Here are the fronts and backs from TSR, these colors match the screenshots a bit better.

I would definitely be interested in doing some of the activities you guys have mentioned. Revamping the graphics of an old game seems like a pretty cool idea, Arne just did that with SML and it came out really well.

I've been coming here for a long time to read up on critiques and tips on pixel art in general, but I never got around to starting an account until while after the site changed to this basic theme. I really liked the old one though, are you guys planning anything similar for the new skin or is it going to be something completely new?

Oh wow, I hadn't realized everyone was replying, thanks for all your thoughts you guys!

So, at the moment the plan is to have the characters in the game have instant jumping similar to Mario or Mega Man, though their in-air controls may vary a bit. Delayed jumping like Prince of Persia and Flasback can be pretty interesting but it probably wouldn't fit well in this game. The delay in Fantasia doesn't seem too bad at all though, it could work really well for a bigger character to help make them feel just a bit heavier then the rest of the characters, there's a total of 10 characters in the game and two of them are somewhat bigger characters so I think I'll talk with some other people on the team about the idea of giving those two very slightly delayed jumps like in Fantasia. Besides that though the main plan is instant jumping.

The main thing I'm trying to figure out is the amount of frames I should use, I'm currently using 8 frame walk cycles so I'm trying to decide what would be a good average number of frames to use for the jumping to make it match. I've been thinking that 3 for rising and 3 for falling plus inbetweens when necessary should work pretty well.

I also like the idea Carnivac mentioned of using the crouching sprite during the landing, it seems like it could work pretty well.

I've been working on some animation stuff for a character I'm working on and I was wondering if I might be able to get a bit of critique regarding them. This is my first walk cycle so it may look a bit rough or there may be some obvious things I have forgotten about, I think it generally looks alright though.


^Low color WIP walk cycle

^Fully colored walk cycle

Right now I'm focusing on jumping, I've only just started so what I have is still a bit rough looking:

I personally like the pose on the far right but I'm still working on the legs a bit.

Any critique would be appreciated, I'm trying to figure out a good process for working on things so if anyone has any tips on the best general process for making a sprite that would be helpful too. I've read that starting with a silhouette and then filling in the details is a really good way of making sure the pose of the sprite is clear so I was thinking of trying that out to see how well it works.

platformer games jumps are indeed quite abstract.

What I would worry about the most is wether the character will shift directions and how much while in jumping.

You say you've read several tutorials  that describe actual mechanics of jumping (I would be interested in reading those if you can pass them on :p ) which has a lot of build up in taking impulse, this is what often gets reduced the most in platformers because we expect them to react quickly.

Look at the original  prince of persia, tomb raider, flashback for examples that sacrified gameplay for proper buildup.

I may have misworded part of what I said, I didn't come across any tutorials, I just happened to notice a few short mentions of realistic jumping in unrelated topics, nothing exactly worthwhile though.

At the moment I'm trying to figure out the jumping for a characters that's generally similar to Mega Man in gameplay, though I have a total of 8 characters that I need to figure out. For a few of them I'm planning something along the lines of the flips found in Contra and Metroid though so those should be generally a bit easier.

I don't think I've played Flashback before but I have seen a few people mention it around here before. I have played the old Prince of Persia though, I remember seeing an interesting show on tv a long time back with the developer talking about how he recorded his brother acting out the jumps and such in person before making sprites out of it, they even showed a few of the recorded scenes.

Most normal platformer games just have the character fake impulse by raising either their legs or their arms or both, then trasition to heroic rising pose, then transition to heroic falling pose and a very quick crouching moment as they land (again to keep gameplay flowing).

This is pretty much all that is "required" but try to bring real mechanics of jumping if your platformer doesnt have too much wild shifting of directions, and try to accomodate the posing to your character´s particular personality. Other than this if you want more realism you can have different jumps for jumping backwards, jumping vertically and jumping forwards.

Those are some very helpful tips. Thanks!

Giving a character a more realistic jumping style might be interesting but it might be hard to balance out that character with others that have normal "game" style jumping, it's something to think about though. I'm generally going for a classic platformer with some ideas from a lot of the big ones like Mario and Mega Man.

I actually just tried a game recently that has some nice looking somewhat more realistic looking jump animations, the character has a vertical jump sprite and a horizontal one and it works pretty well. When you jump it uses just one rising sprite but at the height of the jump it transitions into a long animation for the fall, a lot of the time you don't see the full falling animation but as you fall further you see more and it kinda makes you feel like its a much bigger fall for the character. If you're interested the game can be found here, i'm a big fan of the graphics in general, they look great.

http://www.zweifuss.ca/q/q.htm
you can check this page with SF3 sprites (click on a character, go to movement 1 and check jump u, jump uf, jump ub) to see how different a jump can be depending on each character's personality. This is also an example of the more involved aproach of doing a different jump for backwards forwards and vertical jumping. Do not feel required to have as many frames as these jumps, SF3 is famous for having crazy smooth animation

That is an awesome site! That should definitely help out a lot, lately I've been playing Smash Bros in training mode with the speed at its lowest and watching how different characters jump and move to get some ideas, having something similar to that on the computer is a big help. Do you know if there's a feature on the site to watch the animations at a slower speed at all?