[WIP] [C+C] Attack animation for my game, help please!

[frank62899]

First off, sorry for low quality gif, i don't know how to make it better. This is my WIP sword animation and i really want feedback on how to make it more smooth, and natural.


EDIT: And here's the newest version, still looking for C+C!

[Daikon]

Hi again, I can see improvement since the last time you posted. Good job

As for your problems I can spot a few things that might help out.
 First off your timeing between frames is a bit long. I put it into gimp and you have a 250ms pause between each frame which is a little long. I reduced it to 100ms per frame and it looks much smoother here is a comparison.

Second it looks you have the right idea with moving the whole body but only horizontally. The vertical movement in the body  is just as important.

Third you are also not accounting for 3D movement or movement in the Z axis. What I mean is when you swing a sword you are swinging not just your sword but your whole body as well. Your hips and shoulders rotate as well as your legs. Grab a pencil or a stick and try it out in real life. It makes you feel sort of silly but a lot of high level animators act out their own animations to get a good realization of what they are trying to create.

For myself when I tried this attack I found I twisted my body quite a bit, leaned forward, and bend my front knee a lot.

So as a summary your animation looks a bit flat because of:
-vertical movement
-shoulders
-hips.
-legs.
Here is a realllly rough edit I did, it sort of conveys what I was trying to say.
 



I hope this helps.

[frank62899]

Thanks a ton for helping me! I will use that animation for reference and work on making the shoulders and body move correctly. I'll try to do it tomorrow and post it here.

[frank62899]

I've worked on this a lot and have an updated image, but it still feels weird, take a look.

[Manupix]

About the gif issues: there are visible jpeg artifacts: either you are saving frames as jpeg, or that silly gif maker you're using does.

Never use jpeg for pixel-art: it is a lossy compression format that always messes with graphic designs, adds hundreds of colors etc. Use lossless formats such as png or gif. If you need to save work in progress as layered files, psd or tiff are also good.

If you don't have software to create animations, there was this online tool called iaza which apparently is now ezimba. I haven't used it but I know iaza was good for this as well as transparency and some other features.

[astraldata]

Look at the "line-of-action" from the head & tip of the sword down to the shoulder on the sword arm to the leg that pushes backward to give the strength in the sword slash. If you can't make a clear-enough "direction" to the movement (i.e. if the start frame, middle frame, and end frames don't convey movement in a specific direction [with the whole body in this case]), the animation will always look "flyswatted" as your new edit does.

Additionally, the "swoosh" effect you've got there should follow the arc of the tip of the sword as it moves through 3d space (in other words, it should represent a portion of a wide oval with its center located at the guard-angle + wrist orientation to represent the area being sliced.

Here's an edit to explain this better (I didn't fix the line of action though since it's very difficult to edit JPEG artifacted pixel-art):

[frank62899]

First off, thanks for all the C+C! I used a new gif making tool so this image should be better. I changed the slashing, the end of the sword, started some shading, and redid the colors. Tell me anything else i can change!