AuthorTopic: GR#140 - Magic Fire & Ice - Animation  (Read 21245 times)

Offline Sohei

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 102
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

GR#140 - Magic Fire & Ice - Animation

on: May 23, 2012, 06:25:22 am
Hi! Currently I'm training in fire effects. The idea was to make several types of fire attack for a mage in platformer game. But I've realized, that I don't know what I'm doing.
This is what I call "Fire Touch". You can read the idea, but the shape dynamics makes me hesitant.

Upd:

Ultimate magic "Fire Dragon", a lump of fire in a shape of a dragon's head. But I can't find a way to make plausible burning. What can be done to make it more interresting?

C+C please!
Upd: As an experiment added a sort of afterburn.
Upd2:
Upd3:

Upd4:
« Last Edit: September 15, 2013, 12:24:17 pm by Sohei »

Offline rikfuzz

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 427
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • twitter @hot_pengu

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #1 on: May 23, 2012, 03:06:44 pm
The motion on the first dragon looks weird, especially because it's kind of going counter clockwise, rather than front to back.

Second one's interesting, but my mind relates it to the boss being destroyed type animation.

Think you need to animate the front of the dragon more, and show more directional motion?  The image alone reminded me of an anime I had many years ago, there was a dragon made of blood...    Have found the scene, perhaps not that useful, but inspiring animation! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoSOmR-tmlY#t=1m50s

Some other firebased thing I've done that might be semi useful:

Offline PixelPiledriver

  • 0011
  • **
  • Posts: 997
  • Karma: +6/-0
  • Yo!
    • View Profile
    • My Blog

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #2 on: May 23, 2012, 10:41:15 pm
Cool!













Various degrees of burning detail are interesting.
Having some static elements can add alot of focus and emphasizes the dragon
On the other hand having more parts burning gives it more motion and emphasizes the fire.

I like both face designs.
You could use either one or both for different attacks.
If you want to go really crazy chomp his jaws!

There are different ways of creating and representing special effects.
Iconic, stylized, realistic, etc all have their own look and appeal.

Elements have different viscosity.
This is usually a term used for liquid but can be used as an animation term for all materials.

In nature viscosity is the thickness of a material and it affects many variables about how it changes over time under various forces.

Artistically viscosity helps you give meaning and motion to an effect as it changes each frame.
We can simplify many properties into single ideas:

Volume - overall amount of space, shape and form, mass, 2D and 3D space.
Depth is commonly shown with overlapping shapes, colors, edges etc.

Motion - direction change, speed up, slow down.
Stuff moves.
It goes places.

Resolve - how the material clusters together, breaks down, and dissipates.
Usually energy dissipates and changes over time/distance.

Style - the shape design of individual clusters and particles.
natural vs stylized.
There are different parts of the effect to draw as it changes.
Water has waves, sheets, ripples, beads, bubbles foam etc.
Fire has flames, sparks, swirls, smoke etc.

This crap lets you plan out an animation.
Draw a series of arrows representing forces.
In practice it is similar to using Line of Action for other animation techniques.

Some old drawings of mine:




Mapping lines of action to a photo:


As the material passes thru these arrows how does it change?
That's for you to decide.
And knowing that it is, we seek what it is... ~ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Chapter 1

Offline PypeBros

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1220
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • Pixel Padawan
    • PypeBros
    • View Profile
    • Bilou Homebrew's Blog.

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #3 on: May 24, 2012, 07:18:18 am
@PPD: impressive. I'll keep that as a reference, for sure.
however, my coder mind is wondering: "isn't this the job of a particle system, and not of a skilled pixel artist/animator" ...

Offline Sohei

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 102
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #4 on: May 24, 2012, 10:21:53 am
PixelPiledriver,
This is amazing. Today I've learned something new. Thank you!

Offline Daimoth

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 140
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • I Am Tooth
    • View Profile

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #5 on: May 24, 2012, 11:42:06 pm
Thread is now property of PP. :o

The advice I came to post is feeble by comparison: Fire generally looks like it's coming off in pieces.

Offline Sohei

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 102
  • Karma: +0/-0
    • View Profile

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #6 on: May 25, 2012, 04:56:06 pm
Okay, so I've tried to apply acquired knowledge to make a proper burning head. What do you say?

Offline Conzeit

  • 0100
  • ***
  • Posts: 1448
  • Karma: +3/-0
  • Camus
    • conzeit
    • View Profile
    • CONZEIT

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #7 on: May 25, 2012, 08:38:09 pm
You're getting ahead of yourself, you're shading things before you get to the complexity of the first edit PxPiledriver did.


When I look at his animation I can see all these lines of action. The red ones are constant and the squiggly green represents the pulsing that goes on closer to the head

You can see all these lines of action because you can clearly see where each of the specks of fire is going.


in yours, I can barely tell that all of the fire is pulsing, but I cant see what each little speck of fire is doing.

Now I want you to compare his first step with your edit, just looking at their sillouethes


Even without all the colors, his is much more clear.

at this stage he only used one color for the animation, as he saw that it was working he went adding more and more colors, each complimented what was going on underneath.

I think you should do the same.

Now, PixelPileDriver blatantly used static diamond particles and they dont look even slightly like fire. This would be a bad thing except he's incredibly good at making them ACT like fire.

I think it's an excellent way of explaining how to animate, but dont feel forced to make this your look or anything :p just pay attention to the sillouethe and make sure we can follow the line of action of each speck of fire.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2012, 09:13:01 pm by Conceit »

Offline Daimoth

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 140
  • Karma: +0/-0
  • I Am Tooth
    • View Profile

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #8 on: May 26, 2012, 10:11:25 pm
I like the way his fire looks better than the particle-ey fire, to be honest.  :n:

Offline Grimsane

  • 0010
  • *
  • Posts: 423
  • Karma: +2/-0
    • View Profile

Re: [WIP] Magic Effects (fire)

Reply #9 on: May 26, 2012, 11:47:32 pm
I reckon sohei's latest effort could work if he had a couple or few more frames, the motion is too quick it is more a back forth and rapid flicker than a definite lashing of flame, but I dunno, depends what you are going for, PPs is definetly got the motion nailed, and the heat distortion on the face looks awesome, very particle driven also, try adding between frames and see what happens would be my advice.

PP's last one with the whirlwind of embers is quite interesting ;D curious whether it was hand done or used a particle system or a combination of the 2