Hello everyone! I’ve got a question for @grazer or to anyone else this could pertain to:
During rotation and movements, why is it that sometimes, especially during rotation, the sprites look very rigid and messy?
And say for a shrinking object, why is it that sometimes a row of pixels get thinner or wider than they are supposed to?
Finally, I’d like to ask if these areas would be improved, as it is strange why it doesn’t remain the same as it should. I have a feeling that it is rotating the image, and not the actual object (for rotation), so it rearranges the pixels to better fit the degree it is facing.
This is an old topic, but it was never answered and this is a confusing topic so I’m responding anyway.
Essentially, pixel art cannot be rotated in any direction other than multiples of 90 degrees. In order to get “clean” rotations it would have to be redrawn for each angle. This is what many game artists do (draw either 8 rotations, or draw 4 and flip them) if they need 45 degree or other angles.
Keep in mind that your sprite is drawn as a grid of pixels. The grid cannot be rotated, the pixels can only shift around inside the grid.
Resizing is the same (or similar) problem. This about it like this:
You have a sprite, lets say it is 8x8 pixels.
You want to enlarge it by 50%, so that it is now 12x12 pixels
There is no way to expand 8 pixels evenly into 12 new pixels, so some of the original colors will have to take up one new pixel, and some will take up two new pixels to fill the space, meaning some blocks will appear stretched.
The only way to resize with no distortion at all is to expand it an even amount to 200%, 300%, 400%, etc.