Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: drax013 on March 12, 2018, 05:54:41 pm

Title: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 12, 2018, 05:54:41 pm
Its really basic and I know it needs a lot of work but im just happy that nothing is really out of place per frame LOL.

(https://i.imgur.com/lzhgaOh.gif)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: MysteryMeat on March 13, 2018, 05:13:55 am
Honestly for a first go it's pretty good, you've managed to keep the mass mostly consistent and there's no major errors I can see. If I had to point at anything to fix it'd be the shrinking highlight, instead try having it stretch out a bit with the spread as the material flattens slightly.

Try something more complex next time!
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 13, 2018, 06:50:26 pm
So I tried again with what I'm hoping is a slightly better animation and did as suggested with the highlight

(https://i.imgur.com/rSmt90R.gif)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: MysteryMeat on March 13, 2018, 07:51:19 pm
Kinda worse in every way, making it transparent here doesn't seem like a great idea. Or at the very least, not THAT transparent.
The base shouldn't be a perfect circle from the blobby shape currently implied, and you seem to have taken away so much of the squish effect taht it's barely even a pulse anymore. Go back a bit.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 13, 2018, 07:57:23 pm
 well shoot   :-[  i was trying for a better forward motion and was thinking of using the original more as a side motion but, that is the nature of learning. I will continue tweaking it.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 13, 2018, 08:57:32 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/a5SGWHb.gif)

tried to combine the 2.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: Curly on March 13, 2018, 09:29:00 pm
It makes more sense now :)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 14, 2018, 05:35:36 pm
Thanks I think I like this one!
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 15, 2018, 06:55:41 pm
So here is a side motion for the same slime. all are still very basic, any suggestions on what I could attempt to add to give them a little more "life" is very appreciated!

(https://i.imgur.com/e58hkOo.gif)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: MysteryMeat on March 15, 2018, 07:54:10 pm
shadow bouncing too much, shouldn't lift off the ground there
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 15, 2018, 08:11:22 pm
I wasn't trying for bounce   :-\  but now that you mention it it dose look bouncy. I was just trying to elongate and shrink the shadow as the slime stretched out a bit.... hmmmm
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: eishiya on March 15, 2018, 08:17:25 pm
Try drawing your slime relative to a floor (perhaps with a simple checkerboard pattern) in the same perspective/projection as the game environment. It's harder to make believably motion without context, which is probably why you ended up with it looking like a bounce - the slime's not consistently attached to any sort of ground/floor.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 15, 2018, 08:32:01 pm
that is a great idea! i will attempt it later today. My perspective is 3/4 view rpg style game so i will see what I can do
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: eishiya on March 15, 2018, 08:36:39 pm
In a 3/4 view, we'd be seeing as much of the top of the character as of their side. Your slime views all look closer to side view than 3/4 view, so that's something to work on.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 15, 2018, 11:28:41 pm
noted! ya i have been having a hard time getting the view right. either it looks like its from the side or to much from the top  :yell:
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 15, 2018, 11:55:32 pm
did a really quick mock up, is this a better angle?
(https://i.imgur.com/rbiQfqB.png)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: eishiya on March 16, 2018, 12:01:20 am
I think it's a better angle, but it feels rather top-down rather than 3/4. It could work if the slime is meant to have very little height.

Can you get your hands on some putty? Sculpting it in 3D that you can easily hold in your hands and rotate might help you get a better feel for how the slime should look in 3/4 and in other angles. With any object, being able to conceptualise it in 3D helps a lot with drawing it at any angle.

Another exercise that could also help is drawing the slime's "footprint" in 3/4 view (so if the slime were circular, the footprint would be an oval rather than a circle), and then building up the rest of the slime on top of that. You could also try drawing simpler 3D forms in 3/4 view to get a feel for working with that projection and thinking in 3D before moving on to more complex, compound shapes like that slime. Drawing amorphous forms is actually quite challenging, and isn't a great starting point.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 16, 2018, 12:07:34 am
yes I can get a hold of some modeling clay, and will.  being a slime its not supposed to be to big but not tiny or flat either... The foot print idea is also very helpful and I will give that a try as well. That all being said this is not intended to be a monster but a playable character. From all the ones I have seen via google searches and spriters it seems like  most playable characters are closer to a side view? but not actually a side view....   :blind:
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: eishiya on March 16, 2018, 03:06:47 pm
Are you looking at side-view games or 3/4 games? Don't rely on Google to tell the difference.
Plus, a lot of artists simply get it wrong, since 3/4 isn't a common angle for humans to see the world from xP When people post their 3/4 sprites for critique, almost always the main critique is that they accidentally did a side-view. It makes sense that they would, we're all used to seeing people from the side/eye-level.
It's true that 3/4 characters are usually drawn with the camera actually a little bit lower (this is the case even for environment objects, not just characters) since that usually looks better, but if it's too low, then the characters look like they're lying on the ground rather than standing on it. This is an issue seen even in some published games, and can easily happen as the result of the characters being drawn in isolation from the environment. Always work with a mockup instead of drawing elements on their own.
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 16, 2018, 05:58:28 pm
 sound advice. I tried the foot print idea you gave me and while the do look better i kind of feel like I just made eggs with eyes  :-[, adding a background tile did seem to help a little too.

  (https://i.imgur.com/s8tbfqs.png)
I am trying to do something a little different than the regular slime look....

here is the one I did after making a clay model of the slime. This one came out pretty good i think!! The model really did help!
(https://i.imgur.com/eREnaja.png)

 Here are some of the things I was looking at for reference...
(https://i.imgur.com/xGMew4x.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/MeyaNzU.png)
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: ErekT on March 21, 2018, 01:47:29 pm
For the animation, try some slow-in/slow-out to bring it to life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQBFsTqbKhY
Title: Re: [ C+C ] first animation attempt
Post by: drax013 on March 21, 2018, 08:23:47 pm
Thanks for the video!!