My name is Martin Månsson. I am the sound director of Group 7. As the title describe I’m in charge of the sound for the game ”Potato Pirates”. But sound isn’t anything that we prioritize right now. I have therefore been helping out with the artistic part of the game such as making game sprites which is way more important for the moment. A while ago I made this fighter plane in Photoshop which would be our most common enemy in the game.
The plane is made up by simple shapes, since it will become very small later on when it’s on the game screen. So It helps if the player can see what it fights against. That plane was done in a couple of moments. I didn’t color the plane though. Our group has a member who specializes in doing that work. But this plane was about to be a little harder to work with. Because it shall have an animation in which the plane will be severly damaged so that the player will know when the enemy is about to die. That was a little tougher to do, but it was completed on schedule. I would just have to break off a little piece of the wing, and add some fire and smoke. This time I did color the parts I edited. Then it was about time to kill it. Meaning that I would have to make it disappear. That wouldn’t take much effort. All I had to do was make it explode. And it somewhat worked.
Now here is the most fun and frustrating part. I didn’t feel that this animation was enough. The death of this fighter plane needed to make more sense (even if it didn’t make much sense from the start since the player shoots down these enemies with potatoes). Instead of just exploding on the spot, the plane will shred and fall to the ground… and then it would explode. Which meant that I had to make some more editing. This fighter plane was however originally made in one layer because I didn’t plan to do very much with it at the moment. So I had to break apart this plane in several pieces. The upper wings would be teared of and explode, followed by the lower wings which would face the same fate. Tearing off the upper wing would mean that I would have to add a cockpit and and a pilot to make this work. The plane -or what’s left of it- would then fall helplessly to the ground and explode. The explosion would be the same animation that I made before but with a smaller scale to save me some time.
So there it is. This looks way better than having the ”plain” explosion that I origianally made. We will however use that animation anyways whenever this fighter plane flies into a mountain or another plane by accident.
The yellow flashes is there just to to show that the plane was shot, and it’s nothing that will be added in the game.
Next week all of the sprites for this plane will be done.
Martin Månsson
martinmanssonblog 
What you have written here is very understandable and crystal clear about what you had to do and how you went about doing it. Your workflow was somewhat easy to follow (more on that in a bit), although it did feel a bit complicated at places.
Your workflow is interesting. From what I can gather you went in to the assignment with one idea, but changed your mind in the middle of it. Perhaps planning ahead for any such eventualities could prove valueable in future endeavours?
The animation itself is very simple in it’s design, yet I think it works perfectly. Playing on the weak structular integrity of early 20th-century bi-planes feels more appropriate than the plane combusting and bursting into flames as it might be done traditionally. Although I wonder why the old version of the USAF is used on the plane?
Again, seeing such simplicity is very interesting and I think it really is the way of doing sprite animation. You could always improve the effects on the actual sprite however. The smoke trail in particular could probably have needed a bit more attention and doing something with the pilot could probably give some more life to the sprite, otherwise, good work!
GillaGilla