how do you sprite?

The only way to do it and keep your sanity, imho, is to really, really plan shit in advance.

For sprite rotations, I take the design and break it up into basic, simple shapes that will retain the same outline no matter which angle you look at them from. A sphere is a sphere, a cylinder is a cylinder no matter if it's 90 or 45 degrees you are viewing them from. You can make a rough 360 from there if you keep it simple enough.



Animation from there simply involves vertex manipulation. I try to use two key 'textures' during this phase: Metal and fabric. The metal remains rigid and deforms very little from frame to frame, and only due to the demands of perspective. Fabric is another thing and will move more freely, often against the direction of the metal in any one frame; for example, if armour moves one way then the fabric - because it is lighter - will lag behind for a second, following the direction of the metal in the second frame. In this way we get more lifelike animation, something that moves realistically.



Take the above for example: the body armour moves very little and only according to the camera perspective. The kilt deforms to accommodate the legs, but is otherwise heavy enough to not be flapping all over the place. The tassels on the sporran & pauldrons are a design choice that is there to accentuate movement: they pretty much do the opposite of what the 'metal' pieces are doing until the next frame, swinging about and making the whole thing less static / more interesting to look at.

It helps if you colour the fabric starkly, to draw the eye's attention to it; if it were the same muddy sludge as the other shit in the image than it would just end up looking like a confused mess in the final animation.