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Messages - noriah
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Pixel Art / Re: [C+C] Kitties
« on: August 21, 2014, 12:01:21 pm »
Here's today revision:

Added the tail. Took four or five retries before I could figure out an arc that would fit in the space without forcing the tail to touch the body.

I'm going to try doing some background stuff next before I come back and do the shading on the kitty.

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Pixel Art / Re: [C+C] Kitties
« on: August 19, 2014, 11:32:16 am »
Thanks for such a comprehensive and thoughtful response Cyangmou. m(_ _)m
Indeed, I didn't really do any animation planning before I started drawing so the animation suffers from basic construction issues. :P

Overall with the flour sack, I'm trying to break away from being precious about the silhouette, and to push the squash and stretch in the movement as far as possible. When I animate I naturally err on the subtle side, so if I do planning that's too far, I find it easier to make it more lively.

The flour sack's squash does pop, since it has too few frames, but I like the motion, for blocking stage. The up/down is a lot better and it feels less like cardboard.
For now I'm keeping it in flats and as few frames as possible to make it easy to correct. For example, the tail's going to take a lot less time to correct when there's only six frames! Once I've got the motion in a better place I can noodle. For the final animation I'll probably err more towards double what I've got now, maybe a bit more if I want to ease.

For this revision, I've added in a pass pose:

The blue is just a WIP thing, it'll go back to orange next update.
Though it's kinda hard to see on a light bg, hm.

Edit 8/20:
Here's the next version:

Next to the blue one, to make it easy to compare. Went through and separated into layers to make editing easier.
Added in some follow through on the ears, not sure if it's too much.
Once I work out the tail, I'm thinking about working on the first background.

Cracked open Richard Williams and thought about wave action:

I'll work on the tail tomorrow.

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Pixel Art / Re: [C+C] Forward running sprite animation
« on: August 19, 2014, 08:39:18 am »
I haven't done many walks from the front, so I'd start with reference.
This game has approximately the same size sprites as yours, and they have walks in multiple directions:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/ds/adventuretimehicwysog/sheet/55313/
This channel has lots of easy to use reference footage too:

The grid helps you tell which shoulder is higher, the angle of the hips, etc.

The torso feels stiff because you aren't moving/rotating it at all. The hips and shoulders rotate in opposite directions because they drive the arms and feet to swing in the opposite directions. You could imply a rotation by changing the shading on the torso. You could also move the belt buckle from side to side.
You might also have the head bob up and down on a delay to have it follow through.

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Pixel Art / Re: Puppet/Modular Animation: how when and why?
« on: August 16, 2014, 01:43:25 pm »
I've done this kind of animation before. You block in your action with the puppet, and when you want to change shapes, you can swap out the drawing for one of the pieces. Like for a walk you'd swap the foot section to a foot with the toe bent.

I got into this kind of animation when I was working for a summer animation workshop for kids that want to get into game development. We had a stop motion exercise where the students would cut out paper characters and connect the pieces with pins to create a paper puppet to animate. The higher ups wanted a digital counterpart to this project, so I set up an equivalent in flash. I can't find the file right now, but I'll edit it in when I track it down.

Overall, I'd say its useful as a first pass, and then you can add new drawings for any parts that need it after that. It can speed up animation, and with a deft hand can look as good. It's cheaper overall, and can be cheaper performance or memory wise in engine.  And to simplify animation concepts in the classroom, it's also useful.

Akin to the first video you posted Conceit, this film does some interesting things with a silhouette style puppet animation.

Hope I wasn't too redundant, but I wanted to put in my two cents. Overall a skilled hand can make even the cheapest animation look cool, especially if the art design (choice of style, medium, etc.) supports the method. One has only look at sakuga to realise limited animation can also be beautiful.

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Pixel Art / Re: [C+C] Kitties
« on: August 16, 2014, 12:34:40 pm »
Okay so today I came to the realization that my character is basically a flour sack, so instead of doing a bouncing ball rough I did a flour sack rough.
While looking for reference from the Illusion of Life (because I'm too lazy to go find my copy) I came across this article, which is well written:
The misunderstood flour sack

I want to push the squash and stretch more, so I'll rework it based on the flour sack.
Someone also pointed out I have the arms and legs moving in the same direction, oops!
I'm going to leave the tail out until I work everything else out.

Irregardless, here is my flour sack test:

Now to translate this discovery to my kitty!

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Pixel Art / [C+C] Kitties
« on: August 15, 2014, 11:18:34 am »
I'm working on kitties for a 2d game, looking for critique, especially on animation.

Here's my first revision:

And the second:


Working with flats for now until the animation is closer to final. Right now it's 7 colors.
Added a squash pose for each step and got the tail arc working better. Suggestions/drawover on the tail would be appreciated, I'm going for a tail that gets a bit thicker towards the second half, but it isn't really working out like that.
New to pixelation, I've pixeled before, but this is my first animation. Thanks for reading :)

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