A game monster's combat set in Spine: idle, attack, hurt and death from one PSD
A lava salamander for an RPG: one layered PSD in, a Spine 4.2 rig with four combat animations out — idle, attack, hurt and death. The first prompt built the rig and all four animations in under 3 minutes. The attack worked right away and the hurt after one correction; the rest was polish — mostly on death — with short prompts and free edits with the mouse. Below is every prompt as it was sent, what was wrong after it, and how it was fixed.
The result
Switch between idle, attack, hurt and death. These are the exported Spine 4.2 files playing in the official Spine Web Player — the same JSON, atlas and page you would load in your game. The attack fires an event named hit at the impact, so the game knows when to deal damage.
What you need to start
A finished PSD with every moving part on its own layer. Two things make the model's job easier and save prompts:
- Layers in draw order. The top layer is drawn in front. For a character seen from the side, the near arm goes above the torso and the far arm below it.
- Plain names.
head,jaw,torso,arm_front_upper,thigh_back… The model reads the names and places the joints accordingly.
The salamander came in as 16 layers with no bones: tail, both arms in two pieces, both thighs and shins, a foot, the loincloth, torso, head, jaw, the hand and the club. More on layers in Preparing art.
Prompt 1: the rig and all four animations
This is a lava salamander warrior for an RPG, facing right, holding a stone club in the front hand. Rig it and make four animations; parts that touch must stay overlapped in every frame. idle - 2 s loop: heavy breathing, the head bobs slightly on the neck, the tail sways a little. attack - about 1 s: the club arm stays almost in place and lifts only a little; the work is in the wrist - the club cocks back and snaps forward; the torso leans into the blow and the legs bend slightly. Event 'hit' at the impact. hurt - about 0.5 s: a small recoil from a blow to the chest, then a light wobble of arms and legs that settles. death - about 1.5 s, starts from the rest pose: he staggers, the knees give way one after the other, he falls backwards in phases - not as a stiff board and not as a sack; the feet stay planted, the club slips out of the hand.
Before placing a single bone, the model decided what kind of asset this is — a humanoid — and loaded Riggy's animation recipes for that type: where a humanoid's joints go (the head turns at the neck, not at the snout), how an attack is built (the arm keeps its shape, the wrist snaps), how a death starts from the rest pose. Then it built 19 bones and the four animations in one go.
The attack was right from the start, and the idle only got extra life later. Hurt and death needed work — that is what the rest of this article is about.
How to read this: each block is what we saw in the player, then the prompt we sent, then what changed. We watched each animation frame by frame — click a mark on the track and the player stops on that moment (see Motion).
Prompt 2 — hurt too jerky, death under the ground
In hurt, the club arm swung far too much on the hit. In death, the whole body slid to the left while he staggered, sank below the ground line at the end, and the club flew up into the air.
idle and attack look good. Fix two things. death: in the stagger the whole body slides to the left, and by the end he sinks below the ground line - the legs and back go under y=0, and the club flies up into the air instead of falling. He must end lying on his back ON the ground line, nothing below y=0, feet where they stood; the club drops down and lands on the ground beside him. Please look at the frames of death before you answer. hurt: the club arm jerks too much on the hit - keep it to a few degrees, the recoil should come from the torso.
Hurt was fixed for good: the arm now moves a few degrees and the recoil comes from the torso. Death got better, but not there yet.
Prompt 3 — death in detail, and a gap at the wrist
Death still had the club arm swinging over the head, and the legs went under the ground. We also noticed a thin gap between the fist and the forearm — in the art itself, not the animation.
hurt is good now. death is still wrong, here is what I see: at 0.6-0.8 s the club arm swings up over the head - keep it down by his side. From 0.95 s the legs stay vertical and go under the ground line while the body tips over them; at 1.5 s the legs hang below the ground, the head is the lowest point on the left and the club floats in the air above him, away from the hand. Wanted end pose: he lies flat on his back along the ground line - head on the left, legs stretched out to the right, the feet near where he stood, nothing below y=0; the club lies on the ground next to the hand. One more fix in the setup pose: the fist with the club sits a bit apart from the forearm, there is a gap at the wrist - move hand_front together with the club about 14 px left and 8 px up so the fist sits on the end of the forearm.
The fist moved onto the forearm in the rest pose, so the gap is gone in every animation at once. Death now ended lying down, but a few parts still dipped below the ground and the club floated.
Prompt 4 — a livelier idle, death by the second
The idle breathed well, but the whole body swayed as one block. For death we named each problem with its time: what happens at 0.5–0.7 s, from 1.0 s, at 1.3–1.5 s.
Much better - attack and hurt are approved, don't touch them. Small tuning only. idle: right now the whole body sways as one big piece - add a slight independent sway of both arms (2-3 degrees at the shoulder, a little behind the breath) and of the hips/thighs, so it feels alive. death, small fixes, keep the rest: (1) at 0.5-0.7 s both feet lift off the ground and the club arm bends up so the club is next to the head - keep the feet on the ground until the body tips, and keep the club arm low by the side; (2) from 1.0 s to the end the club sticks straight up into the air - lay it down so at 1.5 s it rests flat on the ground next to the hand; (3) at 1.3-1.5 s the back arm and the tail hang below the ground line - lift them so they rest on the ground, nothing below y=0.
Arms and thighs now sway on their own, a little behind the breath. In death the feet stay on the ground until he tips over, and the club comes down next to the hand.
Mouse fix 1 — the belt that stayed behind
In the attack the torso leans into the blow — and the belt stayed where it was, sliding off the waist. The belt was attached to the hip bone, while the torso bends above it. No prompt needed: in the bone tree we dragged loincloth onto torso. Nothing jumps on the canvas — the part keeps its place and simply follows the torso from now on, in all four animations. Free, a couple of seconds. How it works: moving a bone to a new parent.
Prompt 5 — the near arm hid behind the body
The big arm on the left is the monster's near arm, but its layers sat below the torso, so in hurt it slipped behind the body. And in death the club arm came apart at the joints, with the club sliding out of the fist.
Next round of small fixes. (1) Draw order: the big arm on the left of the picture (arm_back_upper + arm_back_lower) is actually his NEAR arm - in the original art it is in front of the torso, the back thigh and the loincloth. Right now it goes behind the torso, very visible in hurt. Move both of those parts above torso, thigh_back and loincloth (still below jaw and head). (2) death 1.0-1.5 s: the club arm falls apart - the fist separates from the forearm and the forearm from the shoulder, and the club slides out of the fist so the handle lies apart from the hand. Keep that chain joined: rotate only at the joints, no translate on arm_front_upper/arm_front_lower/hand_front/club; let him keep the club in the fist and land with it, club flat on the ground. (3) death 1.15-1.5 s: the near arm's forearm with the claws sticks out horizontally into the air to the right - lay it along the body. (4) at the end the near arm and the tail still dip a bit below the ground line - lift them onto it. attack, hurt and idle are approved, don't change their motion.
The near arm is now drawn in front of the torso, and the club arm stays in one piece with the club in the fist. One thing went the wrong way: the near arm in death now pointed past the head.
Prompt 6 — one direction and one number
Good progress: the draw order is right now, and the club arm stays in one piece with the club in the fist - keep both. Two things left in death, from about 1.1 s to the end: (1) the near arm (arm_back_upper + arm_back_lower) turned the wrong way - it now points past his head to the left and partly goes under the ground. Turn it the other way: lying on his back with the head on the left, the near arm should lie along his side pointing toward his feet (to the right), resting on the ground. The -138 degrees at the shoulder is the wrong direction; something like +40..+60 from rest should do. (2) the belly and the lower torso dip about 40 px below the ground line in the final pose - lift the whole body (fall translate) so the lowest point is on y=0. Nothing else changes.
One short prompt, and the arm now lies along the body, with him resting on the ground.
Prompt 7 and mouse fix 2 — the legs
death is almost there, only the legs in the fall and the final pose (about 0.9-1.5 s): (1) the club-side leg (thigh_front, shin_front, foot_front): lower the thigh a bit toward the other leg, as if the legs close together; foot_front must not twist on its own - keep it at roughly its rest angle relative to the shin (offset near 0) all the way. (2) the other leg (thigh_back + shin_back) ends up sticking up into the air - by the end of the animation it should come back down to a natural relaxed pose, close to its rest angles relative to the body, lying next to the first leg. Everything else stays as it is.
The foot now keeps its angle to the shin. The legs in the last pose were still a little off — one in the air, one under the ground — so we finished them by hand. In Motion mode we clicked the moments of death at 1.15, 1.25, 1.4 and 1.5 s and turned the two thighs with the mouse — a few keyframe edits in death, free. How it works: reshaping a moment.
Prompt 8 and mouse fix 3 — where the ground is
A review of this article caught two more things. Death no longer started from the rest pose: the back thigh was turned 20° already at 0 s. The cause was our own mouse edit on the last moment — that thigh's track started and ended at the same value, so Riggy treated it as a loop and copied the edit to the first frame too (we are changing that for one-shot animations). And we had been measuring the ground from the bottom of the canvas, while this monster's feet stand about 70 px above it.
Last fixes in death, nothing else changes: (1) frame 0 must be exactly the rest pose - right now thigh_back starts already rotated by about +20 degrees at 0 s; make its death track start at 0 offset and keep its end pose as it is now. (2) at 0.2-0.9 s the knees bend but the hips stay where they are, so both feet lift about 70 px off the ground - lower the body together with the knee bend so the feet stay on y=0 until he tips over. (3) at 1.5 s the tail and the near upper arm (arm_back_upper) still dip about 20 px below the ground line - lift them just enough to rest on y=0.
Frame 0 is the rest pose again. But point (2) was our mistake: the feet never lifted, so lowering the body pushed them into the floor. We put it right by hand, taking the ground as the line under the feet in the rest pose: in Motion mode we removed the dip, set the body height for the landing, and laid the tail and the near arm down from the moment of impact — keyframe edits in Motion mode, free. Now the feet stay on the ground until he tips over, he lands with a small bounce, and he lies on the same line he stood on.
What it costs
Each prompt is billed by the tokens it uses, and its price shows next to the reply in the chat, so you always know where you are. You pick the model per project; this one ran on Claude Sonnet 5 — how pricing works. Every edit with the mouse is free. For a sense of scale: Spine animation gigs on Fiverr were listed at $15–200 per animation (checked Sep 30, 2026), and the art and the rig usually cost extra — more in what a Spine animation costs.
What saves prompts
- Describe the motion, don't just name it. "Make an attack" leaves every decision to the model, and it will invent its own. Say how long it lasts, which parts move and which stay, where the motion starts and in what order, and what it should look like. Our attack prompt read: "about 1 s: the club arm stays almost in place and lifts only a little; the work is in the wrist — the club cocks back and snaps forward; the torso leans into the blow and the legs bend slightly" — and the attack was right on the first try. The same goes for the feel: "heavy breathing", "falls backwards in phases — not as a stiff board and not as a sack". More examples in How to write a request.
- Order and name your layers. Two of our fixes — the near arm behind the body and the gap at the wrist — came from the art, not the animation.
- Say what is approved. "attack and hurt are approved, don't touch them" tells the model which animations to leave alone. Changes to the rig itself — where a part hangs, what is drawn in front — still show up in every animation, so recheck them after such a fix.
- Name the second and the direction. "At 1.3–1.5 s the tail hangs below the ground line" is fixed in one reply; "the death looks wrong" takes several.
- Know where the ground is. It is the line under the feet in the rest pose, not the bottom of the picture. Tell the model that number, and check the last frame of a fall against it.
- Small things are faster by hand. Re-hanging a part on another bone or nudging a pose at one moment takes seconds with the mouse and costs nothing — all mouse and keyboard controls.
Take it further
The export is plain Spine 4.2 JSON with an atlas — open it in the Spine editor to polish by hand, or load it straight into your game: guides for Phaser 4, PixiJS 8 and Unity. The salamander's files are on the examples page. Making slot games? The same chat animates symbols and characters — see three symbol animations for $0.35 and a slot character, prompt by prompt. Shipping a game with the Spine Runtimes requires a Spine license from Esoteric Software, whoever made the skeleton — see licensing.
Coming next: from one picture to layers
Today Riggy starts from a layered PSD. We are building a tool that cuts a single character picture into named layers in the right order, with the hidden parts drawn in — so you can go from one image to an animated rig without opening Photoshop.