Pygame need to build sprite from a rotating and non rotating image [duplicate] - pygame

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Closed 22 days ago.
I have an interesting problem with sprits in pygame.
Essentially, I am trying to create an archer sprite which will follow a target.
To do so, I need it to rotate. Naturally, I don't want the whole archer to rotate - just his shoulders/head etc. To do so I have create two separate spritesheets (for the top and bottom)
I can then create the sprite image using:
class Archer(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
def __init__(self, group, pos, size):
super().__init__(group)
self.pos = pos
self.assets_legs = GetAssets('../graphics/archer_fixed.png', size)
self.frames_legs = self.assets_legs.sprite_images
self.assets_body = GetAssets('../graphics/archer_rotate.png', size)
self.frames_body = self.assets_body.sprite_images
self.frame_index = 0
self.angle = 0
self.archer = [self.frames_legs[round(self.frame_index)], self.frames_body[round(self.frame_index)]]
self.image = pygame.Surface((size), pygame.SRCALPHA)
for image in self.archer:
self.image.blit(image, (0,0))
This is fine and works well. However, when I want to rotate the top half and blit this to the self.image, as in:
def rotate(self):
self.rot_img = self.archer[1]
self.rot_img = pygame.transform.rotate(self.rot_img, 1)
self.image = pygame.Surface((75,75), pygame.SRCALPHA)
self.archer = [self.frames_legs[round(self.frame_index)], self.rot_img]
for image in self.archer:
self.image.blit(image, (0,0))
self.rect = self.image.get_rect(center = self.pos)
I get strange artifacts. I suspect because I am trying to blit a surface with a rotated dimension to a self.image. The only work around I can think of is to create two separate sprites and then have them track each other, but the must be a way to do this in one class.
Any ideas?
Cheers