Art 2D Sprites in HD?

[blutbeere]

Hello there ,
I am planning a small sidescrolling(2D Art Style) project with a group of 4 people.
Its not about money or time, we are doing it to become better and have fun.
Since we have a skillfull drawer I thought about the possibilty of having the sprites,
drawn and painted on paper by him, then scanning them and use them.

But it actually seems a little hard to use them as animated sprites if I look at the low res sprite example
on the tutorials.

What would be the best way to use the scanned "paintings", for animated character for example or background?
Since these sprites should be in a high resolution, is that even possible?
What would be the best way to realise an animated background?

Thanks in advance,
Chris.

[hybrid]

There's actually no limit for the resolution of sprites. It's always simpler to keep them in one texture, but you can also swap textures on each frame. this would result in 8k x 8k sprites - more than enough for todays screens.
You can directly draw your sprites onto one sheet, and scan the whole animation set at once. Or combine them later on in a painting program. Just make sure that you can easily blank out the background.
Some other sprite snippets can be found on the forum. The new Irrlicht book also has one as an example.
Animated background is done just exactly like the sprites. Render it at a certain position and move that position as you need. You can also use a full screen plane and a texture matrix if you want to go the 3d way. This also allows for multiple layers without major problems.

[blutbeere]

Danke (Thanks)