AuthorTopic: Johnny J - Animated  (Read 9254 times)

Offline wzl

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Johnny J - Animated

on: February 02, 2015, 07:18:40 pm
Hey ho

Here we go with some of Johnny's animations.

Initially i worked only with a silhouette:


But the desire for colors was strong.
I wasn't aware at that point that it double the frame count (for walk loops at least).
With a sprite that low resolution, the amount of details you can add, as well as the amount of shading is quite minimal so i decided to just shade the back-facing limbs minimally.




I keep getting back to slightly modify them from time to time, to move a pixel one more to the left or right.
It is quite challenging to make accurate animations if you can only have that much pixel estate to work with.

One thing i have briefly tried is using different shades to imply movement, but it turned out to be too subtle when compared to the pixel jumping off to the side.

I just did a little rework on the jump animation, and i can't quite get the landing right


Few days ago i created the climbing animation but i'm still not sure how i'll need to offset them in-game since the sprite would need to be anchored at the grab-position. Need to look into that.


Other than that:



 :crazy:


Edit: Wow, the interpolation really looks horrible on these. No way to interpolate with nearest, eh?
I suppose i could upscale them, given the tiny resolution


Since nobody complained  ::)

I've been actually thinking about the technical approach of implementing the animation.
Games that used roto-scoped animations like flashback, blackhawk, prince of persia, and to a lesser degree heart of darkness and another world, just had such an interesting approach to animation and movement.

Instead of the velocity dictating the animation, the animation dictates the velocity and it is bound to that as well.
You can not jump at any time to cancel the movement cycle, you'll have to wait until the foot touches the ground in order to transition into the jump.

Traditionally those were grid bound. I'd intend to loosen that restriction and have the animations frames more free-flowing. if one walk cycle moves me 1 tile or 1 tile and 2 pixels is fairly unimportant i'd assume. Although it would alter jump distances (i.e. 6 pixels away from the edge vs exactly spot on). This could feel pretty arbitrary i suppose.

I realize this has some of pitfalls.
It would require a number of animations twice. When you jump and your left leg's down, raise the right one. Otherwise do it the other way around. and this would apply for stand-to-walk/walk-to-stand/walk-to-run/run-to-walk/run-to-stand and the list goes on.
I wouldn't want to wait for a specific frame (ie. left foot down) in order to transition into a jump. That would in most cases feel arbitrarily delayed, especially if it isn't grid bound.

I guess i should just go ahead and try it out instead of rambling on..

Whatever are your thoughts on this kind of animation/movement handling?
« Last Edit: February 04, 2015, 12:27:31 am by wzl »

Offline TheWing

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #1 on: February 04, 2015, 10:43:10 pm
Oho, I kinda like the idea of having the animation determine how fast and how long distances J traverses... but to me this kinda means somewhat a loss of physics, which would be something I'd perhaps like.

Having played the older ungame-edition (which had the abstractish blue tileset), I wouldn't want to lose the fluidity of movement you got going on in that. It wasn't perfect but worked really nicely... so if you can manage to blend that into this frame-based thing, good job :3

Offline wzl

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #2 on: February 04, 2015, 11:29:37 pm
Yeah the physics will suffer, or change a lot from that.
The character will turn out nowhere near as mobile as it was in earlier tries. Like the artstyle this thing is constantly changing until it becomes what it wants to be :D (whatever that is)

For now i still need to see how it feels. After today i realized i dont want to continue working is flash, so i'll probably rewrite it, which will have to wait until the weekend.

I was playing around with the animation to see if it would work with them as they are. turns out it's not.


The walkcycle looks reasonable after i removed a frame which made it jump around quite a bit.


The run cycle requires a little more work i'm afraid.



Finally i tried to get from one pose to another, back to the first (left leg front vs right leg front) but the transitions were tough to work out. the arm movement is still wonky in the transition and i dont know how to fix it without changing the standing pose completely.

The idea is that as soon as you press a direction, the cycle starts, and if you stop, the animation doesnt instantly cancel but play to the next frame that can transition into the stand.

It sort of makes me want to go back to the silhouette version  :-\

In case you want to try the current version, beware its buggy, glitchy mechanics!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12237727/ungame/ungame.html

Offline TheWing

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #3 on: February 04, 2015, 11:41:47 pm
The silhouette would certainly make certain things a lot easier.. But I guess the way other gfx is now it wouldn't really fit?

Offline wzl

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #4 on: February 06, 2015, 10:38:34 pm
I've come to several conclusions these last few days. The approach i want to try does not easily apply to a sprite of that size. I'm nowhere near as experienced to make it work.  That plus the lack of color depth compared to the environment made me consider to try scaling it up.



The size went from 1 1/2 tiles to 2 1/2 tiles. It might bring some benefits to the game-play, but it might have some drawbacks. That remains to be seen.
For instance, i could now make him step up 1 tile steps automatically, where as before he'd need to climb it up.

Animation wise i think it helps to have more control over the pose. Slight adjustments don't throw the entire pose off.
Rough run loop so far:


Thanks again Johasu, for the advise to use silhouettes for the process. It really helped to get things going!


I'm unsure if this is the way to go. It feels a little like abandonment. But you shouldn't get too attached for no reason...right?

PS: In hindsight it feels sort of silly maintaining two threads on basically the same topic. Does anything speak against merging them, seeing a bunch of animations in PixelArt as well.

Offline HarveyDentMustDie

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #5 on: February 07, 2015, 12:45:06 am
When I see the palette you posted I can say that you are using 10, and only 5-6 of them are actually visible. This means that you have redundant colors which you should remove, and reuse the rest of them.

Regarding animations I like animations from first post, they look very nice considering their size. :)

Offline wzl

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #6 on: February 07, 2015, 03:25:45 pm
When I see the palette you posted I can say that you are using 10, and only 5-6 of them are actually visible. This means that you have redundant colors which you should remove, and reuse the rest of them.

Regarding animations I like animations from first post, they look very nice considering their size. :)

Thanks, i like the small ones too, but i'm not sure if they're feasible anymore. It's an ongoing process still, no decisions made at that point.

Good point on the colors! there was no reason for the belt and shoes to have different shades of dark brown. Otherwise i have 3 additional browns for the trousers: foreground leg, background leg, and a mid that acts as highlight on one, and shade on the other.
The remaining brown is the hair color.
2 skin and shirt shades to hint at foreground and background.
I don't think i want to reduce it any further though.

I did some refinement on the walk loop. PPD pointed out some hints on stream, slanting the foot before landing and adding a little jumping arc.

Here's what it looks like after reapplying the shading:

static:


locked to motion: (is there an actual term for that?

Offline ErekT

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #7 on: February 07, 2015, 04:25:38 pm
It's a cool idea to have the animation dictate the movement rate but you'll need more frames to keep it smooth-looking that way.  Flashback had a *lot* of frames for the walk and run cycles alone. I can't remember how many the jog had but I think it was above 30. But your character is still pretty lo-res and with limited shading so might not be too much work to add extra in-betweens?

The animations and character look good so far :)

Offline wzl

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #8 on: February 07, 2015, 04:57:58 pm
Thanks for the input :D

Yeah flashback had 20 frames for the full cycle, blackthorne had 16; each without transition.

Actually it would require some redoing. The animation is created so it moves 3px per frame (see the guide pixels below the floor). That is not deliberately, it simply happened to fit the first attempt pretty good. Simply adding inbetweens would result in a 1-2-1-2.. frame offset and probably remove all fluidity.
I'll likely need to adjust it so it moves 4px per frame so i can add inbetweens evenly. Not sure how that will affect the animation yet, but it is something i'd want to do as well, as currently there's an obvious skip between frames.

I'll need to keep these things in mind making further animations, so thanks pointing it out :)



Ok, looks like the modifications were minor. I was able to adjust the limbs movement easily and in return got an even better range of motion for the legs.

I added some inbetweens and it turned out quite smooth





20frames per cycle, currently at 50ms per frame



I did some modifications to johnny. gave him a jacket because i guess it's quite cold in caves, and it makes the animation more lively.

« Last Edit: February 09, 2015, 12:34:30 am by wzl »

Offline Gil

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Re: Johnny J - Animated

Reply #9 on: February 09, 2015, 11:55:05 am
This guy reminds me of Tin Tin :). Loving the art direction.