Mini animation, having troubles with it

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Hi. I'm working on a game in a mini mock-up resolution, 80x60 (in pixels), and I tried to animated a character that can fit in that screen and not take over all the scenery.

Anyway, having troubles managing pixels in such small space:

What I got so far:



I would appreciate any pointers.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Put some more thought into it, but still something seems wrong with it.

And it's supposed to be an adventure game. This seems like marching, not walking. :/

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

One reason he seems like he is marching is when he moves his legs he doesnt kick out his calf until the very end of his thigh extension. It should all happen in one fluid motion. I will probably either make an edit or show you a similar animation done by me.
Edit: Here it is: Keep in mind this is all perfect and i think is a little smaller then yours.
Double edit: this is NOT all perfect is what was meant to be there.

[blumunkee]

Walk cycles are tricky. So tricky that some guy basically wrote a whole book on them.

Also, this by ptoing:

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Mr. Fahrenheit, your animated sprite gives me some useful hints. Will try to experiment emulating your solution.

I'm pretty sure I grasp the basic theory regarding walk animation. The problem is reproducing it skillfully. But isn't it always?

Edit: Oh, crap. I see now I made the hand repeat the same cycle twice inside the whole leg cycle.

Thanks for the image blumunkee. Gonna save that in my project directory. Plan to have my character run at some point in the game.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Another version:

I really had to work against my own instincts to reduce the intensity of the walk. I think it's pretty ok now.

Any glaring mistake there?

Now I started to weight if I want my game to be 16 colors restricted, then again, in such small mock up resolution (80X60) all pixels are rather visible. Dunno. I'll experiment.

Character inside the game, with black outline and without it:

[Phlakes]

That's a much better animation, but the one big problem I see with it is that the leg should be extended just before it hits the ground. So basically make the stepping leg straight in the 4th and 9th frames.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Here is an edit i made to your animation.

I made a color for the foreground arm and a color for the background arm, I made him less stompy (see frames 3 & 8 he raises his foot right before he puts it down), I edited his chest shape, and I made it so his arms and legs move with each other which is more realistic. Lastly I added a head bob to make it seem like his steps have impact.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Not sure I like the head bob, but your work on the legs is amazing. Gonna replicate that. Thanks!

[Grimsane]

the leg and arms you shaded are in synch you shaded the wrong ones in relation to each other, and head bob while a good suggestion is rarely effective with the head alone you need to do it with the entire body

[Parkerbaby]

It is important to reference life when possible, I think. This girl's body moves when she walks. Her body is higher up when her legs are vertical straight under her than when her legs are bent at an angle. A bent leg must give up some ground to a straight leg.

Also, the torso moves when walking. With the current animation, the arm stretches one way from a fixed position and then comes back and stretches the other way. Allow the shoulders to move a pixel or a two with the arms to show slight rotation.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Oh yeah I guess your right, when I tried walking for a reference for about two feet I went the other way my bad.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Ok, played a bit more with this. Pretty much replicated your legs, removed/added few pixels, and of course, switch the cycle of hand rotation. Implemented full torso wobble, but still not sure if it's necessary for such small sprite.

I'm leaning a lot from you Mr. Fahrenheit. Especially about the effects of small subtle details, pixel size! Many thanks! And to others for additional inputs.

This is really stimulating. Might attempt to do more complicated moves, like crouching, jumping and running, although that will move me away a bit from my original simple adventure game project. Hrm...maybe I should try animating him walking toward and from screen first.

EDIT: BTW, how do you save GIF with transparent background? If I do that, one frame "smudges" over the other.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Well, if your in gimp you have to put in (replace) on each frame. This will make each frame replace the last. Also, this is looking so much better and this is a learning experience for me too!

[Grimsane]

looks incredibly stiff, suggestions and an edit, some of the leg frames were 1 pixel off so realigned them for smoother leg motion, tilted the entire body forward to look more natural, human's don't have perfectly straight postures, and also when you walk you are transfering your weight forward onto the forward foot, so it looks more natural


exact same edit but with and without alpha, probably better with BG colour on the current forum theme  , but yes with gifs in your software each layer should have (100ms)<the delay between frames and (combine) or (replace) < this is the frame disposal/cumulation method, 100ms is a 10th of a second, 1000ms is of course 1 second the normal format of gif can only handle hundredths of a second/10ms increments so if you write 16ms it will be scaled up to 20ms (or down I'm not entirely certain, but it definetly will not register the last digit)

stilll looks rather rigid I think mainly due to the head, maybe it will help to have it drop for to frames, invert the up and down pattern.

*oops sleeve and arm length changes because I started messing with the arms but stopped, take the isolated frames as a suggestion

[Parkerbaby]

This is a quick edit just to give general ideas. Directly contact there is a point when legs are splayed out at a rather wide angle with a toe pointing down and a toe pointing up. Also, I felt the shoulders could move more dramatically from one side of the body to the other.

In the reference I posted you can see at the extreme points in the cycle, the base of the girl's arm covering her upper back from being visible while at the other extreme it is covering part of her chest.

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Ok, here it is. Another edit:

Extremely useful advises. Thanks guys. Incorporated Grimsane's weight transfer and Parkerbaby's tips on shoulder movement and the foot shape in the moment it's about the raise from the ground. I think this subtle change really has an effect. I also made few additional (two)-pixel size corrections.

Phew!

This sprite progressed way over my head and the scope of my game project. I would take me ages to come to this point without you. Nevertheless, I will try to continue with this path on other characters and others modes of movement. We'll see.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Hopefully you will post them here because I would love to see them!

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Uh, finding little time to pixel lately. Juggling to many things. :/

Anyway, trying to get face walking animation right, ATM.

Not happy with the posture. Especially the position of arms. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any tips on improving this work? Thanks!

[Lachie Dazdarian]

I've put more work on it. Enlarged, because the game will emulate 80x60 resolution (full screen or in 640x480) so maybe it's incorrect if you observe it in the original resolution.

As always, tips, comments, critics, are appreciated.

Now not happy with the face, but not sure what I can do there to make it more appealing.

[Bissle]

First of all, the side walk animation turned out excellent--great work!

The legs are pretty good overall.

In the first one that you posted, the positioning of the arms looked like his hands were in his pockets--the arms didn't appear to actually change position, just perspective. The enlarged one you posted afterwards is better in that regard, but the movement of the arms still seems "off". In a sprite this size, one pixel can make or break a piece, and any subtle movements would be best to imply with shading.



I tried to do some work on the face, too, to make it match the sideview one more. If anything I think the arms on my edit are too energetic, but I hope it helps.

Since the sideview animation is 10 frames, maybe two more frames could work for this one as well.