Critique > Pixel Art

animated heterofibian (frog person) and auto-erotic self-pixelation

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garsh:
Thanks for the follow-up, Camus, I was hoping you hadn't forgotten me.

Maybe you don't realize it, but for a newcomer to a forum like this, it's intimidating seeing all first class work. Like I said, I lurked Pixelation for a long time, so I'm familiar with the greats.

You might think I'm putting Adam Tierney on a pedestal, but I'm telling you, he's like the Leonardo to my Scooter the fence painter. To me he IS mystifying! But not so much as my personal favorite pixeler: Kenneth Fejer. I have all his trading cards, the lunch box, (the old one AND the new one) and I stare at a poster of him every night as I drift off to sleep. And then I dream about playing his conceptual Kid Icarus DS.

I appreciate all the general advice. I do tend to brush off critism that I don't feel is condusive to my own intentions for my work.

Your idea about blank sillouettes, oy! Why didn't I think of that? Honestly, I used to use that exact method in Mario Paint. I kid you not. When I was a teenager I had a REALLY smooth velociraptor animation like that. Anyway, it would make my animating a lot quicker, I think, and less effort wasted on details for poses I end up not using.

And about the resolution, I know it's a bad habit, but my old PC makes it inconvenient to do anything else. Luckily I should be replacing it relatively soon.

Thanks again, Camus, without you and Peppermint Pig, I would have been totally ignored here.

Rydin:
Very great work. It seems as if you already have some general pixel knowledge, and seems as if you could be a regular here.

Okay, the frogs.
Awsome shading and color choice. Seems like you are going for a realistic look, but an unrealistic character. The static animation is great so far. The throat is perfect. But it feels like it could use a liitle more swaying and breathing. For example, when you stand there, you don't just breath, and not move anything else. Usually, your body moves with your breaths, and you also may make some subtle shifts in position, because you are trying to keep balance (this is VERY subtle, I know, but the smallest details are key when animating). As for the walking animation, I personally would just throw it out. I don't know how it fits into your game, but I think a frog would look much better hopping to and frow, rather than walking. But I'm not here to critique your game, so my advice on the walking animation is to add some more frames.  Right now it doesn't seem like its legs are passing over each other, and it looks like he is doing a sort of dance, rather than walking.  Also when the frogs right arm is moving foward, from the back, its skin moving over its belly and mouth is the right idea, but it seem like it is done in the wrong fahsion.  It seems like the skin is just moving foward, and I think its because you lose some shading on the belly. The belly is moving to, and the light acts accordingly. As for the jumping animation. I think it looks very good, and is looks exactly how a frog would jump if it stood on two legs. But it seems like the legs are doing all the work, and the arms are just being dragged along. I think the arms might help stablize the frog when it land, instead of just flop down.  The tounge animation. I think something is wrong about it, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I think it may be just that the tounge seems too thick, but I donno.  Great work otherwise, and I can't wait to hear more about this game.

Now, the avatar.
I think I know what it is, but the grey thing throws me off. Is it a naughty young boy going through potty training, getting mad at the person pixeling him because he is invading his privacy?  If its not that, I am bewildered....

Anyways, welcome to Pixelation. You can come here any time you like, but you may never leave. :D

garsh:
That's some intense insight, Rydin. You're right: realistic-ish look, fantasy character. Good call.

I'm glad you mentioned the breathing. It was a concious decision for his body to remain perfectly motionless while idling. Like you pointed out, it looks unnatural. But that's not entirely true. See, my inspiration for this character was a real frog that I captured a few weeks ago from the back door on my carport. He's a small tree frog and I've been keeping in him in an aquarium. Watching him hunt insects I noticed that he spends the vast majority of his time completely motionless except for the swelling of his throat "bellow". I suspect it's an evolutionary adaptation so that he doesn't scare off the bugs he's trying to sneak up on. Anyway, that's why I did that. I'm still considering changing it to a subtle body sway like you suggested, though, cause after all; he's an upright-standing humanoid frog.

Like I said in the original post, the walking animation was a quicky garbage job just to fill in until I decided on a final version. I have a new walking animation in mind now, I'm just putting off until my mouse stops acting moody. I'm glad you picked up on the way his belly shading is off, there was something bugging me there I couldn;t figure out, and that's it.

You and Camus both see something off about the tongue lash, and now I'm seeing it too, but I have absolutely no idea what it could be.

RE: my self-pixelation...
Potty trainin? No, he's just lazy. The grey thing is a kind of machette. I really have one like that, but apparently I didn't make it look right in pixel form. The whole thing seems to baffle everyone, and I'm trying to figure out why.

Thanks for all the input, that's a lot of help! And thanks for the welcome. I do plan to be around regularly until I've warn out my welcome.

Conzeit:
oh, I understand now the reasoning behind the still stance.

if you only want too animate the bag, atleast do it very well. use the perfect pacing, and make the details really subtle.

for the pacing, I belive when things are inflated the beggining of the animation is fast (few frames), as are the inbetween frames, and the final frames take a little more time (increase frame number gradually here). for deflating, the opposite is probably true. you have the ideal of a refference you can check while you draw though, so better make use of that than to listen to my babbling, record it if posible.

go to one of the sprite sites at the resources topic, and grab a bunch of mslug animations that contain movements of small range movements but big frame count (a zombie fio, tank ilde animations and a soilder in a exploding portable toilet come to mind), also grab alucard's run (look at upper body movements) off Game Sprite Archives.

now, use the concept conveyed there, which I like to  call sub-pixel/antialiasing animation.

basically, now grab any given frames you already have, and make inbetweeners. seems hard since there is already so little range of mevement in your framws, how do you do it?

compare the two instances, and then shift around a few key pixels (not even rows of pixels, pixels) to make the previous frame look more like the next one,  preferably tweak as little sillouethe pixels as posible, which implies that you work on the shading as a key part of the animation (lit up for big, in darken for small).

and make good use of all those transitions you have, when you are darkening out a pixel because it's going into the shadow area, dont skip many shades, use as many of them as you can.

all these things combined, convey the concept of sub pixels/antialiasing animation, since the whole idea of antialiasing is using varying shades of lightness to convey the percentage in which a shade is present in the pic. IE comunicate shape trough lightness.

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