How to create a believable swimming fish animated Sprite in 2d?

Question

I want to create a fishing game in which fish needs to be swam across in the ocean. I put static fish which just progresses across ocean but it does not look very realistic and interesting to attract users to play.

I have used minimal graphics style to design graphics for the game and want to put some animation, like, moving tails and fins which I can achieve by making multiple images. But I also want to put some big fishes like sharks and only animating fins and tails will not be enough for them. As player will die without touching body due to margin left for tails or fins animation, or consider an eel.

I can use the snake technology for eels but for fishes where only tails move, is there any other way I can use? Or consider the Jumping Fish game by Ketchapp.

Could anyone suggest me proper ways to achieve such animations?

Answer 1

The usual way to animate 2d graphics is the good old method we use since the first days of animated cartoons: draw a separate graphic for each step of the animation and then display them in a loop.

To get the animation phases right it often helps to look at the real thing and study how it moves.