Thanks! I'm definitely not complaining, but it's a complete 180 since up until February my bounce rate floated between 80 and 100%
I had made some REALLY significant changes around that time, and the drop could be attributed to any and all of them.
Some changes I made:
- Migrated from Posterous to WordPress
- New theme (on account of the migration)
- Changed URLs (but kept 301 Redirects in place so links wouldn't break)
Yes, my idea behind it is generally draw a sprite, copy it into a new frame, move some parts of it, then reconnect and clean up the ugliness that results from an arm being completely disconnected from a shift in the rest of the image.
According to a pixel artist friend of mine, all the companies he's worked for using those types of anims will build a proprietary tool that essentially works like Flash in a pure-bitmap context; tweening, scaling, rotation, and bitmap cutouts(e.g. parts that bulge and bounce, like the belly of a fat character, simply reuse an area of the sprite and layer it on top). These tools are used for menu layouts and level design as well as sprites.
It really is a labor of love, best advice really is do as little organic / moving items as possible. They can be added later without feeling the need of "Oh my god not another batch!"
That can work (as I'll dot that for frozen aka slow characters or rage aka fast characters) However certain things just can't be replaced, like a big bite out of a plant or a black eye on another character with blood on the corner of their mouth.
It may be true that books are losing popularity due to digital book readers. I'll still be using books however as a screen just can't compare with the feel, smell, and joy of reading an actual book. They might not be that popular, but they will never die.
