Federation Booker is my first ever 2D game to have a create-a-wrestler mode. This is so impressive because 2D graphics are usually whole images that cannot be rearranged. Here though, each wrestler is broken down into 3 parts that can mixed and matched - and you can hardly tell the difference. This is how it's done...

Composing a Frame
A character is broken down into 3 parts: Head, Body, and Legs. The first step is to figure out where each of those body parts should be, and what they should be doing, in order to make each frame of animation. To do this, I created a special program that lets me move each body part around the screen independently. I simply find the body poses I want and then move them into position to make it look as though the character is whole...

Recording a Frame
Once a pose looks right on screen, I make a record of all the data that makes it look like that. This is basically the image that each body part uses, its position on screen in relation to the others, and a little sketch to remind me what it should look like...

Coding a Frame
The pages of data then need to be typed into the game so that they can be used. These numbers tell the computer what to do with each body part in order to make the character adopt a certain pose. For instance, looking at the above example, if a wrestler's frame is set to 490 he will run through those mathematics and end up kneeling...

Enjoying a Frame
Once a frame is in there and works as intended, all that's left is to enjoy the results. Is the effect worth going through that mind-numbing process? Absolutely, because the alternative is to draw every single frame of animation whole! When you consider that thousands of frames are required, that just isn't an option...