Creating the skeletal animation

Using this technique, we will create a very simple player walk cycle. For this, there is a software called Spine by Esoteric Software, which is a very widely used professional software to create skeletal animations for 2D games. The software can be downloaded from the company's website at http://esotericsoftware.com/spine-purchase:

There are three versions of the software available: the trial, essential, and professional versions. Although majority of the features of the professional version are available in the essential version, it doesn't have ghosting, meshes, free-form deformation, skinning, and IK pinning, which is in beta stage. The inclusion of these features does speed up the animation process and certainly takes out a lot of manual work for the animator or illustrator.

To learn more about these features, visit the website and hover the mouse over these features to have a better understanding of what they do.

You can follow along by downloading the trial...