Array to Animation - how to turn a Spritesheet or array of frames into an animated image sequence

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Now, it's time to get creative and draw what you want showing in those 16 cells of your spritesheet. Note that these could be very sophisticated paintigns each, or merely some crude stick figure animation steps. Perhaps you draw cartoons, a walk sequence?. Have at it, use your brushes and draw.

For this tutorial, all we'll do is draw a unique number in each of the cells.

In reality, what you put in there could be finished images in their own rights. You could pick up photographic elements too, right into the brush and stamp them in their respective places in the spritesheet.

The fun thing is of course also to work with images created in a sequence of renderings from 3D programs such as the popular Poser or DAZ Studio, Carrara, Bryce, Blender and other animation tools for 3D, or 2D sequences from MoHo/AnimeStudio and similar tools.

If you'd like to try one, here's a spritesheet with 30 frames, in a layout of 6 x 5 image cells. It's from a Poser rendering against a blue background, used in other tutorials for compositing with bluescreen (see PD Pro tutorials). You're welcome to download and use this for practicing with Dogwaffle.

6x5 = 30 image cells in a spritesheet, a 30-frame walk sequence created and rendered in Poser
(click the image for larger version, or right-click to save link target on your computer)