Animation: pixel art that moves — frames for pixeledit, motion craft, sheet delivery #39

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opened 2026-07-29 16:27:14 -04:00 by cmoriarty · 0 comments

cmoriarty commented

2026-07-29 16:27:14 -04:00

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Split out of #38 at the user's direction: animation deserves its own focused effort rather than riding along.

Why

Nothing this studio has made moves like the bar moves (Celeste, Dead Cells). The #38 ladder fixed engineering feedback (playtest with frames) and stills (pixeledit + draw/tweak tools); motion is the biggest remaining gap to the stated quality bar, and it has been the weakest area since #20 (pix3lwalk covers walk cycles only; object motion failed twice in #17).

Starting points (from #38 / docs/pixel-art-craft.md)

pixeledit has no frames. The drawing-program dialect draws one grid. The natural extension: a program with a frames list (each frame = ops, or ops-as-diff against frame 1), rendered to a sheet + manifest — the same shape animated_sprite already delivers from the diffusion path, so the game-side loading contract is already defined (sheet PNG + frameWidth/frameHeight/fps JSON).
Craft to bake in mechanically (per the #20 lesson — nothing lands as advice): frame counts for common cycles, key poses before inbetweens, smear frames, anticipation. saint11's animation articles are the corpus.
Tweak-based animation: with draw/tweak tools live (#38), a cheap first experiment is agent-driven: draw frame 1, tweak_pixel_art per frame ("left leg forward"), assemble the sheet. Zero new renderer work; tests whether program-space tweaking preserves identity across frames — the thing diffusion i2v struggles with.
Wan 2.2 sprite LoRA path stays the heavy alternative (docs/asset-gen-research.md): attack-sprite LoRA pair logged, trigger = next drain that specs a non-walk motion.
Dead Cells 3D→sprite pipeline: assessed in #38 as real but heavy; only if the above disappoint.

Bar

Judged in a playable game, same as everything since #37: a character whose idle/walk/action cycles read at played size, delivered as sheets the code agent actually wires up. trog test bakeoff remains the harness; an animation-focused fixture brief probably wants adding.

Split out of #38 at the user's direction: animation deserves its own focused effort rather than riding along. ## Why Nothing this studio has made *moves* like the bar moves (Celeste, Dead Cells). The #38 ladder fixed engineering feedback (playtest with frames) and stills (pixeledit + draw/tweak tools); motion is the biggest remaining gap to the stated quality bar, and it has been the weakest area since #20 (pix3lwalk covers walk cycles only; object motion failed twice in #17). ## Starting points (from #38 / docs/pixel-art-craft.md) - **pixeledit has no frames.** The drawing-program dialect draws one grid. The natural extension: a program with a `frames` list (each frame = ops, or ops-as-diff against frame 1), rendered to a sheet + manifest — the same shape `animated_sprite` already delivers from the diffusion path, so the game-side loading contract is already defined (sheet PNG + frameWidth/frameHeight/fps JSON). - **Craft to bake in mechanically** (per the #20 lesson — nothing lands as advice): frame counts for common cycles, key poses before inbetweens, smear frames, anticipation. saint11's animation articles are the corpus. - **Tweak-based animation**: with draw/tweak tools live (#38), a cheap first experiment is agent-driven: draw frame 1, `tweak_pixel_art` per frame ("left leg forward"), assemble the sheet. Zero new renderer work; tests whether program-space tweaking preserves identity across frames — the thing diffusion i2v struggles with. - **Wan 2.2 sprite LoRA path** stays the heavy alternative (docs/asset-gen-research.md): attack-sprite LoRA pair logged, trigger = next drain that specs a non-walk motion. - **Dead Cells 3D→sprite pipeline**: assessed in #38 as real but heavy; only if the above disappoint. ## Bar Judged in a playable game, same as everything since #37: a character whose idle/walk/action cycles read at played size, delivered as sheets the code agent actually wires up. `trog test bakeoff` remains the harness; an animation-focused fixture brief probably wants adding.

cmoriarty referenced this issue from a commit

2026-07-29 16:27:35 -04:00

feat: cohesion + LSP land together; the slow draw stops being cancelled (#38)

cmoriarty referenced this issue

2026-07-29 19:08:10 -04:00

Pixel art by placement: build the editor-MCP arm, and go learn the craft #38