Black Dragon vs Silvershield Knight Animation in Pixel Art GIF - Splinterlands Art Contest #155

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Good night hivers!
For this week's art contest I wanted to do something different, something more.. I spent a few days working on an animation sequence in pixel art. I was going to submit this the past week, but it wasn't ready so I decided to submit something else. I managed to finish it today, finally. Initially I was going to do something entirely different but the amount of work and my lack of experience in pixel art, I found it overwhelming, either way, I did the best I could so, I hope you guys like it.

Black Dragon by Draicor day 9.gif

This is a 27 frames (drawings) sequence made in Aseprite, of the Black Dragon card and the Silvershield Knight from the Dragon and Life splinters, with the volcano from the splinterlands wallpaper.
I wouldn't know how to name or describe this picture, but I see it as "moments before the fight starts"... All is missing is the lelele lelelelele song from the witcher 3 (just kidding lol).
It took me about 9 days on and off working on this, I don't know how much time it was in hours, but I learned a lot, and I'm grateful for it.


I'm going to post a few gif files of how the work started and how it progressed.

On the first day, I drew the basic sketch of the dragon (heavily inspired by one of the Game of Thrones scene). The head, neck and legs were all over the place, doing animation is a lot harder than I thought.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 1.gif

The next day, I worked a few hours to improve the neck and also drew the head. I spent an hour or two trying to draw the bones from the spine behind the head but I couldn't, the neck moves so much between frames and drawing all those angles was driving me crazy.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 2.gif

I moved on to the legs, I got a lot to learn still, I wasn't satisfied with how they turned out, but I'm sure I'll get better, eventually. I also worked a bit on the tail.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 3.gif

After I finished the dragon, I removed the guidelines and colored it a bit. At first, my initial idea was to have the dragon breath some fire into the splinterlands logo and have the logo light up every now and then, but the fire, I think I wasn't ready to try that yet.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 4.gif

Thats when I decided to add a background, I started looking at some examples online on how to draw a gradient, and I came out with this.
background1.jpg

background2.jpg

background3.jpg

background4.jpg

After all that, I added a land with a neat grass animation that moves with the dragon wings.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 5.gif

On the sixth day, I added a moon on the background and also the volcano.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 6.gif

I chose the knight to face the mighty dragon, and then I added animation to the horse reigns and tail, the knight's helmet and feet and I also added the cape.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 7.gif

This is a screenshot of some of the layers and frames I used, any slight change into the drawing, gets complicated. I hope I can learn to design in a 3d modeling software, I guess at least animating should get easier that way.
layers.jpg

Black Dragon by Draicor day 8.gif

Finally, I added the splinterlands logo and animated it as well with the flashy effect and added a second color to the grass and a few stars on the night sky too.
Black Dragon by Draicor day 9.gif


Thanks for reading, if you want to support me please leave an upvote, and if you have any suggestions or tips for me, I would love to read them in the comments, thanks!

If you haven't played #splinterlands yet and want to give it a try, you could register here.

Posted by Draicor - 2021/09/22



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That is really wonderful work. I love the animation, it flows real nicely. Grat job!

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