[WIP][C+C] Kain's Semi-Naked Templates (Maybe NSFW)

[Kain Nobel]

Topic Goal: This topic is for various animated human sprites to be used in the project I am working on. Such animations will include mostly walking sprites, but might address other animations such as climbing, swimming, etc. I've only got some of what I have planned done at this point, but plan on expanding the set with different body types for both genders. Unless I state a template is finalized, all works are open to suggestions and feedback is appreciated.

Nudity Disclaimer: As these are 'template' sprites, you should expect some mild nudity here and there, mostly pixelated breasts. This is mature content, but not of a sexual nature, so only mature viewers please!

Current Progress




Sample Character
John White of InFAMOUS 2


Current Objectives

• Create "Average" body type (male)
• Last minute fix-ups on existing sprites

[KhrisMUC]

The proportions are off, and the length of the limbs changes from frame to frame.

Sit down and pull your leg up to your chest so your heel touches your butt. Look at where the knee is in relation to your shoulder. That means the leg, from hip to heel, is almost twice as long as the distance hip - shoulder.

Start fixing the front view then wait for replies first, otherwise you're going to have to redraw 12 frames each time.

[Kain Nobel]

From that whole "RPG perspective," the emphasis is the camera focusing more on the top half of the body, thus purposely making the lower half a little shorter than it would be from a full front-on point of view. Honestly not trying to be a PITA or brush off your critique, but more so trying to understand what to do with it. Between what you said, and the comparison to a model (which isn't the same exact perspective but still helps), I'm thinking raise the upper thigh/lower torso area, but hm... should I?

http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/templateexp.png

As silly as it sounds, your advice made me think to take a "test spin," no pun intended. I don't see too much change in limb length, per say, except maybe the foot stepping forward in the "look at my butt" frame should be moved 'up' a bit? I don't think anything is too off, but if so, maybe a pixel or two. Either way, I'll make a couple small changes and see if I can make it look more natural based on the analysis of the rotating sprite.



Oh yeah, front frames slightly edited now, but mostly cosmetic outline softening like I was already doing, but barely changed anything proportion-wise. Better, aye? I'll get to fixing the arm closer to the viewer soon, but that's the only thing I really see oddball about these frames.

[Cyangmou]

I see there tons of anatomical issues. The worst ones are the length of the arms, how the upper length and the lower length play together (and how this is affecting the broadness) and the legs are also very worse done (keep at least in mind that they have got an statical function).

I'd also suggest adding an fourth color'd really help to give the thing the sense of volume it needs. Just some quick changes to it

because an picture says more than 1000 words...




P.S.: also if oyu are focusing the upper part, changing proportions isn't a good idea because at this size every pixel changes a lot.

[PypeBros]

Do not try to use the "standing" sprite (middle) as a frame in the walking animation. That just won't work. When you walk, the only time where you have two feet on the ground is when you've got maximal extension, thus one leg almost fully obscuring the other one. The frame where your legs cross is the one where you've got one foot in the air.

HTH.

Otherwise, just dig for walking cycle tutorial around here.  this, for instance.

[Kain Nobel]

I've probably spent way too long on this but...



I've mixed it up a bit with Cyangmou's edit, and then re-applied what I liked about my original sprite's torso area in a slightly different manner. Unfortunately I saved the sprite before the recent edit I made; I noticed I still had a proportion issue with the arms, so I moved them up a pixel or two, looks better than what you're seeing now. I do agree that adding another skin tone will be beneficial in the end, but I'll probably wait until I'm done revisiting my other frames. I tried to do new legs on my own, just for practice sake, but in the end stuck with Cyangmou's legs because they still look better.

PypeBros is correct, in a sense, about not using that "standing" sprite as a frame of the walk animation. There is nothing wrong with using the same sprite frame to represent standing or a mid-walk, but in this case, with the character's legs spread like they were, it would work for an idle pose but otherwise made my sprite look like a cat burying a turd in the litter box.

I'll try and get the other frames fixed up and posted later tonight, perhaps I'll get started drafting a lady or a child. Thank you guys for your help so far, progress always feels good

[Mike]

If this is one of your first games I say just go with the walk you have now.  The only way to make it look more like a walk would be to add more frames and I beg you to just let it go and be satisfied with what you have.  If you continually try to one up yourself not only will you never finish your previous work will outshine your first work and the projects art will look all disjointed.

Another thing to realize is if the game is fun people are quick to forgive weird walk cycles or whatever.

But if you want some more tutorials heres this one

http://www.angryanimator.com/word/

Unfortunately animation is not just simple taking still images that logically go after another.  It's a bit more complicated...I'm still struggling with it.

A bit of an impractical solution or rather learning aid would be to find a treadmill and film yourself from the front, sides and back and see how it looks.

Oh another thing you can do is get a model viewer or something for a 3D game.  That way you can see how it could be done.

Here I decided to give an edit a shot.  This is probably my first forward walking anim.  Hope it helps.



No arms/no green lines

[Kain Nobel]

*Whew* Life has been so busy these past few days, glad to finally be able to sit down and tinker with this again. Anyways, back to the work at hand!

As the example character made with the template is no longer relevant, at least for the time being, I've updated the top post with the template only, with both the old version and new version. While I haven't done anything with the back-facing frame yet, I did at least get a moment to update the side-facing middle frame. First thing I did was some cosmetic changes to the outline by using a lighter color, and then went about changing the actual anatomy and lining certain features up such as eyes, knees, abs, nipples, etc with his front-facing counterpart. Just awaiting some C&C on anything minor I should touch up on, then I'll start the actual walk-frames and move onto back-facing frames.

If this is one of your first games I say just go with the walk you have now.  The only way to make it look more like a walk would be to add more frames and I beg you to just let it go and be satisfied with what you have.

As far as extra frames, you don't have to beg me to just let it go, I agree haha! Simply put, I'm avoiding going past three key frames per direction, it would currently be too much for me to hassle with for the time being. On the other hand, there were some simple cosmetic and anatomical changes that needed to be made, this is the best place I knew to ask for it.

Your side-facing sprite looks like it would be a good foundation for a running animation, which I'll probably be doing sooner or later. An interesting examination of your front sprite is how, by alternating your horizontal skeleton the way you did, it gives the character a certain 'swagger'. In other words, while mine looks like just a normal walk, your guy walks like a pimp! *Takes mental note*

[Mike]

I'm glad you were helped from my edit.  What really helped me is knowing how it looks from the side. That's why that tiny version is in the corner.  Don't be afraid to use reference.  Video or otherwise.

Also prioritize the back frames its what your players will see the most

[Kain Nobel]

Cool, side-frame is updated! Fixed an arm length issue I missed earlier, thanks to KhrisMUC for pointing it out. I also erased the background arm in one of the frames, it just didn't look like it belonged for some reason. Other than that, mostly cosmetic changes were made to correspond with the front-facing sprite.



Hmm, speaking of back frames, those are done too! Did some alternate skin colors, changed the sample underwear to red, made some frame positioning adjustments, etc...



I haven't brought it to the play test field yet, so there might be some little issues to work out. There is still much else to do, finishing this template guy is the tip of the iceberg! Next small step for mankind is adding that extra color of skin tone, to better portray depth and highlight. Stay tuned for more shenanigans tomorrow evening, and feel free to drop some critique in the meantime

Update
I'm working faster than I can post, new version in top post, added 4th skin tone color, made a quick sample character. Feel free to drill me on the sample character, he was done in a rush lol.

[PypeBros]

I think there's something wrong with the shoulders and chest movement. Chest should follow shoulders. When the left arm is moved forward, the shoulder slightly move forward too, and so will the leftmost chest part. You do the opposite. Ribs is the place where the torsion happens to compensate the opposite twist of shoulder vs hips axis.

HTH.

[Kain Nobel]

An update, hurray! Most of the editing I did this time around was the whole head and neck area, I might've even changed the front chest shading a little bit but I don't remember. Anyhow, the head is approximately a pixel shorter, and a couple pixels less wide, but in turn I brought the chin down a pixel or two which made room for a line representing his mouth. The neck and collarbone area have also been retouched, now you can see a hint of neck anatomy, and you can also see little ear stubs on the side of his front/back head frames too!



@PypeBros: Good observation, in my next revision I'll try my best to apply a subtle change in chest and shoulder movement as suggested. This time I'm not going to have the right-to-left-to-right-etc pattern like I did in the original, so I'll experiment with the 1-pixel-or-so forward with the front stepping leg (or something of that nature.) Thanks for pointing this out, wish me luck!

Edit: Cool, applied a bunch of changes including the recent suggestions made by PypeBros. Too lazy right now to update the top post, so the "current progress" isn't current, but here is a sample I threw together. I was also showing some friends an example of the before and after, so the old sprite is animated next to the newest.

[Kain Nobel]

Okay, normally I wouldn't double post but this is milestone progress, so please forgive me. In other words, my male is pretty much finished, so I have started on a very rough draft of his female counterpart and could use some C&C big time!



I carefully crafted her from scratch, with the male sprite translucent in the background. I tried my best to make her readable as a female, with less broad of shoulders, lighter shading of the neck, curvature of the breasts and bringing the legs closer together. The belly was surprisingly challenging, it was hard to make her not look like she was pregnant.

The head and face... oh lord, what should I do with them? I can't shrink the head on the female, but its awkward because its the only thing that is the same size on the male. I have little experience with faces and hair (and facial hair, haha), so I'll have to demystify this and see how other games do so much detail with so little.

[ABC]

One thing I noticed immediately was that her mid section is too straight. Not too straight to be realistic, but too straight to have your stereotyped sexy female match your stereotyped strong male.

It should be more like ) . ( than | . | if you get what I mean.

Also, the lower part of her legs are too big IMO.

You could aslo try to move her breasts down one pixel. Make them less like balls and more like pears.

Her arms postition, which works really well with the man, is akward on her. I think just having her arms hang to the side of her body would be alot more natural and feminine.

Also, give her a pair of panties. 

[Kain Nobel]

I tried to apply your advice the best I could. The changes I made were bringing the arms in, making the fists into open hands, raising the hips a pixel or two, making the lower legs more slender. I'm pleased with it so far, and the head doesn't look all funky now that she has hair. As far as I'm concerned, unless anybody has something I should go back and redo, these front frames are done.




I've really gotta focus on experimenting with the heads, just to see what kind of details I can get away with. The face is such a small place to work with, I'm not sure how a beard/mustache is going to turn out (on the male, of course.) If I make the head any fatter or taller, it'll probably look weird, so I suppose I just gotta learn how to make due with what I have done so far. I'll study some sprites, see if there are any in the relative size of mine, and practice from there.

Thank you for your input ABC, and thanks to everyone who helped me earlier. Stay tuned folks, there is still more to come in the next few days

[Kain Nobel]

New female frames.




I'm too jaded for the time being to spot any errors, so I could use an extra pair of eyes or so to let me know if anything should be fixed up. I've got more body types and traversal animations planned to go with this series, and I'll try and get some sample characters done eventually. Either way, I'm always open for suggestions and thank you for your time.