Vanguard Knight - Animated 2D Pixel Art Character

A side-view knight with 5 animations in 4 colourways - 212 frames, ready to drop into a platformer, metroidvania or action RPG.

The Vanguard stands about 45 px tall in a 96x64 cell: open-faced helm with a horsehair plume, a dark cape, steel cuirass and pauldrons, a short tabard under a buckled belt, full plate legs and an arming sword. Clean shapes and soft shading, so he reads at 1x. Every frame shares one foot point, so the animations swap without a single pixel of jitter.

What you get

• 5 animations, 53 frames each colourway: idle (8), run (12), attack (9), hurt (6), death (18)
• 4 colourways: Crimson, Azure, Emerald and Obsidian (a dark rival for your hero) - 212 frames in all
• A full sprite sheet (768x320) for each colourway, plus a mirrored left-facing sheet
• One strip per animation, and every frame as its own PNG
• Godot 4 SpriteFrames (.tres) for each colourway with the frame timings already set
• vanguard.json with the cell size, foot point and per-frame times in milliseconds, for any other engine
• 20 preview GIFs and a README with set-up notes for Godot and Unity

Animations

• Idle - 8 frames, loops. A breathing bob with the head, sword hand, plume and cape each lagging a frame behind.
• Run - 12 frames at 60 ms, loops. Contact, down, pass, push-off and a folded swing-through, with the feet rolling heel to toe and the cape flying.
• Attack - 9 frames. A lift, a held wind-up, a fast smear, a held impact with sparks, then an eased recovery back to guard.
• Hurt - 6 frames. A white hit flash, the guard beaten down, a stagger and a step back to guard.
• Death - 18 frames. He reels, his feet go out from under him and he lands flat on his back, legs and arms flopping down after; the sword turns over in the air and sticks in the ground. Then body and sword crumble to dust from the boots up and blow away - stop after frame 10 if you want the body to stay.

The attack, hurt and death use uneven frame times (the wind-up and the impact are held), which is what gives the swing its weight. The times are in the Godot resources and in vanguard.json.

Details

• Side view, facing right (left-facing sheets are included)
• 96x64 px cells, the character about 45 px tall
• Foot point at (42, 58) in every frame
• Transparent PNG, 1 px dark outline, no anti-aliasing - scale it by whole numbers
• Works in Godot, Unity, GameMaker, Construct or any engine that reads sprite sheets

License

Use it in free and commercial games, edit it however you like. Do not resell or redistribute the assets themselves (edited or not) in another asset pack, tileset or template, use them to train AI models, or mint them as NFTs. Credit is appreciated (bubbabba) but not required. Full terms in LICENSE.txt.