u/thelonelyfinch

Hello everyone! I’m interested in learning how to animate pixel art, and I made this animation over the past few days.

I would really appreciate any feedback on how the animation feels overall. Does it look smooth or choppy? Does the squash and stretch feel convincing? I would also be grateful for any advice on how I could improve it, including anything I may be overlooking or lacking in my process.

The animation is 24 frames in total, with each frame lasting 40 ms.

I’ve also noticed that the animation seems to have a strange glowing effect after export that does not appear in Aseprite. I’m not sure whether this is happening on my end or during the export process. Does anyone know what might be causing it?

Thanks, everyone!

Archived Personal Entry
Author: V

A blade vendor sat alone outside her trailer, one hand resting near her wares, her eyes fixed on the razor-thin horizon. It was hotter than usual that afternoon in the Badlands, but the heat had not made her careless. She watched the empty distance for Wraiths, dust trails, anything moving that should not have been.

I was riding Jackie’s ARCH toward a gig Dakota had given me—some gonk pushing product beyond the limits of his protection—when I saw the glint of steel beside the road and stopped.

The vendor acknowledged me with a slight turn of her head. Nothing more. Even while I examined her knives, she never fully looked away from the desert.

The horizon disappeared first.

A wall of dust rose from the earth and swallowed the sky. It was larger than the storm I had ridden out with Panam and Saul at the motel, larger than anything either of us had seen. Sand struck the trailer’s metal walls like handfuls of thrown glass.

She waved me inside.

For nearly twenty-four hours, the Badlands ceased to exist beyond those thin walls. We sat beneath the trembling light of a battery lamp and traded stories—or versions of them. She spoke about travelers who never returned, caravans found emptied along the highway, and the different sounds engines made when their owners were afraid. I told her about Night City, though I left certain parts out. Perhaps she did the same.

Then the wind stopped.

It happened so completely that we could hear the trailer’s metal siding ticking as it settled. The final grains of sand slid down the windows like the last seconds falling through an hourglass.

Outside, the land had been rewritten.

Dunes carved by the rivers in the sky stretched across the road. Tracks, scraps, and the outline of my bike had vanished beneath them. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The world looked untouched, as though nothing had ever crossed it.

Before I left, she pressed a leather sheath into my hand. Inside was a knife, narrow and dark, its edge catching what little remained of the afternoon light.

I asked what I owed her.

She shook her head.

I never asked her name. Or perhaps she told me, and I misplaced it among all the things the Badlands have taken. I remember the sound of sand against metal more clearly than I remember her voice. I remember the weight of the knife. I remember her standing outside the trailer as I rode away, already watching the horizon again.
The sheath has worn smooth where my thumb rests against it.

May her blades never dull.

Photographed during a hike in the Badlands!

Photographed at the end of “Riders on the Storm”