PyGame and Rotozoom (Sorry if OT)

[J. W. McCall]

I'm not sure if this is off-topic, since it doesn't deal with Python 
itself, but here goes:

I'm messing around with writing a simple "game" where the player (a 
crudely drawn smiley face) moves by rotating and moving back or forward 
(think Resident Evil, but from an always-above view).  After much 
hacking, I have it working where left and right rotate the player sprite 
and up always moves the sprite whichever direction it's facing, while 
down is reverse.  I'm using pygame.transform.RotoZoom().

My problem is that it doesn't rotate smoothly.  When it rotates, the 
corners of the image (just a plain white background) look like they're 
hitting some barrier and making it move around.  Think of an empty box 
turned diagonally (so that it looks like a diamond, with its open end 
facing you), and a cube in that box being turned while it's resting in 
the bottom corner.  I want it to rotate smoothly around its center, it's 
it's not doing that.

I'm guessing that it has something to do with me not setting up a Rect 
right, but I'm not sure.  Maybe this is a limitation of Rotozoom/Rotate?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  And yes, I'm a rank PyGame newbie.

Thanks,

J. W. McCall