Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Roach on January 25, 2016, 04:04:50 am
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I've been working on this attack animation for so long now.
(http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb417/spaghettiman666/Knight%20attack_zpsye85twb8.gif)
I took a video of me preforming this swing as a reference, and tried to copy the movements I saw here.
I haven't added motion blur to the sword yet because, I am honestly not quite sure how to do it. If any one can explain to me motion blur techniques that would be nice, such as how to properly trail the sword.
Criticism to improve would be appreciated. I think the way he turns is kind of off.
Here is the full animation so far.
(http://i1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb417/spaghettiman666/Knight%20draw2_zpsys5nqjzt.gif)
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There's no real impact to the swing. It looks almost as if he's slapping someone and a sword is following his hand. His body needs to twist a lot more, and have a bit more follow through.
I'd say take a look at some of the early Fire Emblem animations, as they remind me of the kind of style/animation you're looking for.
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No idea how realistic it would be for a knight but have u considered the sword can come out and attack in one motion like a samurai?
The sheath would be angled horizontally and the slash would perhaps go up a bit and across.
I thought about this for my knight but i cant rly squeeze in a sheath at his height size lol
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@ Rosier, I think the reason maybe it looks like that is because of the lack of motion blur. I haven't added any in yet, because I am currently studying motion blurs trying to figure out the best way to do it. Or it could be my frames are messed up, Not quite sure.
@ Decroded, Yeah I actually have considered this, but I would need to move the sheath to the opposite side of his hip for it to be a natural movement.
I could probably try and move the sheath to his other hip and attempt this, but I've spent so long making his draw animation, it would probably kill me on the inside to get rid of it lol.
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It would help us to see how you swung the sword in your video. If you swung it poorly, then just drawing your own swing won't look very good. It lacks not only weight but strength. You don't swing a sword with your arm but with your whole body
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The sword draw has a cool snappiness to it, and the motion blur works pretty well I think. The unsheathing itself seems like a very counter-intuitive way to go about it though. It's cool if you're going for a lovable fool-type knight, like pretty much any knight in Monty Python-sketches. But if not, you should probably put the scabbard on the opposite hip imo.
I think a big reason the swing itself looks more like a wave than a swing is because the motion is evenly distributed; not enough anticipation and follow through. There's a video that describes this principle really well here if you wanna take a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8OtE60T8yU
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Just a tip, but motion blur never makes an animation have more impact, motion blur is just a fancy effect that can be fun to play around with.
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I think one of the problems was I had too many frames during the direct attack, which seemed to make it look like a weaker and slower hit.
(http://i.imgur.com/YEn7V3q.gif)
I deleted some frames so it looks more instantaneous.
It seems a lot of people don't get that drawing from the right hip was a viable and historical option for carrying your sword, so I might just give in and change it to the left. :crazy:
@Friend, I did swing normally, it's mostly my failure to animating.
@ErekT, Thank you for your feedback, The unsheathing is supposed to be a representation of an English longswordsman style. They commonly wore their longswords on the right side of the hip. I am really tempted to change it now though because it seems a lot of people I show this to question it as well.
I'll probably need to make a lot of changes through the whole thing.
idk this is hard lol.
I just need to practice animation more.
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here's a great read to focus on improving your animation skills- http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/ (http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/)
in the article are "12 key principles" of animation that are applied to Darkstalkers. Out of the 12, 2, 5, 6 and 9 seem most relevant to what you could improve on.
"2.) Anticipation: this is the build up before the release of the action. Since this telegraphs movement, you can’t have too much of this in a video game as inputs should be fairly instantaneous."
in your sprite, there's no anticipation that hes about to swing the sword. he just does it. like it says, a game attack needs to be fairly instantaneous, but anticipation could literally be milliseconds and still be incredibly powerful, especially when you take liberty to exaggerate.
"5.) Followthrough and overlapping action: This mostly pertains to things that trail the main action like clothing, hair, bouncing breasts etc, think of it as the aftermath of the main action. The Vampire games are good about this. DarkStalkers is one of the first games I can recall that has any followthrough animation at all."
I feel the scabbard's weight is not portrayed well and could help sell the weight of the swing if you consider how the scabbard would react. i think it would flap up slightly.
"6.) Slow In Slow Out: This refers to changing the spacing and timing of actions so they’re not totally uniform and flat...The frame padding in Vampire is very expertly done to give weight to the moves. Fierce attacks tend to have alot of frame padding, giving them a very meaty feeling. They looked and FELT stronger than weak attacks. (http://art-eater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/victor-kick.gif) Oh and I almost forgot to mention, another thing the Darkstalkers games do well is the characters tend to lead their actions with their shoulders and hips...This is supremely important for imparting impact. It’s a basic principle of martial arts that your power comes from your core. Alot of animation still does not utilize this principle. Many 3d games have animations where the characters lead with their extremeties rather than their body, leading to a feeling of a marionette on strings. (http://art-eater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/felicia-fp.gif)
i think number 6 is one of the big ones. you need to consider timing of the swing. i just did your swing in my room (albiet i generated more power by leading the action with my hips and core strength as is described). when i did the swing, i noticed a very brief startup, then a huge explosion of acceleration generated by the pelvus/core and this speed followed most of arc the swing. then lastly was a quick cooldown period directly after the explosion that followed into the very very end of the arc to maintain a smooth and balanced motion.
9.) Timing: This refers to the speed of an animation. Timing helps to establish physical properties such as weight, velocity and force. Timing is also important to acting. A character who is depressed might move very slowly with a lot of inertia. A character that’s scared might make fast, jumpy motions. Timing can be very abstract. A humorous animation could be said to have good comedic timing.
this reinforces number 6. rethink timing to go with the intended power.
lastly, i think youre being too safe. you may discover that you could exaggerate and hyperbolize like mad and actually develop an animation that looks MORE natural than less.
(http://art-eater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/QBee.gif) the stretching looks ridiculous, but when you see the actual attack, the timing, followthrough and other elements make it look a lot more natural than you'd expect!
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@Friend, Incredible information! I think the main thing I was focusing on, was just trying to get the basic anatomy down of the positions, and not really actually focusing on trying to replicate a real swing. I will try and apply these tips.
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Just a tip, but motion blur never makes an animation have more impact, motion blur is just a fancy effect that can be fun to play around with.
i just wanted to comment that i personally completely disagree with this. :blind: in fact i think motion blur is a great tool to sell impact because it can be used to greatly emphasize the contrast between the motion itself and the sudden halt of impact. for instance, the sprites below. in the kick you see the contrast between the heavy motion blur leading into the halt of impact. (http://art-eater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/victor-kick.gif)
in the scratch in the other sprite, the motion blur actually signals the start of impact of the scratch against the skin of whoever is being scrathed
(http://art-eater.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/felicia-fp.gif)
blur could also be used to signal that something has been impacted with force. for instance, say you have a friend standing in front of you with their back turned. you run full speed at them and drop kick them in the back of the neck. if your drop kick game is strong, then your friend might fly head first to the ground in a blur of motion because of the sudden action of force upon a still figure
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I would say that motion blur is probably an essential tool of the pixel animator, because usually framerates are so low that it's hard to make large movements smooth without increasing the number of tweens, which would slow the animation down. I wouldn't call it a fancy effect at all.
However, I have found it's useful to determine a project-wide threshold for when you use motion blur, so that you aren't just blurring the smallest of movements. Pick a distance/time (speed = pixels moved/framecount) that motion blur will kick in, and stick to it. I actually think that's a problem with the kicking lavender man that friend posted, the arms moving back actually seem faster than the leg because they are skipping a distance without blurring (showing a tween which does not exist) whereas the actual kick itself is blurred and thus less fast.