Hey everyone! I briefly touched base on this, and even covered a few other 2D animation tools, but today I will be talking about Spriter specifically and how it can help you build great 2D video games.
There are two versions that you can get at this time, that is Spriter free, and Spriter Pro, and if you act now, you will be able to get the new Spriter 2 for a discounted price when you download the Pro version. Spriter 2 is still in development at this point in time (2019) but if you take a look at their demo video, it looks like it will be amazing!
For the most part, most of my animations didn't require any complexity, but as I dove into more complex animations that I wanted, i realized that creating multiple instances was not working out. For simple items that don't require a lot of animations, simply creating a few objects, bringing them into GIMP and adjusting my canvas size worked out, but I struggled trying to create complex characters. So, I decided to try out Spriter (mainly for the free version) and although I haven't published my assets with it yet, I have been able to create animations a lot easier.
Here is one of the characters I am currently working on with it, and this will tie into my Sci-Fi assets that I have been working on.
As you can see this is a simple mech suit, but simple or not, it was difficult to animate it the way I wanted solely using GIMP. Spriter has resolved those issues I was having!
Like any new tool, you need to practice and get training, and that is something Spriter has been good at. They include dozens of training videos on their site to help everyone learn how to use from the simple to the complex.
Even if you don't like Spriter, don't forget there are several other programs out there to utilize, some paid and some free. I would recommend you take a look at each one and look at the interface, tools and cost to see which one has the best balance. If you aren't too concerned with cost then focus on the interface and tools that each has, I have a small breakdown on different ones HERE.
I hope you all enjoy the brief highlight here and feel free to comment below to let me know what topics you want me to talk about!