In Tiny Garden Days, the garden should feel alive. So I wanted a butterfly and a bird to fly across the screen. To do that, I worked with sprites for the first time.<\/p>\n
A sprite is basically a flip book on a single sheet. Several frames sit side by side on one canvas, and each shows the character in a slightly different pose. For the butterfly, the wings are sometimes wide open, sometimes half open and sometimes almost closed.<\/p>\n
The app then plays these frames in quick succession. The eye turns them into movement, and suddenly the butterfly flutters. It\u2019s simple, needs little memory and has worked this way since the early video games.<\/p>\n
The animation was built in quickly. The wings flapped, everything looked lovely. Then I let it fly across the screen.<\/p>\n
It flew. But backwards. It faced one direction and moved in the other. Flapping its wings dutifully, it pushed its way across the screen tail first. I had to laugh quite a bit.<\/p>\n
The reason is mundane: I had never told the app which direction the butterfly flies. The animation only knew how the wings flap, not where the journey is headed.<\/p>\n