AuthorTopic: Stasis Game Walk Cycle  (Read 16550 times)

Offline Sokota

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Stasis Game Walk Cycle

on: October 11, 2012, 07:45:27 pm
Still looking for suggestions on anatomy, but I'm happy with where it is at for now. I redid a walk cycle. I'm trying to get an all around 'normal' or 'casual' walk cycle that multiple npcs could use strolling around a city, as well as be the cycle for the player. This is what I have come up with so far. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm still working on tweaking things to give it more life; I don't like the arms much and the head and hands need work.


The one on the right is one with more torso movement. I think it has a bit more vitality but it was weird with the arms and legs..made him look he had some grandma titties. So I attempted to do something a lot more subtle. Another note, I didn't have black outlines to begin with, but I'm going for a somewhat graphic novel feeling, and I think it might add to the aesthetic. But I might go back to just dark outlines. Thoughts? Thanks so much.

Trying to update a character template's anatomy..Please tell me what you think! I'm also not sure how I feel about the black outlines. I am trying to achieve a sort of graphic novel-esque look. I used a few google image references for the abs section..Not real happy with the arm at the moment. Also updated abs have serious banding issues..Most of the sprite does actually I think. Also, he's got chunky clusters. Is it working for against the style? Colors also need help. So much to improve, but I could use some pointers in the right direction!


I'm reworking an old project's sprites and I redid the walk cycle (which was 8 frames) into this one, which is 12. I'm currently enrolled in animation school, first year. I feel like I have a decently smooth animation, but the weight is the problem..there's no punch. I'd appreciated it if I could get some C&C, as I want to make this the best walk template I can for our game. Thanks so much!


No torso movement/bob has been added yet, I want to nail the legs first. The game is a mouseaimer. I feel like the inbetween after the contact might be too snappy. Anyways, thanks for any feedback, I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

Also, this:

I'm planning on having a multitude of birds in the games to add detail and life to the environments. I wanted to have a walk on the ground and a flight animation, that way when the player walks up to the birds, they get up and fly away. In the meantime, I don't want them completely idle...this is what I have for the walk so far. I was referencing this video (1:14-1:17) for the crow walk. I think I'm close, but I feel like more could be done..not real sure on how to add more than four frames, but if I could make it smoother..please direct me in the right direction.

And now this:

Huh, dunno why it didn't alpha. Anyways, 8 frame fly cycle. I think it's pretty smooth, and decent looking, except for the tail and head. I'm not sure what to do there. Any feedback is welcome. Perhaps adding a bit of perspective so you can see a second wing would help, but I'm not sure on how to do that. I used this as my reference for the fly cycle. I also just realized how bad the dither pattern on the wing looks.

Regards,
Sokota
« Last Edit: January 27, 2013, 04:20:01 am by Sokota »

Offline Decroded

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Re: Human Walk | Bird Walk | Bird Fly Cycle - Animation help!

Reply #1 on: October 12, 2012, 05:34:16 am
walk is great keep going!
your sprite is extremely hard to see on that silly dark background but i think this walk would perfectly suit a special ops guy hunched over a little looking through the sight of his sub machine gun.
you may need some bobbing but it looks like he is trained to walk in a way that reduces bobbing so his aim is not thrown off, so it could be a good thing.
sprinting and jumping would be a different story, he could drop his gun to waist level for that and have alot more movement.


bird walk - well this will be good im sure but something funny about it. it seems obvious its only a half loop. but also i think its coz his head moves forward faster than backward. see this video it seems like the opposite here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gXsruj6UI0

brid flying looks great i think you just need to make the head bob up and down in time with the wings.
you could add its beak opening and closing occasionally if u wanna have it squawking as it flies :P

Offline Sokota

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Re: Human Walk | Bird Walk | Bird Fly Cycle - Animation help!

Reply #2 on: October 19, 2012, 01:16:10 am
Hey thanks for the feedback, Decroded. I've toned down the walk some, as I wanted it to be more casual and applicable to any character.
Image and video hosting by TinyPic" border="0
The first is the current walk in the game (it's really, really ancient..) and the one on the right is my new walk to replace that one. I'm kinda impressed with how far I've come. First is 8 frames, second is 12. I like it except the weird crap going on with the feet wobbling (due to foot/leg separation..not sure how to fix it though, or smooth it out..). Like before, I want to be sure I've nailed the legs before I move on to the torso. Any thoughts? I'd be happier if I could somehow get it to have more weight. Thanks so much.

Sokota

Also, as for your suggestions for the bird, I will check it out and see what I can do. I like the idea of the bird squawking. The bird walk is a full cycle, it's just only four frames, lol. I could push that to 8 fairly easily.

Edit: I just realized the walk is jacked up because there are two contacts, and his picks his foot up and sets it down again. Silly me.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2012, 01:31:12 am by Sokota »

Offline NaCl

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Re: Human Walk | Bird Walk | Bird Fly Cycle - Animation help!

Reply #3 on: November 02, 2012, 10:06:19 am
I think this needs a lot of work. It doesn't really have any sense of weight or fluidity to it. There is so much shifting around from frame to frame. If you're in animation school, you really need to start paying attention to the little details and step up your game. Like, look how the foot nearer us wobbles all around. I don't mean to be a downer, but if you're going to school for animation I assume you want to get good at it. And to get good at it you need to pay attention to the details and look at everything you do with a very critical eye.

You say you want to give it more weight, and this is really the fundamental challenge of animation. How to imply the weight and movement of an object. Your walk now lacks weight because it lacks contrast in the movements. By this I mean, clear changes in the shape of the object. Right now it's just a blobby shape that slides back and forth. If you want the walk to have weight, you need to demonstrate that weight somehow. In a walk, this is often achieved by showing a contrast in the shape of the leg; one frame it is extended onto the ground, the next it is bent and the body is over it. This is the sort of contrast I mean, showing how a shape changes over time.

One more thing, it might be helpful to approach animation more holistically. By that I mean, don't just do the legs and leave the rest for later. Everything has to move together to make sense, especially for an object as complex as the human body. Try starting with a simple stick figure. When you can clearly see the weight in it's movement, then start adding the volumes.

Offline Decroded

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Re: Human Walk | Bird Walk | Bird Fly Cycle - Animation help!

Reply #4 on: November 02, 2012, 10:48:57 am
Yeah i imagined it as some swat guy, gun raised and thought it was a good start for that but i dont think you're going about it right.
Please describe ur process ur using and what about ur references?
I think you should start rough trying to mimick some video or animation youve see.
If photoshop each time u add frame start blank layer and show previous frame 25% alpha as refernce but sketch tue new frame from scratch.
Use some bright colours to highlight each joint.
Also ur guy is way too fat if hes not wearing baggy pants.
Feet way too rounf.
Start with more rough stick-man-ish but use a thicker square pencil brush of 2-3 pixels (square brushez hidden by default in photoshop), and just rough in where everything is.
Dont spend too much time on first pass just get the whole body done with alot more movement than u got now.
Then see how it looks and adjust from there and post here for feedback.
To make it reasonably smooth you probably need 12 frames i think.
Any more is probably too hard for first attempt but less probably looks crappy.

Offline Sokota

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Re: Human Walk | Bird Walk | Bird Fly Cycle - Animation help!

Reply #5 on: November 19, 2012, 03:36:36 am
NaCL: I have just started animation school; this is my first semester. But to be fair, that walk cycle looks like complete s***. I've been studying some stuff over the last couple of weeks and have had some small realizations (if they can be called that, lol). I took your advice and sat down and spent a day working on creating an entire walk cycle, and this is what I came up (A big improvement, but it still needs some going over).


I was trying to make a casual walk...but I think it's too bouncy in the current state. At first the arms were kinda pompous but I toned those down to this. Think it's looking much more like how I want it to. I'm trying to make it more casual and smooth, so any feedback is welcome.

Decroded: Right now, I don't own Photoshop so I don't use layers in my workflow at the moment. I make all my pixels in MSpaint, oldschool. I will probably be switching to GIMP and doing the whole opacity layering thing, since when I do handrawn animation, flipping helps out tremendously and I can't do that with my dated workflow. Right now my new animation is 8 frames, I'll work on making it 12 frames soon, but just need to take a break. Also as far as animation goes, I've been doing pose to pose as far as the process is concerned. So for this new animation I did contacts, passings, downs, then the ups last.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm continuing to try to improve. If you guys want to see some of the handrawn exercises I've done in my class I'll be happy to post them.

Sokota

Offline Sokota

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Re: Walk Cycle | Animation help!

Reply #6 on: December 10, 2012, 04:51:42 am
Okay so after a little tweaking, I've toned the walk down to this.

I still feel like it's not casual enough. And that the legs are a little weird. Need to tone down the back arm swing as well. I'll keep working on it though.

Also, I'm working on a throwing animation because a character is throwing an molotov cocktail (could be any small, grenade-like thing) in a cutscene. The idea is the classic 'point, then throw' type of movement. Anyways, I only have the three keys..2 extremes and the passing breakdown, but I was hoping I could get some help with it. Yes, I looked at myself in the mirror, probably need to do it more, but the passing is giving me trouble. Also don't like the legs. I feel like adding some accents would be good, but perhaps I need to exaggerate the extremes before?

I was trying to put arcs in the hands and strong[ish] lines of action in the extremes.

All feedback is appreciated, thanks. I will keep working on this stuff in the spare time I get.

Sokota
« Last Edit: December 10, 2012, 04:54:30 am by Sokota »

Offline Phlakes

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Re: Walk Cycle & Grenade Throwing Animation [C&C Please]

Reply #7 on: December 10, 2012, 06:08:40 am
As far as the walking, it looks like his legs are never fully extended (they might be in one frame, I'm just looking at the animation), which makes it feel like he's crouch-walking a bit. The movement of the arms also needs a bit of smoothing at the two peaks. They should get slower rather then instantly jump back into swinging.

Offline Sokota

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Re: Character Anatomy Rework [C&C Please]

Reply #8 on: January 15, 2013, 03:13:26 am
Trying to update a character template's anatomy..Please tell me what you think! I'm also not sure how I feel about the black outlines. I am trying to achieve a sort of graphic novel-esque look. I used a few google image references for the abs section..Not real happy with the arm at the moment. Also updated abs have serious banding issues..Most of the sprite does actually I think. Also, he's got chunky clusters. Is it working for against the style? Colors also need help. So much to improve, but I could use some pointers in the right direction! Thanks so much!
« Last Edit: January 15, 2013, 11:35:13 am by Sokota »

Offline Sokota

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Re: Stasis Game Walk Cycle

Reply #9 on: January 27, 2013, 04:20:21 am
Quote
Still looking for suggestions on anatomy, but I'm happy with where it is at for now. I redid a walk cycle. I'm trying to get an all around 'normal' or 'casual' walk cycle that multiple npcs could use strolling around a city, as well as be the cycle for the player. This is what I have come up with so far. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm still working on tweaking things to give it more life; I don't like the arms much and the head and hands need work.


The one on the right is one with more torso movement. I think it has a bit more vitality but it was weird with the arms and legs..made him look he had some grandma titties. So I attempted to do something a lot more subtle. Another note, I didn't have black outlines to begin with, but I'm going for a somewhat graphic novel feeling, and I think it might add to the aesthetic. But I might go back to just dark outlines. Thoughts? Thanks so much.