Help with water animation D:

[Pizza Tom]

I'm trying to work on the water for the game I'm making in school right now, but it's occurred to me that I have no idea what I'm doing. I've tried referencing real rivers and looking to other pixel artists for inspiration, but this is the best I could come up with:



I probably need more than 4 frames (right now it's 1-2-3-2-), but adding frames won't help me much if I don't know how to make even these look good. :/

Crits/advice much appreciated!

[Grimsane]

Post it in a grid so we can see what it looks like tiled, not sure how i could critique that, it does need some work though, most games go a stylized approach concentrating on one aspect of water most of the time its caustics just because it reads as water and there is alot of variety to real caustics so it is hard to detect if it looks "wrong" per say,
your's looks like it could be modified into caustics if you tried, if you are unsure what i mean a quick google search should help. after staring at it awhile I think the white highlights are  what's messing with it the most, but also are you trying to portray static water? or flowing water? because at the moment it sways back and forth. so it looks like neither. well that's about as helpful as I can be.

but one piece of advice instead of referencing reality, step back and try referencing video games, and study how they do it. good luck with it.

[TheMonsterAtlas]

It really depends on what kind of water you're doing. If it's a lake it's going to be more calm because the water isn't flowing anywhere. If it's a river the water will flow.

This tutorial gives you a good understand of how to make a relatively "complex" looking river:  http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/waterflow_imitation.php

The tutorial will show you how to make the river look a little clear and have motion in it as well.

Oceans are hard for me to make, but since ponds/lakes are relatively still you can just do blue and have movement around the edges like a little bit of shimmering or tiny little baby waves :3

[PypeBros]

that tutorial reads mostly as a scrolling to me ...

I'd point out the relative low frame rate of your animation as what makes it non-natural. If possible, ensure that the "waves" of your animation end up in a "disappearing" state (i.e. it makes sense not to have them anymore on the next frame).

I'd drop those little white dots right now: they only bring noise. Highlights on waves would imho have more convincing effect.

[Pizza Tom]

       

Not much of an update, haven't had much time to work on this. The above is just the same animation without the white.

To clarify, this is going to go on a river flowing downward... which it doesn't look like at all right now, so it needs a lot of work.

I'm not sure this direction is even worth pursuing, or if I should just go with a completely different style water, like this (but animated):



I fear that may be too much like a waterfall, but the only reference of in-game water I can seem to find is all waterfalls and oceans. I experimented with making more obvious waves, but it still looked too ocean-y.    I might just end up going with a more waterfall-like look, if only because the direction of movement is very clear (which is important to the gameplay).


EDIT:

Fleshed out the "waterfall" tile a bit, I'm thinking that'll be the direction I have to go with it after all.

[Pizza Tom]

Another update. Trying to go with a simpler style for the water, I don't want it to distract too much from the character and such. It's hard to find a balance between noisy texture and straight-up banding though..