sprite alignment in character animation

pslim · Wed 09/07/2003 08:38:58

I've looked on the boards and faqs and I haven't found a very detailed explanation of aligning sprites, but if I've missed something I apologize for posting too soon.

The problem I'm having is that when I import sprites, i'm copying and pasting them, and it automatically aligns them to one side, cutting off the excess transparent parts. This is fine except that with some of the animations (like the talking one), the following frames in the loop are sprites that extend further to one side or the other, meaning the whole sprite is pushed further away from the "edge" (i don't know what to call it), or where the transparent part has been cut off. This means that when the animation runs the character jerks back and forth in place, in addition to his normal talking animation.

How do I go about aligning them so that he can move his hands around the sides of his body without the whole sprite moving in the other direction and causing the weird bounce effect?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Scummbuddy · Wed 09/07/2003 10:26:59

youre going to have to redo the sprites and this time make sure that the bottom center pixel is in the same spot for all animations. making sure that the bottom center pixel is aligned will cause them all to work accordingly and you may end up with a lot of invisible space on some of your sprites.

pslim · Wed 09/07/2003 10:31:35

That sounds very sensible, but I'm not sure I understand it... Their torsos are always lined up, but as far as the center... I mean, what if I wanted him to stick one arm out to the side, without the other one on the otherside (in other words, to be asymmetrical)? In this case the center as far as all the horizontal pixels would jump over to accomodate his arm adding horizontal length to the sprite as a whole.. so how would i line it back up without matching it on the other side?