AuthorTopic: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.  (Read 6377 times)

Offline TPoe

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[WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

on: November 08, 2011, 07:36:39 am
For fun, I'm making an animation.
It's destined to be Simon from the Castlevania series at some point.
But for now I'd just like to see what people think of the animation before I go to work on it.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2011, 08:53:35 am by TPoe »

Offline RedKnight91

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #1 on: November 08, 2011, 08:03:05 am
I can't see the animation at all : (
Bear with my poor english, I'm italian!

Offline TPoe

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #2 on: November 08, 2011, 08:47:31 am
Hmm, well now I can't either, it worked in the preview mode but I forgot clicking just makes it zoom.

*Edit
Fixed hopefully
« Last Edit: November 08, 2011, 08:54:02 am by TPoe »

Offline RedKnight91

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #3 on: November 08, 2011, 09:08:10 am
Now I can see it! The animation is amazing!!!!!!!!!!
Bear with my poor english, I'm italian!

Offline TPoe

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Re: [WIP]Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #4 on: November 09, 2011, 05:13:39 am
So, I've decided it's not going to be Simon. But I would like to know, would it be cooler to see a knight with a ball and chain (and of course change some things), or a person with a regular whip and keep the animation at the same pace? Also, I've increased the animations size almost 3 times.

Offline jams0988

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #5 on: November 09, 2011, 05:31:01 am
It's a bit too fluid for my tastes. The way it stretches and blurs and bounces around, it looks too soft to be a weapon attacking something.
I mean, the fluidity you have looks impressive, but I don't think it suits the action. Look at the old Castlevania animations that inspired you; the whip flails straight out, and stays suspended horizontally in the air for a second before returning to the idle animation. The rigidity of the Castlevania animations look powerful, like "oh my god, I can see why those skeletons explode into a pile of bones when they're hit like that!"

The Castlevania whip animation goes from idle to full attack position in like one tenth of a second - by comparison, some of your attacks in their take almost half a second per whipping motion. Too slow for a whip, when they're supposed to break the sound barrier, heheh!

So, I like how fluid it is, but I think you should save all those frames for other actions, like jumping, running, etc. And then really make the attack animations look powerful by keeping the frame counts low and snappy. Fluidity to show he's a skilled, graceful acrobat. Rigidity to show he's a powerful badass! =)
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 05:38:16 am by jams0988 »

Offline Phlakes

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #6 on: November 09, 2011, 05:33:34 am
Yeah, it looks more like he's waving the whip around rather than swinging it to attack. I never thought I'd see a pixel animation that was too smooth.

Offline TPoe

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #7 on: November 09, 2011, 05:42:44 am
Ok, so I tried to make it seem like more of a whipping than a swiping, I'm editing the small version just cause it's easier.

Did it work?

Also, I don't intend to make any more animations for him. So I'm gonna just try and make this work instead of what you said Jams about using them for jumps and other things, although I agree that would probably work best.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 05:47:45 am by TPoe »

Offline jams0988

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #8 on: November 09, 2011, 05:45:48 am
The first attack looks pretty snappy to me, but the second one still looks a little slow. Richter Belmont's animation, for reference, only has him actually swinging the whip for 3/6 of his attack frames; two of the frames are used for the whip being in straight attack position, and one is him simply putting his arm behind him. It's all super quick, and a third of the animation is just the whip being in a rigid "this will kill you!" looking position. With yours, even for his first attack, which looks pretty quick, there's still this feeling that he's simply smacking the air with it, like it's lacking bite.

I don't really know how I'd go about making it look meaner, since you obviously want him to be able to chain attacks together quickly and smoothly, but....maybe it's not possible with a whip-like weapon? Iirc, Secret of Mana's whip actually only had *two*(!!!!) frames for it's attack animation. And again, the whip was lashed straight out, super rigid looking for the attack. Good luck though, hahah. I think a mean looking whip is going to be pretty tough to animate when you want to allow these kinds of acrobatics while using it. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with! =)

Edit: Like you said, something that isn't a plain whip might look better like this...what you've got looks like it was inspired by God of War a bit, which kind of worked because he had those huge knives on the ends of his chains, so it was obvious that the graceful swinging motions would still do damage. You might want to do something like a morning star, like you said earlier. That might work a bit better in this situation, especially if you had the character using his own momentum to get the morning star moving during combos. Could end up looking really cool, while still allowing you to let the character smoothly jump and spin around and such. =D

Edit edit: Just looked up some whip videos on youtube to see what they actually look like, and your animation seems pretty realistic...I think the real problem here is that whips really aren't very good weapons, only giving the victim minor cuts and things, unlike a real weapon made for causing serious damage. Which is probably why the two games that I know of that feature whips as weapons (Secret of Mana and Casltevania) don't animate them realistically at all, hahah. You really may want to go with a morning star instead/chain and sickle/whatever instead, lol. Then again, if you included a bunch of the awesome "wa-KSHSHSHS!!" sound effects while your guy is flipping out waving it around everywhere, it might end up pretty awesome in its own way, hahah! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNKPIOelTgA
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 06:00:13 am by jams0988 »

Offline TPoe

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Re: [WIP] Simon Belmont Whipping Animation sort of.

Reply #9 on: November 09, 2011, 06:00:09 am


So I did my best with what I have, still not quite there, I'll try the flail now and hopefully that'll work.

Thanks for all the suggestions Jams! I might have left it looking more like a baton twirl than a whip haha

*edit after reading your edit

I still like it better this way than it was at the beginning, the character I'm doing is from a video game, so it's probably better to make it a little bit like the original.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 06:02:01 am by TPoe »