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Pixel Art / The quest of the Runcycle
« on: September 16, 2014, 11:46:58 am »
Hi guys,
So this year I decided to build myself a solid portfolio with a lot of different things including animation, I've never been much of an animator and the generic runcycle animation is, I think, a good place to start. It's pretty hard tho.
I've tried several times using different approaches.
2 years ago I started working on a quite "technical approach"
It didn't quite work since I'm not a patient person and there are better ways to achieve this kind of works (like puppet animation).
This year I used a different approach, drawing directly each frame of a very simple character at a smaller resolution, with less frames. I felt it was much easier that way and errors are more forgiving.
I think it works, it was a bit faster before I convert it to gif format for some reason. I din't bother much about timing tho, might lack a bit of punch.
from that base, i tried to animated a bigger character. I simply doubled the resolution to draw over each frame.
Actually I think it sucks. The movement is wonky, messy. I think the cause of this, now that I look closer, is that she doesn't step up from the ground. There should be 1 frame or 2 where the character jumps off the ground and her feet doesn't touch the ground.
Yesterday I started a new one using the same process (took the small guy as a base) and I came to something way more satisfying.
Well, so I corrected most of the errors I found in the knight one and the movement is way more punchy and clear (also clean pixelling and bright colors does help readability). I played a bit around timing, it might not be 100% accurate with my original psd file but I think It looks alright.
There might be a few anatomical issues, like legs being shorter/longer on certain frames or weird poses but once animated it doesn't seem to matter much. Tell me if you spot anything obvious
I think I'm on the right track with that one, I will continue working on it. Maybe give him a proper head someday and play around other animations like idle, jump, shoot, attack, run with gun in hands, etc.
Any feedback / head design proposition is highly appreciated, thanks for reading
So this year I decided to build myself a solid portfolio with a lot of different things including animation, I've never been much of an animator and the generic runcycle animation is, I think, a good place to start. It's pretty hard tho.
I've tried several times using different approaches.
2 years ago I started working on a quite "technical approach"
It didn't quite work since I'm not a patient person and there are better ways to achieve this kind of works (like puppet animation).
This year I used a different approach, drawing directly each frame of a very simple character at a smaller resolution, with less frames. I felt it was much easier that way and errors are more forgiving.
I think it works, it was a bit faster before I convert it to gif format for some reason. I din't bother much about timing tho, might lack a bit of punch.
from that base, i tried to animated a bigger character. I simply doubled the resolution to draw over each frame.
Actually I think it sucks. The movement is wonky, messy. I think the cause of this, now that I look closer, is that she doesn't step up from the ground. There should be 1 frame or 2 where the character jumps off the ground and her feet doesn't touch the ground.
Yesterday I started a new one using the same process (took the small guy as a base) and I came to something way more satisfying.
Well, so I corrected most of the errors I found in the knight one and the movement is way more punchy and clear (also clean pixelling and bright colors does help readability). I played a bit around timing, it might not be 100% accurate with my original psd file but I think It looks alright.
There might be a few anatomical issues, like legs being shorter/longer on certain frames or weird poses but once animated it doesn't seem to matter much. Tell me if you spot anything obvious
I think I'm on the right track with that one, I will continue working on it. Maybe give him a proper head someday and play around other animations like idle, jump, shoot, attack, run with gun in hands, etc.
Any feedback / head design proposition is highly appreciated, thanks for reading
