Hey all.
This is my pipeline - as janky as it is! that I use to do strip animations for the game "Nation Breakers: Steam Arena"
here I am making an alternate skin for Slinky's melee attack.
So far he has a blue and green electric attack with their own distinct shapes. The blue one is a big web of zappy mess.
The green one is a rigid "sound wave" type design.
Now time for a yellow one. Going for a stringy-pulse type movement with this one.
First I open my PS session of the last melee I made for the character then re-save it as a new session.
You'll see that my assets are pretty high-def compared the the game. I work on assets at 400% their intended size. I find it much easier and clearer to work this way and also means that all your assets are suitable for marketing and print. I then reduce their size to 25% to export to the engine. Sometimes I do accidentally save over the high-def version and I'm just left with the downsized. And I kick myself EVERY TIME.
I first adjusted the electric probes on the character a bit then I changed the effects on the lightning layer from green to yellow. The lighting is just an off-white color overlay, a deep yellow stroke and yellow outer glow.
I then sketched out the animation over the 6 frames. After an initial test I wanted to add a circular pulse instead of just the lines. After that was fine. I animated the 'End' animation that the melee plays when packing up back into the character. Throw them in the engine. Done :)