Cutout Sprite Animation

[Hen-Tai]

Hi Folks,
i was lurking here in the forum for quite some time now and i finally decided to be part of this awesome community XD.

I'm experienced in 3D animation but really want to get in touch with 2D as well. I REALLY love the animation style of Vanillaware games (Odin Sphere, Muramasa, Kumatanchi, Grim Grimoire....). It combines rather static cutout animations with amazing classical sprite animations in order to create a quite unique style...

Here is some footage so you know what i'm talking about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wX1lE41L6E Kumatanchi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEMBRpd9c98 Odin Sphere

My question here is, does anyone have good ressources/tutorials on how to work with this method? I can't really imagine a good workflow for that like when to ecactly change sprites and what program to use. I tried out ToonBoom which has some rather interesting features.
I also found some cutout sprite sheets and created some myself from the gif animations i was able to fin the the internet.

So thanks in advance and hopefully you guys can help me out ^-°

-Hen

[triptych]

how to animate like that:

step 1: animate something like that


there's literally no advice anyone can give you for animating something that's animated the same way a large number of things are
go try
get good
the end

[Hen-Tai]

how to animate like that:

step 1: animate something like that


there's literally no advice anyone can give you for animating something that's animated the same way a large number of things are
go try
get good
the end

Hmm, thanks for the quick answer. Then let me phrase it differently.
Is there any good software solution for inbetween picture changes? Let's say i am rotating a leg from frame 1-60 and i want to change the actual leg sprite with another while still rotating. This would spare me alot of time/frustration XD

Thanks in advance

[GrooveMan.exe]

That would be Flash.

Although with actual games, the animation is done in-engine. The parts are all separate image files, and rotated/switched/animated as the game needs them too. That kind of animation style goes back as far as the SNES/Genesis era's Mode-7 abuse. More modern, low-res examples would be DS games like the Castlevania (any of those 3) and Namco X Capcom for the PS2. Oh, and any modern Super Robot Wars games.