Spriter

While 3D is the main choice for games for computer and consoles, 2D remains a popular choice for the mobile game developers. Not only are they the visual building blocks for the vast majority of mobile games, but, given the right tool, you can easily animate the characters in your games and create an immersive experience for the players.

Spriter is a user-friendly application that can help you create 2D frame animations you can easily integrate into your video games.

The program comes with a clean and easy to use interface that allows you to build your entity from separate images that you drag and drop into the workspace. The positioning of the parts is a simple task of arranging them together, resizing, changing angles and recording the desired animation for its equivalent action.

It is worth mentioning that the application allows you to go through the project's images and set their pivot points, particularly if you want your characters to emulate relatively natural movements. While you can end up with several similar images following this, you can always use them for image swapping purposes.

In case you prefer your entities to carry out various movements, then it is highly recommended that you create and assign bones to each of their body parts. In spite of the fact that they are not necessary, the truth is that including bones makes working with complex objects considerably simpler. Another reason why you should bones is that it makes editing the entities less challenging if you decide to make adjustments later on.

Once you are done assigning corresponding parts, you can animate them by choosing an appropriate movement, rotation, stretching and by altering the translucency (the alpha button) of the bones. You should do this for at least two points as to create a key frame. On a side note, you can consider checking out the detailed manual in case you are having problems using any of the functions.

Regardless of whether you need a tool that allows you to create new entities from scratch for your games or perhaps you solely need to make a few modifications to the heroes you already have, Spriter might be worth a try.