Bunny Hop: A Hand-Painted Runner
A small, single-tap game built in GameSalad. A white rabbit runs across a slowly rotating world while hand-painted sky plates drift behind it.
- Timeline
- Feb – Apr 2022
- Category
- Game · Hand-painted 2D
- Tools
- Procreate, GameSalad
This piece explores how painterly, hand-built background plates can support very simple, low-friction gameplay. The player controls a small white rabbit with a single input, while the environment turns beneath it to suggest movement and depth. The goal was not difficulty, but a light, watchable loop.
Visual Direction
The world is composed of two main elements: a rotating globe plate and a drifting sky plate. Both were painted in Procreate with soft, mixed-brush textures to keep the scene from feeling purely vector-based. Colors were kept in a mid-value range.
Sky Plate Variations
To keep the scene replayable, two sky moods were painted: a softer day palette and a more saturated night palette. Both skies were arranged as circular bands so they could scroll or rotate behind the globe without visible seams.
Character Assembly
The rabbit animation is based on a licensed sprite sheet (credited above). Frames were imported into Procreate, cleaned, and re-timed to create a steady, rhythmic hop suited for a slow-scrolling environment. This kept production focused on scene painting rather than full character animation.
Implementation in GameSalad
After painting, the assets were composed in GameSalad. A collaborator set up the behaviors that rotate the globe at a constant rate and scroll the sky at a slightly offset speed to imply parallax. The interaction stays intentionally minimal — the player’s tap simply keeps the rabbit moving in sync with the rotating world.
Asset Credits
Rabbit run-cycle sprite sourced from Shutterstock.