What are animated portraits? (beta)

Animated portraits bring the character sprites on the story stage to life with a light idle loop: breathing, a gentle head tilt, hair that sways. The original artwork stays sharp. It is the same picture, gently warped, not a video and not a redrawn image. Characters don't blink or move their mouths.

Animated portraits are in beta. They work wherever character cutouts appear on the stage: in the Immersive journey style, and in the Standard style when Display portraits is on.

How do I turn them on?

They are off by default. While playing, open Settings (the gear), go to the Theme tab and switch on Animated portraits (marked Beta). In Standard style, the switch sits right under Display portraits.

The setting is saved on this device only and does not sync to your account. It applies to every journey you play on that device.

Click (or tap) a character on the stage to pause its animation. Click again to resume.

Why is the switch greyed out?

The switch is disabled, with the reason shown under it, in three cases:

• Your system's motion accessibility settings disallow animations: your device has reduced motion turned on, so the art stays still.
• No GPU detected: the browser renders graphics in software. Animating sprites that way would burn CPU and battery, so the art stays still.
• This world has no animated portraits yet: none of the sprites in your journey have been prepared for animation (see below).

If WebGL fails for any other reason, the sprite simply shows as a still image.

Why don't the characters move in my world?

Only some worlds are compatible. Each sprite has to be prepared once (an analysis of where the hair, face and neck are) before it can move, and for now only the Imagina team can run that preparation. On a world that hasn't been prepared, or for a sprite that was added or replaced after preparation, the character just stays still. Nothing breaks, and there is no extra cost to you: animated portraits cost no credits.

Once a world is prepared, a new version that keeps the same sprite images stays animated. Changing a sprite's picture means it needs preparing again.

A journey keeps the sprites of the world version it started on, or was last updated to. If those weren't prepared, starting a new journey or updating your journey to the world's latest version may help.

Can I animate my own world's sprites?

Not from the editor yet. While this is a beta, write to [email protected] with your world's name (or a link to it) and ask for its sprites to be prepared. Standard stage sprites give the best results: a single character, a transparent background cutout, with the face and hair visible.