The player controller for Crash has been evolving constantly. At the moment, she can aim in idle, run, crouch and jump states. And, while she is aiming, her torso is updated with a new sprite of the current rotation.
It sounds pretty simple, but when you’re dealing with high definition sprites in pixel art… heh!
We started with the main sprite (the body) looking at one direction and the arm with free rotation.
But then we faced the first problem. The main sprite was animated, so the rotation point of the arm was changing each frame. Some animations like run move the sprite of the body and the shoulder in consequence.
To solve that, we created a script to read and save the points of each frame in order to move the arm before the rotation.
Then, another problem appeared. When Crash aimed high or low the body didn’t change. However her arms did.
We proceeded to separate the torso and legs and animated them in different layer animations.
Finally, Crash has different aiming angles for torso part that works independently from legs. Now, when the torso changes from one angle to another, the legs animation plays its correct frame.
It’s time to work with the special moves. In the next post we will talk about them and cover Crash full mobility.
