AuthorTopic: Missed you  (Read 3026 times)

Offline Fieldren

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Missed you

on: December 16, 2016, 03:53:37 am
Hi,im back after some time so heres the thing:
I'm absolutely new in terms of animation and i really need some help please.

I'm working currently on this guy, so i made some key-frames just to joint some things together but i have a lot of issues and i needed some feedback, tips or any kind of miracle possible.

My main issues here are:

- Don't know very well how to get a fluid animation
-I'm completely aware that this particular animation has 6 frames, and i'm just posting here cuz i'm kinda stuck in the process.
-Shades/Lights transitions
-Completely noob on photoshop animation.
-I'm completely aware that i need to clean my sprite (it has blank pixels and some trash here and there.)



Any kind of feedback is appreciated.
Praise the sun \[T]/

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Missed you

Reply #1 on: December 16, 2016, 03:58:45 am
These read more like a series of sprites than an animation, and in the last one he changes proportions a bit.
What kind of animation or transition are you trying to create here?
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
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Offline Fieldren

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Re: Missed you

Reply #2 on: December 16, 2016, 04:08:34 am
So long ,Meat.

Well, actually i think about this as a transition from idle, to alarmed...I don't know how to explain it better.
It's the frame between the monster roaming around and hearing you.

I'm completely aware about proportions,it's completely work in progress but the point here are those little space in-between frames, i just can't get them to work.

I know that an 8 frame animation is the way to go, but i wanted to share my progress as soon as i have it.

Praise the sun \[T]/

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Missed you

Reply #3 on: December 16, 2016, 04:15:41 am
So it's a "the monster noticed you" animation?
It might be helpful to look at how other games tackled that, I know some of the animations the Alien makes in Alien: Isolation are pretty good, it might be wise to look at some youtube footage and take cues from that!
Other things to note would be footage of predatory animals and how they react during hunts.
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
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Offline yrizoud

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Re: Missed you

Reply #4 on: December 16, 2016, 04:22:18 pm
When building such an animation, on each new frame I start by placing what's supposed to be in the same position as in the previous  frame : Very often, it's a foot in contact with floor. The exact pixels may move a little if there's some shuffling or spinning, but typically a character spins on the ball of his feet, and this specific part needs to stays anchored in place.

Then I'd check the heavy or important body parts:
- hips
- shoulders (or more specifically, the logical point which is midway between the shoulders)
- head - it is heavily constrained by the shoulder spot, but neck allow quite a lot of rotation, and viewer focuses often on faces/heads.
- hands
I tend to disregard knees and elbows, because they can be deduced from the others.

Over the course of animation, check that each of these points has a logical and consistent movement. Even if you're comparing very few frames, or very different ones, you still had better harmonize them (limb proportions, volumes, and even general color/lightness).
If you have a cycling animation, check that the "trajectory" of these elements is smooth... circle, ellipse, egg-shaped. if a body part has a star-shaped movement, it means the animation is jerky and probably not following a natural path.

You can see the same principles are used in the (good) animated smileys


Offline Fieldren

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Re: Missed you

Reply #5 on: December 16, 2016, 06:29:18 pm
So it's a "the monster noticed you" animation?
It might be helpful to look at how other games tackled that, I know some of the animations the Alien makes in Alien: Isolation are pretty good, it might be wise to look at some youtube footage and take cues from that!
Other things to note would be footage of predatory animals and how they react during hunts.

Absolutely.I wanted to start with this transition because it has the idle stance and the "gonna kill you now" stance.
I've been watching a lot of alien content and i get your point of the "hunter acting like the hunter".
I have been thinking on that concept since i first asked for advice on the Pixel art Thread and it has helped a lot in the process,almost thinking about this guy as a snake(rather than anything else).

Praise the sun \[T]/

Offline Fieldren

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Re: Missed you

Reply #6 on: December 16, 2016, 06:36:50 pm
When building such an animation, on each new frame I start by placing what's supposed to be in the same position as in the previous  frame : Very often, it's a foot in contact with floor. The exact pixels may move a little if there's some shuffling or spinning, but typically a character spins on the ball of his feet, and this specific part needs to stays anchored in place.

Then I'd check the heavy or important body parts:
- hips
- shoulders (or more specifically, the logical point which is midway between the shoulders)
- head - it is heavily constrained by the shoulder spot, but neck allow quite a lot of rotation, and viewer focuses often on faces/heads.
- hands
I tend to disregard knees and elbows, because they can be deduced from the others.

Over the course of animation, check that each of these points has a logical and consistent movement. Even if you're comparing very few frames, or very different ones, you still had better harmonize them (limb proportions, volumes, and even general color/lightness).
If you have a cycling animation, check that the "trajectory" of these elements is smooth... circle, ellipse, egg-shaped. if a body part has a star-shaped movement, it means the animation is jerky and probably not following a natural path.

You can see the same principles are used in the (good) animated smileys


Thanks for help me Yrizoud!

I'm very noobish mainly on photoshop, so i make each individual frame separatedly and after that i get to join them together, so i think that one of my problems has to do with that...As i get more and more familiar with the software i think that i can solve all this issues, but for the moment it is something that has brought me a lot of trouble.Going to work a lot more on this one and posting results, thanks bro!
« Last Edit: December 16, 2016, 06:54:01 pm by Fieldren »
Praise the sun \[T]/

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Missed you

Reply #7 on: December 16, 2016, 07:02:13 pm
I believe there are onionskin options in photoshop, a feature where previous and antecedent frames are added to the current frame as transparencies to better keep track of motions. See if you can find some documentation on that, it's probably one of the best tools a new animator can have to make eyeballing this stuff easier to figure out.

If not, aseprite is ten bucks and I've been using it for all my animation work since I got it. It's threadbare right now animationways but it's got enough to make little loops and sprite sequences, which is what you're doing here.
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |