Anabel Animated Icon Process

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Pixel portrait animation of am anthropomorphic female fox with short red hair, wearing a blue jacked with white fur trim. She looks into the camera, then she pulls out a large chocolate chip cookie and eats it in three bites, crumbs spilling everywhere!

Here’s a tutorial where I walk you through the long process of creating this animated pixel art icon as a commission.

Layouts

First, I chatted with my client over Discord as they explained to me the type of animation they’d like is the fursona, idling , eating a cookie, then smiling. It’s a straightforward animation for an icon assumed I could get it done in the coming weekend. I still made a decent collections of refs in PureRef to keep things accurate.

Collage of refereneces images compiled in the software PureRef, featuring anthropomorphic foxes and open fox jaws to delineate where the teeth should be.

Usually I go out of my way to find more references of the character to get a feel for their vibe, but since it’s an icon, I can work off just the head.

Work in Progress pixel portrait sketch animation anthropomorphic canine. They pull out a large round cookie and takes a bite out of it, crumbs spilling everywhere!

Despite tasks at my day job, I got in the first steps to block in a basic animation thanks to Pixquare on iPad. The beginning is more dog like than fox like as the model sheet as I didn’t get it into my tablet, but I made due with the 30 minute lunch break I had available.

Work in Progress pixel portrait animation of am anthropomorphic female fox with short red hair, wearing a blue jacked with white fur trim. She looks into the camera, then she pulls out a large round cookie and takes a bite out of it, crumbs spilling everywhere! The bite motion is an unfinished sketch.

Once I got home, I exported the file to Aseprite, and refined the animation timing down to what I wanted, readjusting the frame rate to 15fps, or 66 milliseconds, and using Linked Frames to conserve drawings.

Work in Progress pixel portrait animation of am anthropomorphic female fox with short red hair, wearing a blue jacked with white fur trim. She looks into the camera, then she pulls out a large round cookie and takes a bite out of it, crumbs spilling everywhere! The bite motion is an unfinished sketch.

After a weekend at Anime Central, I got back to work refining the pixel art to resemble the sona and block in the eye blinks and crumb animations. Funny enough, I tried sharing this part of the WIP to my client, but for some reason Discord was buggy and kept playing the gif in this awful flashing that wasn’t present on this website or my files.

Work in Progress pixel portrait animation of am anthropomorphic female fox with short red hair, wearing a blue jacked with white fur trim. She looks into the camera, then she pulls out a large round cookie and eats it in three bites, crumbs spilling everywhere!

One bite was decent but I wanted more flair and added two more bites to finish off the cookie! It’s a welcome surprise to the client and it’s a fresh way to make a smooth loop.

Work in Progress pixel portrait animation of an anthropomorphic female fox with short red hair, wearing a blue jacked with white fur trim. She looks into the camera, then she pulls out a large chocolate chip cookie and eats it in three bites, crumbs spilling everywhere!

There was more time Memorial Day weekend to complete the details on the cookie, and ears and fur animations. Everything else is polishing and re-timing movements for a better rhythm. According to my Toggl Timer, this entire project took me 8hours 14 minutes and 37 seconds over the course of 7 business days.

Process animation image depicting four steps of creating the icon animation, from initial sketch, to animation block in, to animation refinement, to final polishing pass.

I make plenty more icons as well as larger pixel animations! If you want to commission me for artwork yourself, check out my Commissions Page!