Animating motionblur/trails

[Seiseki]

Most animated sprites in games have nice trails or ghosting as motion blur, which adds more impact and also makes the motion seem clearer.

I've attempted this before but didn't get any satisfying results.
Does anyone know of any tutorials on the subject or inspiration sources to look at?

Is there a trick to using them? Like a minimum frame rate?
I usually go for 10 frames per second, for retro style sprites/animation. But that might be too slow.

(no actual art yet  )

[PixelPiledriver]

I've written some stuff about this in the past.
It could be covered more extensively.




http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=14964.msg137576#msg137576


http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=13546.msg130893#msg130893






The Animators Survival Kit touches lightly on the subject.
But from what I remember does not attempt to break it down in depth.

(no actual art yet  )

Ya it's always helpful to have something to work with.
Come back with that and we can talk about it more.

[Seiseki]

Thanks, I'll post what I've got so far when I get the time. 

What I managed to come up with on my own was, the thing that moves fast becomes a blurred long shape in the path of the motion.
But the trail needs to catch up with the object, a fist or a sword, when it slows down.



Here's the thing I made.
Gonna remake it though so I need to learn what I can from it.

The trail looks more like a sword trail which cleaves the air, rather than a bat..
Right now I'm also using longer delay for the impact and when he draws back.
It's supposed to be an old school simple animation, so I can't add too many frames.

[Chaos680]

I think an important part of using motion blurs, is also an extra frame or two with whatever that is about to be blurred to stay in relative place. This indicates that some potential power/weight is being put into it and also gives the player/viewer a quick shot of what is going to happen before the swing happens.

If you look at all the gifs PixelPiledriver posted, before each motion-blur occurs is a either static frame or two, or one with very minuscule pixel movements. And then the follow through is a static image of where-ever the blur moved said object to.