Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Shipright on August 31, 2015, 04:14:17 am

Title: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on August 31, 2015, 04:14:17 am
Greetings! I am trying to finalize my player character by making sure the basic animations work. I have found myself having to increase the resolution of the base sprite to get the game details I want and thus have had to up my animation game to work with larger and more complicated sprites. Here is the evolution of my player character:

(http://i.imgur.com/6rk0tPP.png)

And here is the first walk animation I made any my attempt at replicating it with the more detailed sprite:

(http://i.imgur.com/FvodJyn.gif) and... (http://i.imgur.com/ee9qpnW.gif)

The new one seems a bit choppy for me and I think it might be the head bob. I wanted to give some upper body movement but swinging arms and bobbing chest both didn't work out so I went with the head and arms moving up and down a bit. Should I lose it?

Sorry for the change in image size/style, I recently switched from Aesprite to PyxelEdit. Any thoughts and critiques appreciated. I want to get this one down before moving on to the other directions.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on August 31, 2015, 07:33:06 am
So I went ahead and played with the run animation as well. I feel this still looks rough. There is a lot of overlap of limbs and body here and I am only playing with a two color sprite presently so I color coded the limbs to make tracking the movements easier. Again here is old and new side by side:

(http://i.imgur.com/ruVOKBC.gif) and... (http://i.imgur.com/C4NiT4M.gif)

Again any thoughts would be helpful, I am brand new to this!
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: pistachio on August 31, 2015, 08:10:27 am
1st thought:

(http://i.imgur.com/qHRT8ei.png)

Crits:
The run is as slow as the walk, almost feels like it's on the moon. Cut out 2 frames or increase the FPS to fix that.
Arms could swing further back unless you were going for foreshortened movement (which reads pretty wonky flatshaded and at low res).

Aside from this basically all it needs is some shoulder and hip rotation to get rid of the superbros-like flatness. Depends how you want to evolve this. ;)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 01, 2015, 06:41:38 am
Thanks for the input Pistachio!

So here are it is again after some feedback modifications:

(http://i.imgur.com/cQ8LJH3.gif)

I added rotation to both left and right shoulder in sync with the arms, and added horizontal movement to the collar bones. I think when combined with the chest bounce it suggests athletic movement pretty well. I also extended the right arm back a pixel to exaggerate that movement just a bit. And no more moon walking, the frame rate has been sped up to 80fps from the 120 of the walk animation.

I am having some trouble with the hip rotation. I see why it needs to be there and agree wholeheartedly but I have tried a few variations and nothing satisfies me thus far. Does anyone have any advise on how to approach this?

Also for context this is for a ARPG isometric type dungeon crawler. This was originally intended to be one of four directions covering down/down right/right but I am leaning towards the full eight orientations now so this would be down right.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 07, 2015, 06:38:16 pm
Hey guys! I got some work done over the weekend.

First off so I had some context on what the other directions would look like I went ahead and defined the stand positions in all eight directions. I can tell there is something off on on the Left Up/Down and Right Up/Down positions. I can't quite put my finger on it but I think it has to do with the arms and arm gaps. I am also not quite happy with the Left and Right poses. I tried to rotate them as far as I could without them becoming too skinny. Also with just the two colors its hard to define the arms against the body. Of course I could add a color...

(http://i.imgur.com/RFEHtU6.gif)

And from there I started on some of the other direction walk animations.

(http://i.imgur.com/wGSkU3P.gif)   (http://i.imgur.com/hJZS4iz.gif)

I am sure these are far from perfect. As always any comments are greatly appreciated.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 09, 2015, 07:51:43 am
New and improved walk and run animations. I incorporated hip movement into added appropriately scaled (I hope) feet to both. On the walk the arms now swing and there were some minor changes to the legs. I think I am headed in the right direction, please let me know!

(http://i.imgur.com/xJ9v7lj.gif)   (http://i.imgur.com/apQGzDw.gif)

Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on September 09, 2015, 08:13:54 am
No one walks with their feet so far spread apart, as in the down/up walking animations.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 10, 2015, 06:20:28 am
I agree, thanks for the feedback. Its hard to see some of the obvious when you have been staring at the same pixels all night. Below is a slight modification with each leg moved one pixel for a 40% reduction in separation. I tried to go another pixel but that narrowed the hips the sprite looked feminine. I will remember that if/when I get around to a female graphic.

(http://i.imgur.com/Mr7tvB7.gif)   (http://i.imgur.com/IUqlHVq.gif)

Better?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 13, 2015, 08:36:51 am
The latest and greatest. If there are no serious errors pointed out I say I finally have an entire animation series complete!

(http://i.imgur.com/9hYn27r.gif)

Thoughts?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on September 13, 2015, 04:13:43 pm
That seems about right yeah. There's a million more things you could change of course, but that looks solid enough to me.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 15, 2015, 05:41:58 am
Thanks Gil. Yeah I am nitpicking myself to death. On that vein...

(http://i.imgur.com/D2w71Wm.png)

When working on the rest of the run directions the right/left was bothering me and I figured out it was the head. I can only turn the body so much without losing all detail but the head  can be completely rotated amd I left it the same as the down right/left and this didn't differentiate things enough. So with that said I tried to rotate the head fully but I am stuck. I can't settle on anything for the right and left.

So above is what I have plus some options I have played with. Everything I do makes it look like a robot. Anyway, does anyone have a preference?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on September 15, 2015, 02:15:57 pm
First or second probably works best. Clusters seem a bit better on the first, I'd go with that.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 28, 2015, 07:11:18 pm
So I shifted focus a bit so there is something else in world to compare things to perspective wise. Ended up with this guy!

(http://i.imgur.com/8P3FGv1.gif)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on September 29, 2015, 06:45:15 am
More progress...

(http://i.imgur.com/m656NL8.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/VEtHqjO.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/VggYwSg.gif)
(http://i.imgur.com/FRA0VU2.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/Be0NjhJ.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/2ZPJ78z.gif)
(http://i.imgur.com/nDhEf3X.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/Gk8A7mH.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/0NGKSxT.gif)


Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on October 05, 2015, 03:57:29 am
And the walk cycle. Well, hop cycle for this guy anyway...

(http://i.imgur.com/gcI5Ydj.gif)

And a death. I didn't think it was necessary to do eight direction death animations so there will just be this one for S-->NE, and a mirror for N-->SW.

(http://i.imgur.com/j85AbhS.gif)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Conzeit on October 05, 2015, 08:53:20 pm
shouldnt the bunny belly be 2 pixels wide when he lies down dead? it kinda looks like he was made of paper all along and flattened or something

hadnt really replied cause you seem to be going pretty strong, nice style and solid animations dont wanna nitpick too much and take that rythm out of ya
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on October 06, 2015, 01:45:40 am
The idea was to show a bit of perspective as he is falling away from the camera. So in a sense he is falling down like a billboard but can't have him be as thick as when he is standing upright.

Thank you for the kind words. And please point out anything you see. I may not agree or take it onboard but knowing how others see things is a great help.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on October 06, 2015, 11:46:07 am
I agree with Conceit, I think most people aren't answering because this is just solid good. Nothing yet that draws a crowd, but nothing wrong that draws people to help out. It's an unfortunate thing we've noticed before on the site. So, don't fear, we're all watching this and going "good job", this just isn't the forum where you just post "good job" posts :)

In any case, good job ;)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on October 15, 2015, 06:11:27 am
Thank you for the kind words!

Working on a deer.

(http://i.imgur.com/lVC7t0r.png)

With larger animals I have found you can't spitball anatomy as much. This ended up bigger than I wanted so it will probably become a moose. I was going for the European fallow deer. I need to shave two pixels off the height and shorten the length a bit. I like the shape for realism but I will probably stylize it a bit to fit with the other sprites.

In any case I hope that by having the anatomy incorporated from the beginning I can speed up animation.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on October 24, 2015, 07:06:38 pm
So I was able to set some time aside this weekend to further refine the deer:

(http://i.imgur.com/0FlOa0J.png)

What do you think? I feel I have the size just right based on my sources.

Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on October 26, 2015, 02:19:15 pm
Be careful with those lines hugging the edge, like the highlight on the fur, they create banding. In this case, I don't even think you need that highlight.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on October 30, 2015, 06:37:50 am
Are you referring to the highlight along the back?

I am not familiar with the term "banding," can you explain it?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: yaomon17 on October 30, 2015, 07:02:13 am
http://www.pixel.schlet.net/
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 03, 2015, 06:21:06 am
Wow, I hadn't realized how long I've been away from this stuff. Finally got some time to pick things back up.

So I went ahead and animated the deer:

(http://i.imgur.com/ObDAGmK.gif)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 05, 2015, 10:53:49 pm
I'm on a roll! A doe and a fawn. With buck for comparison.

(http://i.imgur.com/ObDAGmK.gif)(http://i.imgur.com/aedpF45.gif)(https://i.imgur.com/LwAUNzx.gif)

I am not happy with the doe. Its a resize of the buck but something is off with the proportions. I wanted it smaller than the buck (real doe are about 20% smaller). I am thinking it needs its length reduced a pixel or maybe the legs are too long. Thoughts?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on December 06, 2015, 02:53:26 pm
I would give the buck a bit more posture. Raise the neck up higher, make it seem a bit cocky. Bucks can be really majestic and I'd like to see that a bit in yours.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 09, 2015, 05:11:49 am
That will be the case for one of the idle (the other being grazing) and alert animations.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 28, 2015, 02:01:38 am
Some more work on the deer. This is a combination of all the animations I have done for it including a walk cycle, default pose, a series of idles, and an alert pose.

Gil, I put more posture in the default and alert to capture that majestic arrogance bucks sometimes have.

(http://i.imgur.com/p29g9Yq.gif)

And I started working on something new:

(http://i.imgur.com/MwO1VT3.png)

Thoughts? Good enough to start animating?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on December 28, 2015, 06:38:40 am
Majestic pose looks good. For the bears, I would also make a deault pose where all four limbs are visible, poses where two of the limbs cover the other two EXACTLY are very static and fake looking in nature, so I would never have the game rest at that point.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 28, 2015, 08:13:07 am
Yeah makes sense. I'll fix that.

Worked through a run cycle for the deer. It was easier than I though since deer don't alternate gaits when running so only 10 frames (vice 12 for walking).

(http://i.imgur.com/82MkNiL.gif)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 29, 2015, 03:38:45 am
And just trucking along...

(http://i.imgur.com/k4xhah9.png)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Conzeit on December 29, 2015, 06:37:39 pm
normally with your sprites  the  S/w s/e n/w n/e views dont look weird, cause they're bipeds, but the  S/w s/e are looking weird, the face is obviously not from that projection. The n/w n/e legs are also looking weird, they dont connect like you would expect for that perspective, I dont know what rationale you used to incline the lines there but it looks off
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on December 29, 2015, 07:10:40 pm
The lines used are isometic, one pixel for up and two pixels for over. Maybe it follows too closely? Is the back too straight?

(http://gas13.ru/v3/tutorials/b1.gif)

I think the issue with the head in the SW/SE is that the further antler should be higher to suggest it is further back. I'll play with that and see if it hels.

Can you clarify what you mean about the legs? Their offset from front to back falls directly on isometric grid square lines. Do you mean the spacing between front and back pairs?

(http://i.imgur.com/i83yx66.png)
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on January 07, 2016, 06:55:51 am
I am working on the other walking directions of the deer, it is tedious and time consuming. To keep myself moving I switched to something else tonight.

(http://i.imgur.com/1PaKCi6.gif)

Its supposed to be an osprey, and sized to be able to stand on my player characters shoulder or arm. I would like to do a series of birds off this base. My question to you all is how does this read? Does it look like a bird of prey to you or just a glorified chicken/seagull?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Gil on January 07, 2016, 02:32:45 pm
It doesn't read very bird of prey yet, but I don't see how you could improve on that really. I feel like the problem is the beak. The black forehead and black beak kind of meld together, I would really highlight the beak as that's what screams predator to me.

A second point is shoulder or arm. Bird on shoulder = pirate, bird on arm = always hunting bird. If you manage to get the bird on my character's arm, even if it looks like a parrot, I'll still think hunting bird.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on January 08, 2016, 02:06:26 am
It doesn't read very bird of prey yet, but I don't see how you could improve on that really. I feel like the problem is the beak. The black forehead and black beak kind of meld together, I would really highlight the beak as that's what screams predator to me.

I think that may just be an issue with the Osprey in particular due to its color scheme. I was going for an easily recolorable sprite so I could bash out flavor art real quick and that color scheme (gray and black) was easy to create a pallet for. Here is the same sprite but colored and slightly modified to be a Harris Hawk:

(http://i.imgur.com/TNxvjZp.gif)

Does that improve the read? Here it is with the player character for size. The sprite is about 1.6ft tall in game scale.

(http://i.imgur.com/aXpWHV0.gif)

Quote
A second point is shoulder or arm. Bird on shoulder = pirate, bird on arm = always hunting bird. If you manage to get the bird on my character's arm, even if it looks like a parrot, I'll still think hunting bird.

I didn't think about that and its a really good point. This is still 100% an art project but since form follows function the in game RPG rational is that these would be hyprid pets/equipment. Some birds would act as passive stat boosters that are equipped to the shoulders slot. Parrot gives charisma, Raven gives constitution, owl gives intelligence, etc. Other birds would be more like weapons and be equiped to an arm slot, and they could be actively used for some utility as a glorified Zelda boomerang such as the Osprey being able to get to deep water fish spots without a boat, the Harris Hawk can be used to hunt small animals without spooking them, etc. Then the bigger eagles can be actual offensive weapons verse mobs.

That's where I am coming from.

Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on January 08, 2016, 08:13:52 am
A larger template for an eagle, with what I hope is an obvious species selection :)

(http://i.imgur.com/6AJgdQk.gif)

I know I am messing up the shading. I just am not good at it yet. The only thing that makes me able to tolerate it is that eventually I will remove all the shading anyway and apply int with a matching normal map when I put these into an engine.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on February 10, 2016, 07:04:36 am
I found some motivation to return to my player character. This is one of three idles, the "winded" one intended to act as a visual cue to the player that their stamina is significantly depleted.

(http://i.imgur.com/hAoLLa1.gif)

I found this far easier to do then a mild normal idle so I pushed forward and will work backwards from here. Which doesn't mean I did a good job so critique away! The third idle will be an exhausted animation for when stamina is gone and will served during what I imagine would me a movement penalty.

I also experimented with adding a mouth. It won't always be there but I intend to use it for exaggerated expressions like gasping for air here or maybe a warcry and such.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Roach on February 16, 2016, 08:56:33 am
his traps shouldn't expand with his breath.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on February 20, 2016, 09:37:24 pm
Aren't those on your back?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Roach on February 20, 2016, 10:05:16 pm
no your traps are the sides of your neck, lats are your back.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on February 22, 2016, 05:23:25 am
There are two trapezius apparently, I was thinking of the larger one across your shoulder blades. Anyway, NECK, movement on the neck.

What are you thinking? The neck is only two pixels wide, maybe expand it to four for the two frames at max inhalation?
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Roach on February 22, 2016, 12:24:19 pm
I dont think it should expand at all. The rest of the motion is fine but the neck expansion kind of throws me off because Your neck doesn't expand like that when you breathe in real life. You already have good emphasis on the shoulders.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Shipright on February 23, 2016, 05:31:11 am
I think you mean the shoulder blades, the neck remains two pixels the whole animation unless it's covered by the chin. That's the shoulders rolling back. I hear you but the upper body looks static without that.
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: DreCorp on February 28, 2016, 03:30:18 pm
Hey there Shipright, just wanted to give you thumbs up for the great work you doing.

Keep it up! :D
Title: Re: Player Character Animations
Post by: Roach on March 16, 2016, 08:56:34 am
I haven't seen an update in too long! I really hope you didn't quit, watching your progress filled me with inspiration.  :'(