AA stands for Anti-Aliasing. Aliases are hard edges, in 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional art that causes elements to stick out, where perfect, hard lines are visible. In 3D games, if anti-aliasing isn't used, you can often see hard edges along the edges of a polygon. It looks like the edges are jagged. This can be especially bad on stuff like chain-link fences.

In 2D art, it's when you have hard edges that stick out noticeably, and you need to do some blending of the colors, on the edges.

Here's a tutorial that explains the process of anti-aliasing pretty well.

I think your templates look really awesome! Really love it. In terms of aliasing, you only really have it bad on the insides of the legs, along the arms, and on the right side of the heads. Personally, I'm not even sure I'd worry about aliasing on a template. The idea is that you'll eventually put clothing, hair, etc on top of this. At that point, when you have a finished sprite, then I would consider adding AA. It's more of a finishing touch IMO.

The main flaw I see is that his arms and legs appear out of proportion. You seem to be going for a mostly-anatomically-correct-but-still-anime-ish style here, but that clashes with the proportions of his arms and legs. His arms appear a little bit too long in comparison to his legs, and his legs also look too thin.

I actually think the hair looks pretty nice. If you're worried about the shading on anything, I'd say the pants need work. They have a sort of gradient-shading going on right now, and I feel it's actually causing some problems with the way the pose reads.  I understand the pose you're conveying, but it comes across strangely because the shading on the legs doesn't properly reflect it. His left leg is supposed to be forward I think, and the other leg back and behind, with his knee bent somewhat. The feet appear correctly placed, but either the size of the legs in comparison to one another is off, or the shading is creating the illusion that they are. I'm not quite sure which it is.

Of the poses you've shown, I think the 2nd looks best. The first one it appears the sword is just kind of balancing on his neck, and in the third, the sword appears far too large to be held that way. I agree with Alastor that if you go with the second pose, you should work on the elbow. That's the main element causing it to appear off.

If you want to consider another holding position altogether, might I suggest something like this?

http://www.thearma.org/essays/langk1.jpg

I know the legs are in the wrong position, but I'm referring to the way of holding the blade. With a sword of that size, one of the few poses that would be comfortable is to rest the flat of the blade against the shoulder. This may look more natural than your other poses.

Hopefully I've made sense. You've got a good thing going on here, and it appears to be coming along nicely, but it needs a few tweaks.

Aha, thank you for the clarification. Everything you both said makes sense now that I understand it's a matter of angle.

Here's my newest try at it. I think it's more true to the angle of the other two animations. Is it an improvement? Anything I should tweak?



Again, huge thank you for your critique. I'm far happier with my animations now, and I'm becoming much more comfortable animating in the process.

I'm probably going to give the running frames for the south animation a try now. Please let me know if there's more adjustment needed to the north walk, so I can correct it before I move onto the North run as well.

I'll probably also post my running animations in this thread as well when they are complete, if you can be bothered. You've already been very helpful.

I may also try my hand at a more feminine walk cycle. The large, bold steps of this template won't be suitable for any but the most butch and boisterous of women.

Edit: I saw the new version had the same problem as the old, just less severe. Replaced with a more current version. I've tried really hard to make the other leg actually appear to be "forward", but it's hard with such tiny ankles. Any better?

Edit2: Baah, girlfriend still says he looks like he's going backwards. I'm really lost. I'm drawing the legs from a different perspective and I'm still not getting the correct illusion. Is this version any better?

Sorry for the late reply here, and thanks for your input VDX.

I definitely saw what you meant about the walking backwards when he goes north, but your comment about how you prefer the larger movements made me realise the animations are not really all in the same style, and I sought to fix that as well. I also felt like my animations were not fluid enough, so I've made them 8 frames per direction instead of 6.

Here's the results. Please let me know if there's anything that looks odd. I'm pretty new to animation, and the longer I stare at my own walk cycles, the more blind I become to the movement, so please help me out.







If you guys can help me get these to a satisfactory level, I'll give running a shot too! Probably going to take this cycle, and replace the high points in the animations with a more drastic, almost jumping frame. A saw this technique in use in Seiken Densetsu 3 (which my walking animations are also heavily inspired by), and I think I could pull that off.

Edit: Also, side note - I've started using Pro Motion 6. Excellent piece of software. The learning curve was terrible, but underneath the unintuitive (to me) interface lies a very beautiful beast. My only problem with it is that I cannot view more than one project at a time in it. I know there's separate tabs to switch between, but I want to actually have two images on screen at once. Anyone know a way to do this?

Not a bad initial sketch. Already though, the shadows (blue) don't seem quite right. The forehead looks strange (almost gives the impression of a lump on the noggin), and I think the left cheek needs to be re-shaded. The shadows give an impression of an oddly shaped cheek in my opinion, though it may clear up anyway, when you define your sketch further.

I feel the hair is quite well sketched, and I'm interested in seeing how that'll progress as you work on this piece.

You may also need to be careful with the left eye as you further define the work. It's a little difficult to understand what's going on with it now, and that could get worse as more detail is added. I think he's squinting the left eye, but I'm not entirely sure. It also looks a little like the eye may be injured instead. As you progress the piece, be mindful of what the eye is supposed to be conveying, because it has the potential to become more obscured later.

Can't wait to see how your next iteration of it looks.