Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: CodeCriminal on March 24, 2010, 11:21:58 pm
-
Hi all, just joined the forums after browsing for a few days :)
Im working on some sprites for a platform game i have to do for college. So far so good, but i would like, I guess, some C+C.
pretty much any advice you can give to help me improve them. Also, i would appreciate it very much if someone could povide advice on how to change the orientation of the head and still keep it looking 'nice'. for example I would like the head in the standing animation to face the viewer slightly instead staring straight to the right.. ehhh... yeah so here they are, animations and a part of the sheet.
Originals:
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_3b11625d-2c5e-d094-3db7-982d3be6e7c3.gif)(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_bd0674aa-f7ac-f624-d9e1-2d744621d18d.gif)(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_3da4d84e-3541-1514-2552-33e34ff2335c.gif)
(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/1218/spritesheetfinal.png)
Also, i want to simulate breathing with the stationary animation but I am finding it really difficult to pull it off. Any advice?
About the pony tail being all static and stuff in the running animation, yeah i tried to animate it but failed, unfortunatly I erased that so I cannot post it here.
Thanks Lots
PS: Working solely in MS paint if that means anything, however im using a program called gamemaker to view animations (I dont know of any other program that is as easy to create and view animations with)
UPDATE (25 - 26 March 2010):
Breathing -
v1 (http://gickr.com/results4/anim_3310df3e-ca4e-fb54-59f7-8cbc12e9c2ea.gif) (look closely if you cant see it :P )
Eh... yeah i dont like it..
Ok so ive been working on for the past hour or so a new animation that features my character (currently doesnt have a name) holding his sword in a stationary pose (avoiding working on my other animations :-[ ), could i get some C+C please, any changes I can make to make it look even better?
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_56cf0800-4e58-e9d4-11cf-049006edc049.gif)
Anyone got any ideas for a jumping/falling pose/animation? because im stumped.. :blind: Well, I know how i want the legs to behave during the jump/fall. I want him to kind of leap from one foot and as he approaches the climax of the jump he would have gradually reached a tuck and then as he falls his leaping leg will lower back down to land. But as far as the arms go, i have no idea what to do with them, i tried spanning them out but it just did not look right..
UPDATE - (29 March 2010)
Ok, so after hours of struggling to animate the running and idle animations one of them finally pulled through, beefmo's edit was an immense help and for that I thank you.
Ive also changed the skin palette ever so slightly (now the shadows are slightly pink, trying to achieve a more fleshy feel). The eye has been moved 1 pixel to the left and had its shading changed slightly, you can see it better if you zoom in.
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_512dc22b-cce2-1404-d9dc-d4aea5b70b28.gif)
Yeah, i know its not much of an update, but i wanted to let you guys know im still here :lol: im pretty slow at this, still learning quite alot (especially animation), but for a programmer i think im doing pretty well. :)
Very similar to how beefmo did his edit, except the right knee does not move to the left and the foot stays as is (i felt as though on beefmo's edit that this was quite a "dainty" way for the sprite to bend its legs).
I decided to keep the hair "static" and have only the pony tail move because it felt to much like sonic's spines from the sonic advance games (however I might try to move it slightly in an attempt to cover up the 1 pixel up/down motion), I want to keep the cuteness level at a distance with this sprite, even though he is chibi ::) . Another thing I noticed with beefmo's edit was that the arm seemed to just hang "limpley" (is that even a word? :blind: ) and I had to do something about that although im not to happy with my version of the arm now (I think it moves to drastically).
Thats it I think, The idle animation is deffinatly coming along but probably still needs work. So yeah, C+C please :crazy: Thanks!
PS: Those of you who have commented on my running animation, please do not think I am ignoring your advice, infact I am taking it in whole-heartedly. Only im struggling with the animation itself so I havent been able to post any updates on it, sorry. :-[
EDIT: Here is the idle animation with, what is my attempt at a suttle hair animation
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_d7bb3b30-d3c9-82d4-3de1-6c1cba63cd59.gif)
I actually prefer the non-moving hair, but yeah, im guessing most everyone here doesnt..
-
That looks nice. =)
Though I'd say the the arms look a little stiff. On the frames where his arm is swinging, I think if you made it go back/forward just a bit more would work wonders.
I like the little tail wag, btw. I don't know how to tell you to have it breathe+tail wag and still have it look presentable. I'm sure someone else here can help you with that. But I think this tutorial will help you out with breathing:
http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_breathing_life_into_sprites.php (http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_breathing_life_into_sprites.php)
-
That looks nice. =)
Though I'd say the the arms look a little stiff. On the frames where his arm is swinging, I think if you made it go back/forward just a bit more would work wonders.
I like the little tail wag, btw. I don't know how to tell you to have it breathe+tail wag and still have it look presentable. I'm sure someone else here can help you with that. But I think this tutorial will help you out with breathing:
http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_breathing_life_into_sprites.php (http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/sywtbapa_breathing_life_into_sprites.php)
Thanks :) I will be sure to rearrange the arms and see how it looks, I agree with you in the 'stiffness' of them I just couldnt identify the problem.
Checking out this web page thanks again.
-
I'm really liking the colors of your character!
I do think the running animation looks really stiff though. When doing the running animation for my character i found this image to be a really good reference and I think it'd fit well with your character! http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/43480.htm
Hope it helps: )
-
I'm really liking the colors of your character!
I do think the running animation looks really stiff though. When doing the running animation for my character i found this image to be a really good reference and I think it'd fit well with your character! http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/43480.htm
Hope it helps: )
Thanks :)
Yeah, trying to fix that now, I made the arms swing a little higher but no good, I think i need to insert another couple frames as said before.. easier said than done. Usually i have 8+ frames of animation where as here i only have 6 (it just turned out that way for some reason) to be honest i was hoping it wouldnt become a problem
-
I don't think your problem is the amount of frames you are using, my character only uses 6 and I think it works pretty well, you can check him out in my topic "minimalist platform characters" for some more refrence images if you want.
I think your character needs to lean more into his run and move his whole body where as now he is only really moving his arms and legs. Shoulders need to move back and forth as well as his head.
-
I don't think your problem is the amount of frames you are using, my character only uses 6 and I think it works pretty well, you can check him out in my topic "minimalist platform characters" for some more refrence images if you want.
I think your character needs to lean more into his run and move his whole body where as now he is only really moving his arms and legs. Shoulders need to move back and forth as well as his head.
:blind: heh yeah, so he does and yet it looks so smooth. Rotating the upper body around and leaning into the run is do-able I think, however rotating the head+hair around is not as easy for me (I think I asked if anyone could give me some tips/advice on doing so in the first post i made). Ill give it a shot though :P
-
haha thanks! Really? I'd find the shoulders and body way harder to animate than the hair haha maybe because my characters hair is just a yellow blob. I would try an edit on the hair for you but I'm not that good at pixel art so it'd take me a while and I really need to get to bed soon! All i do when I animate mine is move the hair a couple pixels forward and cut off the pixels too far forward and fill in the ones that are in back? That probably doesn't make any sense and I doubt it's too helpful haha
-
Ponytail edit
(http://www.game-designer.org/art/pixelart/edit/anim_3b11625d-2c5e-d094-3db7-982d3be6e7c3.gif)
-
Ponytail edit
(http://www.game-designer.org/art/pixelart/edit/anim_3b11625d-2c5e-d094-3db7-982d3be6e7c3.gif)
Thanks Gil, I dont mean to be rude and i appreciate your effort but the pony tail animation is a little off :(
It seems as though it 'waggles' with respect to some completely different force than the one that is applied to the hair and tail if you get me (in other words it waggles to much to slowly).
Thanks again.
Heres my first real attempt at breathing, obviously its a little off because the rest of the upper body doesnt move (I tried but the move isnt suttle enough). Any thoughts, suggestions, possible motivation for editing? :P
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_3310df3e-ca4e-fb54-59f7-8cbc12e9c2ea.gif)
Thanks
-
Imho, the key thing that makes him "stiff" while running is the lack of move of the shoulders. Also, it's a bit unnatural to see his hair still pointing forwards while running.
Frame 3 & 4 of the run also produce a surprising artefact as the same location is used first by the back arm and then by the foreground arm, making it look like a punch coming out of his stomach.
You can likely fix this by making the arm bend sooner.
-
Meh I made an edit not to proud of it but I like it when people post cool characters like this so I figured I should try and help out in order to keep those cool people around.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/runeditzebacoon3.gif) Also I experimented and made the passing frames leg delay which should add a nice snap when he is in the air frame.
Oh and I tried my hand at animating the pony tail but I'm not that good at it hopefully for both our sakes someone will see this thread and fix it and explain how they did.
-
Meh I made an edit not to proud of it but I like it when people post cool characters like this so I figured I should try and help out in order to keep those cool people around.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/runeditzebacoon3.gif) Also I experimented and made the passing frames leg delay which add should add a nice snap when he is in the air frame.
Oh and I tried my hand at animating the pony tail but I'm not that good at it hopefully for both our sakes someone will see this thread and fix it and explain how they did.
Thanks! :),
I really like how you animated the pony tail, just what i was looking for :P the running animation has a nice bounce to it too. However im not too keen on the arms, they look a bit too "care-free" which is not the direction i want to take the this character, id much rather keep the coolness about him :P
Thanks loads, going to begin editing the pony tail animation a bit so that it conforms with the shading :P
@PypeBros - Have tried to sort out the upper body based on your input, no luck as of yet, will post something for critique when im happy with it :)
PS: Erk... Mike could you send me the strip of frames, I dont have any software to open GIFs with, sorry.
-
Yep here you go
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/Zebracoonanimstrip.gif) I should've done this in promotion in the first place...
Also do you mean his arms are carefree because they swing up more? You can solve that but still have the pendulum effect you need so it doesn't look robotic. (although I think I put the arms highest position on the wrong frames hah) Just place the highest points the arms will go so they are low enough that should work. EEEEEHH I just realized I made the arm straight instead of maintaining the bend when its at its highest point. oops.
Oh and this should come in handy for you
http://web.archive.org/web/20070506060430/www.bigbluebubble.com/pixeltutorial/chapter15.htm
-
Had a little mess around with your dood trying to breathe a little more life into your idle animation. Exaggerated his breathing and added some extra bounce to him. Take from it what you will, but either way it was really fun messing around with him. Your little guy is really cool!
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss262/beefmo/chibidood.gif)
I must say theres definitely improvement in Mike's run edit, the erratic flailing of the tail seems.. well.. erratic :P Maybe if you smoothed the motion almost to the point of your tailwag, it would make it look more fluid and would definitely mesh with the edit Mike did to the ponytail.
I feel from your new avatar and the general bad arse'ness of this little guy he could do with a more dynamic run, something less generic.
But either way he's coming along and looking great! keep it up!
-
Had a little mess around with your dood trying to breathe a little more life into your idle animation. Exaggerated his breathing and added some extra bounce to him. Take from it what you will, but either way it was really fun messing around with him. Your little guy is really cool!
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss262/beefmo/chibidood.gif)
I must say theres definitely improvement in Mike's run edit, the erratic flailing of the tail seems.. well.. erratic :P Maybe if you smoothed the motion almost to the point of your tailwag, it would make it look more fluid and would definitely mesh with the edit Mike did to the ponytail.
I feel from your new avatar and the general bad arse'ness of this little guy he could do with a more dynamic run, something less generic.
But either way he's coming along and looking great! keep it up!
Haha! that looks awesome, so smooth (kinda jealous of your smooth animation skills :P ). not to keen on the way his right leg moves when bending, looks kinda "dainty" but the rest is awesome :P
About the run animation, yeah ive been trying for days now to get it to look just right through editing and im considering just starting from scratch, have him lean into the run more, have some upper body rotation and try out creating that "pendulum effect" Mike was talking about.. any suggestions for a dynamic run? because i was just going to do a sprint.
Anywho, im still spriting, this little guy, will make another update in the top post soon.
Thanks :)
@Beefmo - would you mind sending the strip of frames for that animation, I have no software to load GIF's with sorry
-
Wewps meant to post that too sorry ><
(http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss262/beefmo/chibidoodsheet.gif)
I had a nice reference run sprite that i ran across just before, but I seem to have lost it, I'll try to dig it up for you.
-
You could if you wanted to do the exact same movement for the tail as the hair with a few tweaks because the tail is more rigid. The tail would stay pretty stationary at the base but the further you along the tail you go the less rigid and the less attached it is to the main body. Though that is only if he completely relaxes the tail. I've seen cats run with their tails straight up and there is barely any overlapping action.
-
This is really minor, but his (foreground) arm snaps forwards really fast, and then the back one instantly catches up to it. You could probably get away with loosing a frame of it moving backwards in favor for a slight transition, as right now it kind of looks like hes doing a one two punch combo on the air in front of him.
-
Hm. There isn't much emphasis on any point in the running animation, so the legs look sort-of like they're peddling a bike, & the arms look flaily.
Running is sort-of like a series of leaps, or at least that's what it feels like. Emphasize the airborne bit. Quick edit -
(http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/xv8w1h0s/anim_3b11625d-2c5e-d094-3db7-982d3b.gif)(http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/xv8w1h0s/anim_3b-edit.gif)
original/edit
I duplicated the airborne frame, extended the leg a little (sloppily), & made the arms fixed for those two frames.
-
That's like a half step but totally a step in the right direction. If you're going to add that little snap! make sure you add some vertical bounce/sink to it, so there's an emphasized motion to go with the pause! otherwise the snap makes him look robotic ahaha : D
-
- Bump for update :P
Thank you all for your C+C I look forward to more :)
-
I think you shouldn't mind that it looks like Sonic's idle from Sonic Advance. Furthermore 100% of the time animations look better when they have overlapping action which means parts that move at different speeds.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/zebracoon_idle_hair.gif)
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/zebracoon_idle_hair_animstrip.gif)
Btw how are you exporting these into animated gifs and yet you can't animate gifs themselves? I can't imagine you have an easy time doing straight ahead animations like I did on the pony tail and now this idle. I have to constantly flip back and forth in order to figure out where the hair was going and where it came from.
-
Furthermore 100% of the time animations look better when they have overlapping action which means parts that move at different speeds.
Hmm thats interesting, I thought that everything that was animating had to be in in sync with the rest of the animation, just goes to show how much I know about animation haha. :)
Anywho, I am animating with a program called gamemaker (and no, Im not using it to make games, however I used to back when it was v5-6ish, so it is familiar to me) and creating the GIF's using http://gickr.com/ (http://gickr.com/) . First I draw an individual part of the animation (such as the breathing motion of the chest in my latest animation) in MS paint constantly loading small updates into gamemaker and then move onto the next individual part. rinse and repeat, I just find it easier that way.
Why shouldnt I mind having a sonic advance-esk hair animation? I prefer the stiff-ness of the hair (and ofcourse I could try to create "stiff-ness" aswell as having an animation as mentioned above in my update). But if you have a good reason as to why I should have floppy hair
Would just like to clarify something here, by "straight ahead" do you mean straight forward or simple? If so I dont understand your complaint having to "constantly flip back and forth in order to figure out where the hair was going.." Is that not a normal process then, could you maybe explain what you mean a little more?
Which graphics application are you using to load and save GIF animations, maybe i could use it too.
EDIT: Even though i disagree with having hair-motion for my sprite, here, I am the student and so I made the hair move in the animation (but i did it with suttlety, i think).
I followed the frames from yours and beefmo's hair animations, only i did not make changes to the hair between each frame as drastic.
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_d7bb3b30-d3c9-82d4-3de1-6c1cba63cd59.gif)
Edit2:
After playing a little with the hair (i.e. sticking the above hair animation on my idle-sword animation) I noticed that for that animation it looked really quite good but for the generic idle animation it looked pretty poor, curious as to why this was ocurring, I compared the 6 individual frames of both animations paying particular attention to the hair. After a few seconds I realized that the in the generic animation there was a "1 frame delay" in motion compared to the idle-sword animation, and decided to remedy that. I believe it now looks how it should but I am interested in what you guys think (just checking that Im not losing my marbles here :lol:)
original:
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_d7bb3b30-d3c9-82d4-3de1-6c1cba63cd59.gif)
edit:
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_54652e26-dbc8-6154-f9ab-8f1626c09cc5.gif)(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_3bde2f1e-671b-b2b4-2de4-f654e71aea2b.gif)
I suppose, the hair moving isnt so bad. Its actually kind of growing on me (especially on the idle-sword animation, now it looks 10x as awesome as it did :P).
Thanks!
-
I use Graphics Gale and sometimes I use pro-motion but I'll use anything that has onion skinning. I'm not as fluent with pro-motion though when I use that program I become very clumsy. I used to use Multimedia Fusion 2 for my animations because it uses onion skin and without it it's very hard to keep things accurate and animate with confidence.
And what I mean by straight ahead is not an insult at all lol. I mean straight ahead as opposed to pose to pose animation. Straight ahead animation means you have no guide frames whatsoever and just animate all willy nilly until you come up with something, for example. Did you ever use the edges of a page to animate something, that is straight ahead basically.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/vashers/FuegoFB_run.gif)
That is a straight ahead animation and it's especially easy to tell that because this run is 14 frames meaning each step is 7 frames. This is not at all how I would normally do it but I was just messing around with Flipnote studios on my DSi and that's how it turned out. I started from the first frame and just kept moving forward. Although after reaching frame 7 I realized I was done with a step so then I could use those frames to reference when drawing the next 7 frames.
However I don't suggest doing runs or walks or cycles like how I did, on the other hand you primarily use straight ahead animation for things you can't predict like the movement of hair and other loose bits of the character.
Oh and I'm think you should keep your characters hair floppy because it makes more sense and is more appealing to look at it. With animation you always want to be experiencing change otherwise it becomes lifeless.
Even a character with seemingly thick hair has a lot of bounce.
(http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4831/sorawisdomwalk.gif)
This is extremely slow in Firefox lol but still my point stands, you can see very nice movement in the hair even though it would seem very stiff.
Here is a handy list of rules that you can check off one by one in order to make your animation more "Full"
http://frankanollie.com/PhysicalAnimation.html
-
@Mike - I downloaded both graphics gale and pro motion and neither of them will let me load/save gifs without purchasing the full version, however the onion skinning is nice and I have used it before (a while back i think) so for animation I will probably continue to use graphics gale, but for shading and such I will just stick with paint for now (until I get used to graphics gale and then will probably move over to it).
straight ahead thingy - Ah! :lol: glad we cleared that up :)
I've decided to keep my characters hair animation, if you could check the post before this i made a slight edit to the hair and explain what I did and why.
The reason that characters hair in the animation you posted seems stiff is because it doesnt bend like the hair on my character, thats the only difference, if it bent from the tip to the root it would seem just as floppy. I could try not-bending my characters but I think I've fooled around enough with the Idle animations and I should really start moving forwards I have alot of work to do.
Thanks for the link, bookmarked :)
Ok, so yeah, now the reply is out the way, I've been working on another run cycle in graphics gale trying to animate a sprint. At the moment it has no arms, because everything I tried sucked, but I will try, try and try again with the aid of the past and future posts here :).
(http://gickr.com/results4/anim_7e67e10a-4672-7994-4d43-adfc8664583b.gif)(ok maybe its not quite a sprint, but thats fine.. All I really want is advice on how to pollish it up some more)
I think I hit the mark and followed what people had said, then again I thought my first running animation was ok but everyone seems to be able to find flaws in it so I'm posting this one here to be judged and ridiculed. :lol:
Once I get the sprint animation down I will try and translate it to my actual sprite. After thats done I have jumping, attacking, climbimg, and so on. So yeah lots of work+learning to be done, expect more updates until the whole sheet is finished.
-
That run...dude...it's perfect...nearly. I think their needs to be more vertical bounce. When he is off the ground you can really exaggerate how much air he gets. Right now the bounce seems a bit too little. That amount of bounce is usually for a walking woman. So says Richards Williams that is. The energy is good and the spacing is good and it totally fits with your character. I see nothing you need to change about the overall movement. Because you didn't start with everything you are free to have the arms however you want. You could even have him dragging his sword.
The best part about this animation is how well the feet follow arcs, you can really see and feel the rotation of the feet as he runs. Some may say you need more in-betweens but I think right now from what I can see it looks great. Are you going to make this game in Game maker? Because I make all my games in a similar program called Multimedia Fusion 2(cost money) nothing wrong with it I say.
Oh and the approach you took on animating the hair is a nice compromise PLUS it will be easier to animate the character overall if you keep the flowy bits movement to a minimum.
Anyway looking forward to seeing more!!
-
You could try Jasc Animation Shop.
It's old but (should be) free. And IMO it's pretty good for animation testing.
-
Can someone please tell me how you copy the animations? When I copy them it only seems to copy one frame, thanks
Des_Zac
-
You don't copy gifs, you have to save them by right clicking and going to "save image as" and then save it.
Not sure why you are using this thread to ask that...