A couple RPG walk cycles

[martyisnothere]

Hello!  I'm new here.  I've been doing a lot of pixel art lately, so I was thrilled to find this place after Arne mentioned it in a blog post about his 16 color palette.  The critique here is some of the best that I've seen in an internet forum.





These are a couple characters that I've been working on for a little top-down action RPG demo.  They were designed to have replaceable heads (the cyclops body would work just as well for a troll or minotaur or demon...), and I was trying to keep the frame count low for the heads, but the lack of head motion has been bothering me.  I've been waiting to do the east and north cycles for the cyclops until I've figured out his arm motion.  It looks too mechanical right now.

Thanks so much for taking a look.  I'd love to get feedback on these, and I hope to get a lot better at this with the help of the kind people of this forum.

Also, if you'd like to see some more of my pixel work, I made a quick tumblr with some recent stuff http://martyisnothero.tumblr.com/

[rikfuzz]

Really looks very nice!  Especially the front and back views.

Because the heads are SO big, they could really do with a bit of animation, especially stuff like hair (even if it is pretty short) you'd expect it to react at least little. 

Followed you on tumblr!

[martyisnothere]

Thanks so much for the reply, rikfuzz.





I'm still pretty inexperienced as an animator, and it took me a few tries to do anything that wasn't just obviously bad.  I kind of like the bouncier motion on the cyclops' head, but I'm really disappointed with the human.  I'm also using his pompadour hairdo as a silly excuse to not animate hair.  I think that instead of trying to work on him anymore, I'm going to redesign the character in a way that would have more secondary motion.  Different hair, flowier clothing.  Maybe I'll even bump him up to 8 frames like the cyclops.

[blumunkee]

Good animation requires intuition, and you have lots of intuition. This looks great! Can't wait to see more.

[NaCl]

Looking great! All I can suggest is that you really pay attention to the movement of the silhouette when you animate pixel art. Movement without a change to the silhouette can look like things are just sliding around. The cyclops pectorals and face, for instance.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. Hope you stick around.