My name is Victor Kristiansson and I am working with team 6 on Colossus Core, or as we have decided to name it, Desolate Echo. My biggest task this week was to provide the team with an animation for the death of our avatar. I have some experience with animations previously, and since our game is using pixel art the animation process is very basic and simple.
The first thing I had to know was what to animate. The avatar is a (relatively speaking) small hovercraft and what is more appropriate to a mechancial device than an explosion? Or rather, a series of explosions.
My workflow was very simple, I made an explosion that expands and then evaporates, then simply added one or two explosions in a few frames in rapid succession, creating a larger chain-effect. Every explosion has the same pattern, basically a diamond shape and some explosions overlap others.
But before I could do any of that, I had to have a template for the explosion. I sat down with the hovercraft sprite and started to experiment with different stiles. Circular explosions bot large and small. None of them turned out very well so the idea was quickly scrapped. Working in a 32 x 64 resolution can be limiting, so failing the circle I had little choice available when it came to shapes. I tried out a diamond shape and it worked out quite well actually. They sort of locked together nicely, covering large areas of the hovercraft’s hull efficiently.
Next task then is to determine the colors. I tried with the red and orange in the center, turning yellowish towards the edges. It looked good, but I didn’t like how it looked upon evaporation. I didn’t hink the yellow worked without the fiery centre very well so I inverted it. I made the absolute centre a bit bright to give some contrast, added a single yellow line around that and then layered orange and a definite red outer edge. This worked much better because the red outer edge looks more ”definitive” than the (in my opinion) hard to see single yellow edge.
With the template complete, it was simply a matter of importing it from Krita into the GraphicsGale software for animation. Upon completion the animation consisted of 19 frames, a reasonable amount I think. I then proceeded to use Sprite Packer to create the spritesheet and I am quite happy with the results! 
Victor Kristiansson 
The text is easy to read and understand and it’s clear what you’ve done, you also explained your previous experience within the medium this gave a better understanding on why you got the assignment you did.
You go straight to the point and you clearly explain the issues you’ve encountered and how you dealt with them. It was particularly interesting to hear why you specifically chose to use diamond shapes for the explosions and to know that it was a conscious choice
One thing that might pose an issue is the yellow colour on the explosions, on the page it looks very dirty, almost like a mustard colour. I’m not entirely sure why it’s like that it could be WordPress, but I decided to check it out in Photoshop. As the image was a transparent .png Photoshop made the background black. With a darker background it looked fine and some details that melted in with your theme appeared as well. This lead me to think of two possibilities;
1. It’s just an issue on either my end or WordPress and in that case it’s fine nothing to worry about
or
2. The white background washes out the colours, this could lead to some issues if your level has brighter sections.
Let’s all hope it’s number one, but might be worth checking out just in case.
But overall it looks good, the animation seems smooth and you brought up everything in a way that it’s easy for the reader to follow you through the workflow. The limitations of pixel art was brought up in a way so that the reader could understand them even if they lack personal experience with pixel graphics. This makes the reader more aware of the conscious decisions you had to make.
Ps. You mentioned that you worked in Krita which is a freeware so you might not have Photoshop, but if you do or anyone else in your group does you can easily size up the sprite sheet for the blog. Just make sure to set it to ”Nearest neighbour (Sharp edges) ” so it won’t auto blur making it easier for the readers to view your sprites in the future.
GillaGilla