Animating Sprite Fright Style: Two New Video Lessons

Rik Schutte is the lead animator on Sprite Fright, now in production. One of Rik’s tasks is to mentor new animators. He does this via video lessons, a style guide, and coaching.

Recently, Rik added two new video lessons covering techniques used to achieve Sprite Fright’s trademark style.

In the first video, Rik discusses previewing animation on 2s, covering both the “quick and dirty method”, and the Nonlinear Animation Editor (or “NLA Editor”). While initially daunting, the NLA Editor provides far more control, thanks to the use of a modifier as a kind of non-destructive filter over your animation.

Video two deals with smears and multiples (for more on smears in Sprite Fright, see this post). Smears are a way to mimic motion blur, and date back to old-fashioned 2D animation -- think Looney Toons. As smears in Sprite Fright are done with Grease Pencil, Rik’s video functions partly as a mini introduction to 2D in Blender. Subscribers can watch the second video here.

For more of Rik’s advice on animation, see this post on rubber hose posing in Sprite Fright.

And to follow Sprite Fright’s animation team, have a look at the weekly production logs here.