Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Madgarden on January 27, 2007, 07:56:41 am
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Hi there. Sorry I haven't posted on here for a looong while, but I really haven't been pixeling. I'm trying to get back into it now for some game projects, and so I'm currently working on a little 4-shade greyscale Bruce Lee character for a Kung Fu Master type of thing. Without further ado...
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/bruces.png)
They are Return of the Dragon and a Fist of Fury Bruces. ;)
I realize they're small and not very complicated, but I'd be greatful for any critique you can offer, especially on the anatomy and shading.
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<3 <3 <3
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That is one super snazzy piece there.
The pose for starters. is just brilliant. You've got Bruce down to a 't'.
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(http://www.locustleaves.com/bruces.gif)
contrast issues, some aa on the belt and white speculars just nitpicks. Great GREAT encapturement of the character, wonderful little hand gestures. Perfect. Bruce Lee is Master.
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(http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/258/bleecy6.png)
Kinda reminds me of something :lol:
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Not with that top on it doesn't.
Anyway, it looks great.
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Thank ye!
Nice edit Helm, especially the shinies. I was wondering how to go about that.
Now hopefully the next frame won't take me another 3 hours... :-\
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I really think it would be nice to invest into a bruce lee style for the forum?
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I've been working on the walk animation... not done yet, but in the meantime, I've also updated the stance sprite. It's looking less chibi and even more Brucey, at least that's what I'm going for:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/bruce.png)
The walk animation should be done sooner than later, after which I'll do jumping and crouching.
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Oh hell yes. That's smooth. Not much to comment on, expect how much I like it.
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Badass.
The grey folds on black pants look somewhat off, but it probably looks better that way then using the dark grey to highlight the pants.
(http://i7.tinypic.com/4chzol3.png)
... Yeah. :lol:
Nice work! :y:
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Ooh, I really like how you did those pants. The folds are great, and the wasteband. Too bad, as you say, the pants are black. Bruce wouldn't wear grey pants... just not happening. ;)
OK, I think this is my final stance update. I just can't stop tweaking the crap out of it. Hey, gotta learn somehow, right?
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/bruce2.png)
I've adjusted the stance to tilt the hips the way Bruce is usually seen doing, and adjusted the lead arm to help expose the lat a bit, and not look quite so bent.
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having highlights on the inside of the pants just looks stupid. bruce lee wouldnt honestly care if you gave him grey pants with black shadows.
not many things are 100% black, highlights would appear grey like the following:
(http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000EZJ7NM.01-A2LOVRVZ5R8C38._AA280_SCLZZZZZZZ_V66832627_.jpg)
i suggest you look at junkboys edit again.
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That's a really good looking sprite. It would look better if you make him pose in the dragon stance. And keep that stance to looking correct.
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Feron, I suppose you're right. I'll play around with junkboy's ideas, but I'd like to keep the pants as dark as possible. All of the foreground objects will require black outlining and highlights to make them stand out from the background.
Andy, I'm more or less following this stance of Bruce's: http://ppc.warhawkenterprises.com/brucelee/brucerodtwobattle.jpg
I'm not sure what a "dragon stance" is, but I am familiar with a variety of stances (cat stance, horse stance, female stance, etc.) and none of the traditional kung fu stances really match what Bruce uses.
[EDIT]
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/bruce3.png)
Yea, those pants are really growing on me. Dang, looks nice. Now I have to figure out how to incorporate those nice folds into my walking frames... :ouch:
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What I really meant was a "suggestion". Heh, didn't have to use my advice.
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Andy, I'm more or less following this stance of Bruce's: http://ppc.warhawkenterprises.com/brucelee/brucerodtwobattle.jpg
that photo's quality is not great - but they pants are toward the top, where the light hits them.
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I'm not sure what a "dragon stance" is, but I am familiar with a variety of stances (cat stance, horse stance, female stance, etc.) and none of the traditional kung fu stances really match what Bruce uses.
[offtopic]Didn't Bruce make up his own style or something?[/offtopic]
This is nice.
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Bruce's stance probably could be the bow stance. Doesn't matter. :D It's the guy's sprite, I'll let him decide to that.
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Xion Night, Bruce's called his own martial arts way "Jeet Kune Do." His philosophy is to take what was useful to him and discard the rest. Anyway, his movie style isn't necessarily indicative of his "real life" martial arts methods, but they looked great on screen. :)
Andy, if you're going to continue on about the form of his stance, then at least show some pictures. Regardless, the stance I'm using is pretty much what you'd see in his movies, and that's what I'm sticking with.
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(http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:6UGjV74XeTWONM:http://www.wushuaustin.com/images/alexis_dragon.jpg)
I wasn't trying to argue, but just a " suggestion" geez.
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mad likeness is really great as othes have said.
I'd try to relay a little less on the outlines too...have some bigger darker areas to make it look more dramatic and deep.
Also I kinda dislike the way you did his muscles...Bruce was never really bubbly and your 1pixel speculars make it look like that, try to make his muscles more angular because that was kinda defining for him.
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Conceit, I agree about the bubbliness. I'm currently trying to strike a balance between sweaty and muscley. :) Working on the darker areas as well, trying to improve the emphasis on shadow. The walking frames are very close to being "done", so hopefully I'll get them posted up tomorrow night.
Aw heck, here's one of the frames I was just working on anyway. Let me know if I'm on the right track:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/bruce_walk1.png)
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I zoomed in and it looked good. Great job on improving him. I'd like a highlight or two on his skin. Good luck.
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OK, phew! Here's the walk animation:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk.gif)
And the sprite sheet for it:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk_sheet.png)
I tried to deepen the shadows, yet keep the shininess because I really think it helps it "pop" and will set Bruce apart from the enemies when I get to them. How's it all look? I'm going cross-eyed now and need some sleep. ;)
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Looks great! I thought it would be cool to see bruce walk in his fighting stance, so he's sort of shifting forward with each step, ready to fight. it would seem like an odd transition during a game for him to instantly be in his fighting stance after walking like that. it's still an awesome animation, nonetheless. I wouldn't mind it either way, as well.
Goodluck with it.
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(http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/8859/feilongbreathewz6.gif) (http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/5674/feilongwalkbackbn0.gif) (http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/7198/feilongwalkforwardyy8.gif)
some references I think could help, since fei long basically is bruce lee :P
theres a good sense of weight to his walking anims and although a little clunky and could use a few extra frames, i think they do a much better job than your current 'mathematical' walk cycle
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Holy crap, I just realized something. The forward and backward walk animations for Fei Long use the same leg movement, in reverse, but changes the lean and arm position. That's so... ingenious.
I also agree with Takam that he should have a more Bruce Lee-esque walk cycle rather than this generic one.
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Have you ever played Kung Fu Master? I'm doing a remake of that, so the walking animation is more appropriate simply because Bruce will be travelling a fair distance, and there will be times when there are no enemies on-screen for short periods. Bruce will be striding around with a vengeance. ;) If it was a one-on-one figher, then I'd definitely go for the stance-walk though.
When he stops, I'll actually not throw him right into his stance... I'll have another stance that is a sort of relaxed "ready" stance. When he attacks, then he'll drop into the fighting stance when the move finishes (again, like Kung Fu Master). Also, his stride-width matches his fighting stance, so I can transition from the stance to walking by starting with frame 1.
I've only got 'til the 11th to get this all done. :o
By the way, thanks for finding those Fei Long sprites, I was looking for them, heh.
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...he should have a more Bruce Lee-esque walk cycle rather than this generic one.
Bruce Lee-esque is probably something like:
Wooooooooooo!!!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Wooooo.gif)
I don't know. It made more sense at the time.
Not much to say about the animation. It's pretty solid, but yes, it is pretty generic. It does seem like a power-stride, so maybe you can put more emphasis on that, having a fist ready for attack or a tilted head eyeing the enemy.
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hahahahahaha I can imagine him doing the high pitched hiyas as he runs like that snake. Still, I think gameplay wise, the one mad is using is proper.
(http://www.locustleaves.com/walk2.gif) (http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk.gif)
I think an extra stress frame there makes this a much more weighted and determined walk.
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snake, hahahah! That's awesome, you're killing me, heh! *SAVED*
Helm, that's a nice edit, thanks, and I agree. I spend all week on the animation, and you make it look twice as good in like 5 minutes. ;) Must analyze...
I really appreciate everyone who's helped me out on this so far.
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I am hugely not a fan of 6-frame walks (unlike Tsu :P) I think you NEED the stress frame where the character STEPS onto the ground. Which is what I added. Then again, I'm no expert in animation.
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You know, I vowed last time I made a 6-frame walk animation that I'd not do it again, and go with 8 frames. However, since I felt strapped for time and was just getting back into the pixel swing, I DID IT AGAIN. :( Your edit has made me see the light, once again, and nevermore shall I stray from the righteous path.
Besides, this is Bruce, baby! He deserves more than 6 frames.
However, I cower in fear at the tongue-lashing I'll receive once I reveal my 2-frame attack animations. ;)
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if you make good keyframes (and boy, mad, you do) then adding extra smoothing and dynamic frames to soften the transitions out where you need them is a matter of copy-pasting-shifting-pixels for like, 5 minutes
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the animation is pretty flawless but may I suggest adding a bit of variation to this, frames 1 and 4, and 2 and 5 are basically identical with flipped around legs and arms (almost symetrical), when your walking did doesn't tend to happen, as a leg steps forwards the timing tends to be much quicker than the the still foot moving behind the body. Im not too sure how else to explain it, well just look at my edit.. I changed the floor contact to frame 6 so its easier to tell its a stride
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk.gif) >> (http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/9074/walk2pz4.gif)
I agree with Helms edit there needs to be more emphasis on on the step, repeating what helm said I also am not a animation expert :-X.
looking great, hope I helped.
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You made Bruce limp. Bruce doesn't limp.
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So far Helms is best by far. And the one snake made is hilarious.
On a sidenote - In classical animation you normally have 12 frames per step so 24 frames for a walkcycle = 1 second and about twice as much for a run, 6 frames per step, 12 for full cycle = 1/2 a second.
And of course how many frames you need strongly depends on the character you are making and what speed he is going at.
I personally like 8 frame runs and 12 frame walks for games.
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That limp is due to the head bobing up and down so rapidly, that can be fixed. the stride is should be mostly in the legs, then again this is only my opinion. I stand by what I said about the leg movements.
(http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/9074/walk2pz4.gif) >> (http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3423/walk3wd1.gif)
Im just tryin to keep it to 6 frames, you shouldnt have to add more frames imo.
I don't think the head movements should be so exagerated, it reminds me of a pigeon walking.
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I'm not sure what a "dragon stance" is, but I am familiar with a variety of stances (cat stance, horse stance, female stance, etc.) and none of the traditional kung fu stances really match what Bruce uses.
[offtopic]Didn't Bruce make up his own style or something?[/offtopic]
This is nice.
JKD is an mixture off about everything that is effective. Bruce Lee himself always fought in Bi Jong Stance.
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The head doesn't have anything to do with the limp. It's that the further foot jumps too much. Anyway, I'm sure mad will go with whatever suits him best.
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agree here, that limp is because the backleg snaps forward and it looks bad. Why not use 8 instead of 6 frames, it looks better in this case. Restriction like that is not always a good thing.
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Helm's powers absorbed and adapted:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk3.gif)
Jumping and crouching are next (with screenshots soon to follow). Should I continue to post about the "project" in the other forum, or is this OK here?
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POWER WALK OF POWER. Lovely.
Keep posting here, and we'll keep helping here, and you'll make your game and everybody will be happy.
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In my experience with platform game dev, i've come to notice that when certain frames are emphesized such as they are in the last edit, sometimes the player can appear to be moving or 'sliding' on their feet since the forward movement is constant. Although, this can sometimes be taken care of by some sneaky shifting of pixels in the animation when implemented into the game, although if it's too exagerated sometimes the player seems to have more of a 'jerky' control over the character.
Just a thought.
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A proper programmer will never GLIDE his humanoid sprites in animation, but he will make certain that in walking animations, the sprite is moved the exact amount of pixels his feet move in every frame. So from the frame before the step, to the frame where the feet is firmly on the ground the sprite should not move its x coordinate. The body moves.
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A proper programmer will never GLIDE his humanoid sprites in animation, but he will make certain that in walking animations, the sprite is moved the exact amount of pixels his feet move in every frame. So from the frame before the step, to the frame where the feet is firmly on the ground the sprite should not move its x coordinate. The body moves.
aw cmon helm, lots of programmers do that, the latest castlevanias on DS are a good example
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Yes and it looks absolutely horrible and gliding. I will mock this up so you can see how it should be in-code.
EDIT: here
(http://www.locustleaves.com/proofwalk.gif)
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I don't think it looks bad at all, sure it doesn't make much sense, I think as long as it works with the art style it doesn't hurt.
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It can work someplaces. Mostly cartoony stuff with lots of inertia like Sonic games etc. You picked a wrong example with castlevania because I finished POR on DS and loved it to bits BUT the freakin' walk-cycles. They're so bad. Not only do they glide, not only they're oversmoothed, not only are the actual runs extremely artifical and silly, they're also SEMI-SIDEWAYS. On a fully side-ways, no perspective platformer. They're humanoid, and look very bad.
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While the animation looks solid, the x displacement is not the same for each frame. If the player was moving 'X' amount to the right in each step, the result would not look like that animation, explaination below
(http://i11.tinypic.com/43cnkvn.gif)
Also, the slight headbob in the animation does not make up for the distance difference between frames.
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The x displacement doesn't have to be the same for each frame.
Let's hear it from Mad when he's around, as he's coded/ing this engine and has others before it. always robustly.
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Again, agree with Helm, linear walks = wrong in all cases, liberties can be taken, as he stated, for cartoony stuff, but never 100% linear.
I started making this before I saw Helm's, but it's more complex and I will write a bit about it.
(http://www.ptoing.net/walklogic.gif)
The top one is moved linear (as linear as Promotion wanted to make it) according to the center of the sprite (shown by the dots at the top, 2 pixels wide because it's an even number of pixels wide)
The bottom one is moved according to where the feet are on the ground.
If you look at the top one it looks like he is moving his legs but suspended from an invisible metal bar stuck in his head which moves at a constant speed = unnatural.
At the bottom I have the footsteps seperate so you can see how the top one slides around like mad.
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I'm here! Personally, I am going to go with the "glide" option for the more arcadey feel. Actually, you're never going to see Brucey moving much on the screen due to scrolling, and so the issue is almost a moot one, but...
WTF... ?! Did I just see Bruce up above in the banner? Heh.
Uh, where was I. Oh yes. Unless you have an large number of frames, then you get a jerky update on the sprite movement, where the whole body jumps by a large amount each frame. This more appropriate, IMO, for something like Prince of Persia or Karateka where movement and positioning is intended to be exact. With an arcadey game, though, IMO it should be as liquid as possible on-screen. Jerky movement also complicates collision detection, as it's possible to "jump" through a collision hotspot or what have you. So, gliding is usually what you get in most games.
However, if you calculate the horizontal movement rate based on the animation speed and resulting distance between strides over time, as you guys have analyzed in previous posts, then your character will still travel the same distance as with the jerky update method, but with the smooth motion. The feet slide a little, but it's forgivable. This is what I've done for SAKFU, and really I don't see it as "gliding" around much. A lot of that has to do with the animation too.
If you *do* have a lot of frames for your walking/running animation, then even though it looks better with the "jerky" movement method than a lower frame count does, it's still worthwhile, IMO, to use the glide motion because the gliding will be even less apparent due to the high frame rate. Apparent sliding is minimal. The feet will appear to be properly placed, especially when scrolling; which, by the way, cancels out the exact-foot-placement effect anyway using the jerky method. You can't scroll jerkily without making people sick. ;)
Anyway, that's my take on it... smoothness over exact placement, but with effort spent on matching the rate of movement to the animation. I may need to fix up Bruce's foot placement some more to make the linear motion correct, but again, with the scrolling it's probably not necessary. JUST KICK STUFF! ;)
EDIT:
I'm modifying the animation as we speak to square up the distance of the steps in each frame... post shortly.
Here:
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/walk4.gif)
I've also raised him up an extra pixel in the middle of his stride to smooth out the vertical motion.
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awesome :)
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One thing I noticed that is not that good is that the leg frames are almost congruent. As in legs from frames 1 and 5 overlay perfectly. Even in a sideon sprite this should never be the case (unless it's one colour and you only use half a walkcycle)
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This is true, as far as being common practice for video game sprites. I can try lifting up the rear foot by 1 pixel, or forward/backward by 1, and also adjust the shading further (though there's not much room there with 2 shades to work with). Do you have any specific suggestions?
I need to get into demo-mode very soon though, so these sorts of tweaks may have to wait 'til later. :'(
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Again, agree with Helm, linear walks = wrong in all cases, liberties can be taken, as he stated, for cartoony stuff, but never 100% linear.
I started making this before I saw Helm's, but it's more complex and I will write a bit about it.
(http://www.ptoing.net/walklogic.gif)
The top one is moved linear (as linear as Promotion wanted to make it) according to the center of the sprite (shown by the dots at the top, 2 pixels wide because it's an even number of pixels wide)
The bottom one is moved according to where the feet are on the ground.
If you look at the top one it looks like he is moving his legs but suspended from an invisible metal bar stuck in his head which moves at a constant speed = unnatural.
At the bottom I have the footsteps seperate so you can see how the top one slides around like mad.
It never occured to me that walking wasn't a linear motion until I saw this. Most video game guys you see sliding around but I played capcom's alien vs predator today and Schaefer has a really neat stompy walk cycle. How would you go about maintaining that sort've thing in a game? I figure you'd have to store displacement with each frame instead of some fixed iteration on the x axis.
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It can work someplaces. Mostly cartoony stuff with lots of inertia like Sonic games etc. You picked a wrong example with castlevania because I finished POR on DS and loved it to bits BUT the freakin' walk-cycles. They're so bad. Not only do they glide, not only they're oversmoothed, not only are the actual runs extremely artifical and silly, they're also SEMI-SIDEWAYS. On a fully side-ways, no perspective platformer. They're humanoid, and look very bad.
Haha, personally i really liked how they moved kind of gracefully as if not even touching the ground. It made the controls feel really smooth and precise. I think it's more of a gameplay decision since in some previous games the walk cycles were exact and solid and looked really nice, but the controls were really clunky for me at least. They probably wanted the character to move faster but still wanted to keep the rather slow walk animation. Also i think the sideways thing looks better than something flyswatted. They probably wanted that just to make the character strike a cool pose when idle and to have more room to play with stuff like the clothes flowing around the legs and so forth. The DS games had a lot of things that sought to break the swatted-flat feel from the snes games. Stuff like 3D backrounds that change perspective as you move and so forth.
Back to the original topic, i think it's really hard to match gameplay and animation issues. If the character walks in a linear fashion, you can have more precise feel of your characters speed and position relative to enemies, which is VERY important when were talking about hand-to-hand combat. But then again, more realistic stuff of course looks more solid.
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flyswatted. They probably wanted that just to make the character strike a cool pose when idle and to have more room to play with stuff like the clothes flowing around the legs and so forth. The DS games had a lot of things that sought to break the swatted-flat feel from the snes games. Stuff like 3D backrounds that change perspective as you move and so forth.
There was nothing flyswatted by a proper sideways walkcycle. You're abusing the term. And striking 'cool poses' all the time is what makes Castlevania games aggravating some times for all the nice gameplay.
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BOING!
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/mock_jump.gif)(http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/mock_jump2.gif)
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*hypnotized*
Animation mockup looks great, but having such large durations during the "crouched and about to jump" frame and "landed and about to go back to idle" frame might make the jumps a little sluggish.
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Yea, you're right about the timing. In game I will match the Kung Fu Master timings as close as possible.
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(http://www.locustleaves.com/mock_jump2sloppy.gif) (http://www3.sympatico.ca/ppridham/misc/images/blf/mock_jump2.gif)
These are very solid keyframes. For the amount of time it took me to tween without drawing much new of anything, I think you could do with the extra niceness.
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Nice. It really helps add weight to the take-off and landing, and the arm movement, well, is smooth now. I've usually been afraid to tween on finished frames, figuring it will be too messy of a job mucking around with the details and such. You've shattered that misconception for me, thanks. ;)
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Can I mention that you can use a solid X displacement and still get an uneven walk by "nudging" the animation?
I don't feel like doing it right now, but nudging is the art of doing small displacements in the animation, so that it jerks when walking in place, yet moves correctly when moving x pixels at a time...
It's a necessary skill for any animator with lazy programmers (read programmers programming with restrictions)
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Can I mention that you can use a solid X displacement and still get an uneven walk by "nudging" the animation?
I don't feel like doing it right now, but nudging is the art of doing small displacements in the animation, so that it jerks when walking in place, yet moves correctly when moving x pixels at a time...
It's a necessary skill for any animator with lazy programmers (read programmers programming with restrictions)
This is what i said when i first mentioned the issue, it can be corrected by messing with the actual placement of the frame in the animation. Such as when the animation is still, it jerks around, but it looks more realistic when moving horizontally.