Just starting out on my first game!

[Allegro]

Thanks!

I'm unfortunately going to have to leave it as is, and focus on animation for now, but I do plan on fixing it up... hopefully before the end of May.

[Allegro]

Really enjoyed looking at your work so far!
Great job... 

Based upon Cyangmou's comment,  here might be a quick fix for your thug's proportions... it may not be
perfect yet but perhaps it might lead you further towards a better endresult.

I didn't really want to change the proportions and create a larger sprite the way that you did as I feel that their size is how I want them, but I did refine their look a little. I think this is how I'm going to proceed. I have to start animating jumps and walks and runs today.

Here are the two versions side by side:

[Peltast]

I'm not at all an expert on animation, but just one thing to point out: I think the animation would benefit a lot from frames at the beginning/end that allow it to slow it down.  If you try to 'pulse' like that in real life, you'll notice you naturally slow down at the beginning and end of your movement; this is because you're pushing with your feet, and allowing gravity to slow your upward movement until you start going down again.  That happens in an arc, not in a linear fashion.

Take a look at fighter sprites and you'll see what I mean.  This isn't the best example, but I'm too lazy to find a better one:


And if you're up to it, I'd recommend animating the feet as well.  They are what is actually driving the upward motion, so it's most natural for them to move first and everything else to follow.

[Allegro]

I agree to an extent, but there are a couple of problems... one being I just don't think I have the bandwidth to get all of the animation done if I increase the number of frames that will be in all of the various cycles.

If that weren't an issue, I could slow the fps down a little to help it be slower, however another problem is that at the size I'm working at, the character is only moving a very small number of pixels. The character you pointed out is larger, and so there's more resolution to play with subtle motions in... I'm not confident in my ability to make this more subtle at the scale that I'm working at.

Maybe it would be more appropriate to take out the animation, and leave it more like a Megaman or Battletoads style keep-alive where he just blinks on occasion? The characters are going to have multiple weapons that they can pick up and throw and swing, which means there will be multiple stances per character... so I'm trying to keep the stuff as graphic and the animation as limited possible

Now Scott Pilgrim used more frames of animation and looked great; but I felt that what I was doing might be a nice compromise between that and the old NES style idle animation :

edit: meant to include an updated foot animation... I think it does actually make a difference.

[Jigsaw]

It's not a question of resolution, or framerate, it's a question of timing on the frames you do have. I mean, sure, you can get more subtle motion if you increase resolution or framerate, but here's a 2 minute edit I did of your animation without redrawing a single thing:

[Allegro]

Thanks Jigsaw
I hadn't considered the option of holding each frame a separate amount of time. I've gone back and edited my idle and block animations get get something a little more smooth.

I have about 30 cycles I have to rough out in the next week, so it's going to be a busy week for me

Here's what I've done so far. (I want an extra frame in the jump just before landing and since I hope to reuse the bottom pose for our crouch... I'll probably see about adding an extra frame before the crouch too... unsure if it will be the same frame that will be used at the end of the jump. Also, I plan on fixing the size of the arms in the run, though I like them looking bulkier in the block and doublejump/tumble)

[Seiseki]

You really need to look into and understand banding because I see it a lot in your work.
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322

There's also quitea bit of pillow shading, for example the running animation, his arm looks completely flat.
I think you're pretty good at animation though, I see you even made his shorts move more like fabric, awesome

This might not be the style you're after, but I played around with it, practicing shading.

[Allegro]

Thanks Seiseki, I'll be sure to read that thread. It looks like a very good resource.

This is my first time doing character animation in about 8 years, and the first time doing it in this method, so it's kind of fun to get back into

It's interesting to see another take on the shading of the character, but I think I'm looking to keep things a little more flat/graphic than that.

[Jigsaw]

FWIW I find the proportions in the running animation way more charming and pleasing to look at than in the idle or walking animations. The bulky arms help justify the disproportionately big upper body, and the shape and size of the torso looks much more balanced than in the idle animation. I would much rather see you adjust those animations to match the running one than the other way around.

On another note it looks very weird to me that the red - the darkest colour - has barely darker red outlines, while the much lighter whites, yellows and skintones all have solid black outlines.

[Allegro]

FWIW I find the proportions in the running animation way more charming and pleasing to look at than in the idle or walking animations. The bulky arms help justify the disproportionately big upper body, and the shape and size of the torso looks much more balanced than in the idle animation. I would much rather see you adjust those animations to match the running one than the other way around.

On another note it looks very weird to me that the red - the darkest colour - has barely darker red outlines, while the much lighter whites, yellows and skintones all have solid black outlines.

Ha, well, after a quick facebook poll, it seems like overwhelmingly my friends agrees with you. So, I'll keep the dude with big arms going forward.

I'm still not sure about the colors. The shirt is intentionally different since it's a part that we plan on palette swapping. We wanted the colors to stand out since they'll determine which team you're on.



I'm personally partial toward having line colors determined by the object that they're outlining, while my partner seems to think that all black works... but we both agree that the middle one is a happy medium...