Animating characters for your game

Start from one good base sprite and build every animation from it. Frames made as separate images (one "new pose" or "edit" at a time) don't share scale, foot position, facing or colours, so characters jitter, resize or flip in game. Sprite Studio's animation modes keep all of that consistent for you.

Walk, run and idle loops: use Cycles from video (MCP: sprite_animate, action cycle, layout single). It turns one still of your character into a real 8-frame loop with proper contact and passing poses, keeps your sprite's size and palette, and plants the feet. It costs 450 credits per direction and takes a few minutes.

Attacks, punches, kicks, hits, jumps, deaths and special moves: use a Pose sequence (MCP: action sequence). Pick a preset or describe 2 to 6 key poses, one per frame, for example "lead arm fully extended at head height". All frames share one scale, one palette and the same foot line. 50 credits per frame, and frames that fail are refunded.

Pose checking and redo: every pose sequence frame is checked against its pose text after it's made. A frame that clearly shows the wrong pose (for example standing still when you asked for a kick) is made again once, free. The result lists each frame's pose and its check (pass, fail or unsure), and the frame data file carries the same per frame. If one frame is still wrong, redo just that frame (MCP: sprite_animate, action redo_frame, with the job_id and the frame number, optionally a new pose description) for 50 credits: it keeps the other frames exactly as they are and fits the new one to the same scale, feet, colours and facing.

Directions: side-scrollers need only one facing. Pick Face left or Face right (MCP: facing) on every pose sequence and cycle: each frame is checked after it's made and any frame facing the other way is flipped, so all your sheets face the same way. Then mirror the sprite in your engine for the other direction. Isometric and top-down games can use the Isometric 4-way preset (south-east and north-east drawings plus mirrors), and cycles accept that 4-way sheet to animate every direction at once.

Frame data: every spritesheet Sprite Studio makes on our servers comes with a JSON file (Frame data on the asset page; data_url over MCP). It uses Aseprite's format, so Phaser can load it with this.load.aseprite and play the animations by name, and PixiJS and Godot importers read it too. It lists each frame's position and duration, one animation per row (attacks are marked play-once), and a "feet" point per frame. A plainer "gamefoundry" block repeats the per-frame foot point and character bounds.

Keeping characters planted: draw each frame so its foot point sits on the character's position in the world (draw at world x minus foot x, world y minus foot y). Characters then stay on the ground when switching between frames and animations, and different-sized poses (a crouch, a lunge) line up correctly.

The web tool's own export (Finish and export, Sprite sheet + JSON) lines frames up on the feet as well and works with Phaser, Pixi and most engines.