[WIP] Dungeon Romp (Animations!)

[Avocado]

newest:


I tried raising the shield up a pixel and moved the light source a bit higher, which I thought was a great piece of advice.  It seems to look less like a belly but also makes the character a bit flatter, but I can deal with that. I added a vampire and a bat, but I had no clue as to how to shade the wings well. I'll figure it out.  I haven't worked on the shield animation much but I have a deadline in which to make the barebones sprites and animations for a brief demo, so ill see if I can fix it up if I have time near the end.

[Ben2theEdge]

I think what you really need is to use a different 3rd color; instead of using it for shading use it to add a new hue. This will make things more readable but most people also find 3-color schemes more interesting than monochromatic ones.

[Avocado]

I played around with your color suggestion and realized that my problem wasn't the three colors thing so much as the lack of saturation. Do you guys prefer the saturated or unsaturated version right below it? Is the shield still a belly?
Animations are underway and will be up soon, in the neighborhood of later today or tomorrow.

EDIT: ack, nevermind, project leader says they're oversaturated and liked them the way they were.

[Pawige]

Quick edit/suggestion for a few things. I think this pose helps with the belly-shield problem as well. Also made him grip his sword in a bit more solid manner and rotated the eyes just a titch forward.



Anyways, if this were a game I could play. I would play it. So good work!

[Sokota]

Does the shield have to be round? Could it be teardropish or even angular? That would help cancel the effect of reading as a 'big ole round tummy', I think. Looking good, and liking the 3-color choice!

Sokota

[Avocado]

ooooooh animations (now in original post and two posts down), and thanks for the comments everybody

and a quick character update of what's probably going into the demo, which means these are the characters im giong to be focusing on.



I tried changing up the protagonist's pose based on pawiges edit, but my big concern with this is that I don't know how much sense it makes for the protagonist to be so un-alert when hes in a dungeon teeming with baddies.  I think i'm going to wind up making the pose more like pawige's edit or keeping the original one and playing around with the shield some more. Sokota, I'd like to keep the shield circular, but thanks for the suggestion.

[32]

I think just making an idle animation could resolve the shield issue, just a generic up down breathing type thing. I think the un-alertness stems from the lack of facial expression, I would think that if you were expecting to be attacked you would hold the shield higher, to protect your head/heart.

[Avocado]

@32: You're right, ill get right on that.

Animations!

(old crawl, new crawl, falling from the ceiling, all 4 frames)
(Still have to fix the body he's bobbing like a madman, but do the legs look alright?)
(Still have some work to do with this but is the general motion of the shield an improvement? I know about the little gaps where it seems to do a figure eight, im going to fix that)
(Sword swing from the last post, I just wanted to have everything in one fat post for convenience. Is the movement of the right leg too much of a bother?)

[#36005A]

Perhaps the idle animation could show the shield in the "guard down" position, and then in the running/attacking animations he could raise it. That way you make it clear that it is, in fact, a shield, without letting the little guy's guard down at all times.

Or is that what 32 was saying? If it was, then I agree!

[Pawige]

Now this is very far from perfect, but I just wanted to do a quick edit of the sword animation to show you what you can do with it. Right now your attack animation is rather weak and (from a gameplay perspective) has minimal range.



Key points to remember. You need to keyframe the extreme positions the character will be in. That is, draw him all over again in a different pose, rather than just moving a few bits around. Put a lot of emphasis on the beginning and the end of the motions, the parts inbetween are really just filler, it's those keyframes that make or break the animation. There was a thread just very recently with some very good advice about animation here http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=8577.0. And there are a bajillion other good resources about in online. Do a bit of in-depth research and it will pay off big time!