. But you don't need that many to write a good game. You can actually just paint three directions. North, South, and East. You can mirror the East frames, and resave, to make the West, without repainting. That's just 33 frames!

Some of the frames you paint will be used twice. The order to save them is 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11. This will save you quite a lot of repainting. Another way to save repainting is to paint the head and torso only once, save it as torso.pcx or whatever, and paste it on the new frame. This way you'll just have to paint in the arms and legs.

I'm going to go through a description of how I use the templates. You can use any paint program that supports layers.

1. Open the first template frame (frame0).

2. Paint the head and torso of your character on a new layer. Then delete the template frame. Save as Torso.pcx. Then, copy this frame and close it.

3. Open the first template frame again. Paste the torso as a new layer. Now paint in the arms and legs of your first frame. This time get the background color before deleting the template frame. After the template is deleted, flood fill the first frame with the background color.

4. Save your first frame as ego(direction whatever). It's easiest to remember if you leave the numbers, unless you want to rename the numbers after 5, when they are repeated.

5. On the next frame and all subsequent frames, I use 3 layers. The template, the last frame, and the new frame starting with the torso. I start out by turning the last frame layer completely down to 0%. Sometimes I turn down the new frame layer with the torso on it a little bit, so I can see all of the template underneath. I paint in the arms and legs, then delete the template layer, and compare the new frame to the last frame to make sure they work well together. Then I delete the frame underneath, the template frame, and save the next frame. Make a copy, open the next template sequence, and paste this frame on a new layer, and then the torso on the next layer, and paint another frame.

These frames are big and will take a lot of space, so you should probably resize them by 50% or so before saving. One way to give your characters variety using these templates is to resize them, changing the ratio of width to height. So you can make the character look skinny or stout. Of course, you would do this to the template before you painted your character.

I hope these templates will help you get started on your game. Painted animation is a little work, but it looks great. These templates are completely free without any restrictions whatsoever. You can use them in anyway you like. If you have any questions, or need help using them, just email me at rjtober@win.bright.net.

I hope you write a great game.