GR#203 - Hyper Light Drifter Inspired Sprites

[Rosier]

Some characters from my own things that I turned into Drifters.  In order, it's Cole, Reiciel, Maki, Clarke (female and male), Jaunt, King and Roman.



Roman doing some attacks.  First is a Electric Palm Strike, second is laser knife, last is totally a sword swing and not a frisbee.




An enemy design.

[Conzeit]

dude, few colors isnt it. HLD has practically no shading. think only in solid colors, like not more than one per limb

Their taurus guy sort of looks like yours but if you want to get the style dont go for the least HLD characteristic character first. Go for someone like the drifter, someone flat and with no shading, focus on diferentiating the limbs by putting differently colored details on the guy

plus your guy kinda looks like a buffed up fireman(from megaman). why are you doing superhero underpants in HLD?. try something with glyphs on it, cloaks or medieval armor

focus on getting an intresting sillouethe first and foremost. drawing only in one color with no outlines for starters will help

[Rosier]

I mainly used the shading from this guy, who has two shades of muscle definition.  Smaller characters like the Drifter and the Schlaepfer Knight have one shade.  I'll try out making a Drifter style character and keep the one shade in mind.

I assure you, it's not based on Fireman. 
The underpants are intended to be armor, same with the arms, legs and helmet.  It could do with being more HLD inspired, though, if I didn't get the point across.


I'll rework some stuff and then get started on a Drifter.  Your help is appreciated.

[AlcopopStar]

Good start and the helmet design is really neat, but maybe try for a more complex pose? You are also pillowing your shading a little bit by outlining the arms and the helmet. The HLD art style has the light source hitting very directly with no buffer shades. You shouldn't bother with internal AAing or anything because HLDs style is accentuate the pixel and focus on dynamic shapes, block shading and bright harmonious colors.  There is actually very little traditional pixel tech going into it, which part of what makes the style so fresh and engaging.

[Rosier]

The three Drifters are hood and full gas mask, mouthpiece gas mask and goggles and then scarf.

I removed the extraneous machines from it's back and gave it fur stuff to make it more like a race or something along those lines.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Much better. By removing "extraneous machines from it's back" you increase readability, and black was good choice to balance all that red. There are still some problems with his feet, they don't have good shape, and you should remove those black pixels near his thumbs.

[DrKucho]

loving these kind of sprites, so stylish , good job on the mimic,  in my opinion one very important thing is you have to do a lot of frames,   fluid animation on these sprites makes the real deal

[cels]

As an alternative to HDMD's suggestion (sorry bro, your screen name is too damn long) how about making the area next to the monster's hands a different colour, so the blue from the hands doesn't crash with the blue or red from the legs? Would give better readability.

[Decroded]

i think u have too many bright red detail points for a sprite this size which flatten him out.
also notice in ur reference image the use of heavier contrast on focal points such as hair and helmet (in that order to my eyes)?
then u have things like the gun tip (I think) carefully using a bright colour that can be easily read without looking directly at it.

i think ur guy could benefit from bull legs like this guy http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo259/relativity11/new-demon-turkeyd.jpg

[Rosier]

A Light, Medium and Heavy Attack.  All are obviously derived from the Heavy, but I changed some minor things like leg placement and the Light being an electric palm strike.


And messed with this guy's legs and wrappings.  Longer legs definitely suit him more.

[Decroded]

Reads more like he is throwing a frisbee than a heavy attack.

If its a palm attack why not start by lifting the front leg, step in, then cross the rear arm forward (pull other arm back)?
Kinda like this

^ That would be far more powerful than the strange bitch-slap he is doing now 

[Rosier]

Reads more like he is throwing a frisbee than a heavy attack.

If its a palm attack why not start by lifting the front leg, step in, then cross the rear arm forward (pull other arm back)?
Kinda like this

^ That would be far more powerful than the strange bitch-slap he is doing now 

It's probably a bit hard to see cause of the colors, but the intention was him to make a 'unfurling his sword' thing.  When he crosses his arm, his weapon lengthens before swinging.  I'll admit it didn't turn out exactly as I wanted, but it was pretty late and was going to work on it later.

As for palm strike, I literally just removed frames from the Heavy and noticed it still worked.  Again, I might go back and do a bit more with it, but I'll probably end up doing something else with it.

[Decroded]

So 1st is electric palm attack, 2nd and 3rd are knife attack which is the same colour as electric palm? 

1st and 2nd are OK but 3rd just looks wrong to me.

[Rosier]

So 1st is electric palm attack, 2nd and 3rd are knife attack which is the same colour as electric palm? 

1st and 2nd are OK but 3rd just looks wrong to me.

Laser Sword?  They both function using electricity.

Noted.  I'll come up with something else.

[Decroded]

Laser/plasma swords r cool 

Pretty small sword though looks more like a knife.
I guess its tempting to make heavy attack motion a variation of the light attack but try standing up and doing some sword motions or watch some sword fight videos.

[Rosier]

A bunch of my other characters as Drifters.

[Rosier]

In the animation, it's rolling up his sleeve, charging electricity, rush stab, then fix sleeve.

[Fizzick]

I have two complaints. The first is that most of your characters look the same,Cnut with different hairstyles, costumes and heights. Palette variation is a good cue for differentiation, and silhouette comes just as important.

For the animation, I see very little commitment to the attack from the character's body. Typically before a forward movement there is a windup to gain momentum. I would have his arm bent until the second half of the swing, and definitely get his body and legs more involved.

[Rosier]

I have two complaints. The first is that most of your characters look the same,Cnut with different hairstyles, costumes and heights. Palette variation is a good cue for differentiation, and silhouette comes just as important.

For the animation, I see very little commitment to the attack from the character's body. Typically before a forward movement there is a windup to gain momentum. I would have his arm bent until the second half of the swing, and definitely get his body and legs more involved.

The seven characters are all from different universes, so they wouldn't be interacting.  Their accompanying characters look far more diverse.  I think of these as the Main Characters of their respective series, so I group their sprites together. The repeat of colors is intentional for these characters alone.

There's a bit of forward movement, but I made admittedly too fast when animating.  I can lower the speed and maybe add a frame or two to help.  But when you say bending the arm, are you referring to bending his arm like he was doing a running punch?  I kinda have that in the motion blur, but I can make it apparent in the normal frames.

[Rosier]

Added a bit more movement, smoothed out his head, and added robo speed boots to go along with some leg movement.

[coffee]

Hey Rosier

I'm not sure if you intend this to be a game character or not. If it's supposed to be, I think they main issue with the animations is that it starts off in a very stiff pose. It would be very weird if you ran around and than suddenly stopped to an halt to do the motion in your animation. I would try to put a bit more power into it with more anticipation.

I'm definatly not an expert in animation but I would do something like this instead:


More movement could possibly be done but I have little time, someone here could probably make this a little more interesting! I've also changed a few of the features and since you're going
for a HLD style I would make the colours stand out more as individual spots. Right now it's a little to dark and messy.

Good luck!

[astraldata]

@coffee
Been watching this thread a while now and I must say that your edit of the animation in the prior OP update was exactly what I was thinking. For any really strong attack, the attacker would put his entire body into it, thus there would be a lot of anticipation to the animation, and the visual energy buildup really does the trick there, not to mention you improved the sprite's readability and visual appeal with more follow-through on the cape. Nice job.

I did want to mention to the OP (and anyone else interested) that this kind of anticipation doesn't necessarily need a visual representation of the energy buildup as long as the limb charging up the energy moves slightly away (in the opposite direction) from the intended direction of movement before actually moving there. That particular trick is the major key in the buildup of that 'pop' of energy you see in a lot of anime attacks.

Although the key to lively animation is significant 'change' from frame to frame, powerful sudden directional movement mandates this opposing movement to build up (anticipate) the energy required to execute the action.

Someone like PPD, who is known for his very effective animations, has this sense of anticipation down to a science (among the other basic animation things, such as spacing, overlapping action, follow-through, etc., which increase the believability, readability, and dynamism of his animations -- and at a resolution this small, all you really have is effective animation to get your point across!)

[Rosier]

Hey Rosier

I'm not sure if you intend this to be a game character or not. If it's supposed to be, I think they main issue with the animations is that it starts off in a very stiff pose. It would be very weird if you ran around and than suddenly stopped to an halt to do the motion in your animation. I would try to put a bit more power into it with more anticipation.

I'm definatly not an expert in animation but I would do something like this instead:


More movement could possibly be done but I have little time, someone here could probably make this a little more interesting! I've also changed a few of the features and since you're going
for a HLD style I would make the colours stand out more as individual spots. Right now it's a little to dark and messy.

Good luck!

Well that looks really fricking sick...

I'm not really making game animations so much as just animations.  I'm mimicking HLD pretty thoroughly though, so that's the reason that he starts in a bland pose.  Looking at yours I can see where a few things can be changed. 
As for colors, I have zero talent other than washed out.  You mind if I touch on your palette?

@astral
Can you elaborate on the limb moving in the opposite direction, or link some of PPD's animations? 

Should I make the arm arch back a bit before the move forward?

[Decroded]

force flows through whole body in power attacks.
pulling left arm back rotates shoulders and propels right arm with more force.
you can find pixelpiledrivers profile on the forum then click Posts to peruse his content.
go right through it I'm sure u won't be disappointed.

[astraldata]

yours:

mine:


I duplicated frame 11 and tweaked it to show you what I'm referring to about adding power to your animation. Note how on frame 11 it moves up+back into the distance before going forward with the beginnings of the strike motion (in your original, there was simply a straight-forward lunge with zero anticipation there.) Other than that 1 additional frame I added, the only other tweak I made was on frame 14 to make the hand movement/spacing correct with the anticipation frame I added.

As far as Pixel Pile Driver's stuff, I learned animation way back on the old pixelation (RIP the Bruce Lee banner. ;P) before I knew of him, so I don't have any links to his work, though it shouldn't be too hard to find. He's got a little website with a lot of animation tutorials. Just google him.

[Rosier]

yours:

mine:


I duplicated frame 11 and tweaked it to show you what I'm referring to about adding power to your animation. Note how on frame 11 it moves up+back into the distance before going forward with the beginnings of the strike motion (in your original, there was simply a straight-forward lunge with zero anticipation there.) Other than that 1 additional frame I added, the only other tweak I made was on frame 14 to make the hand movement/spacing correct with the anticipation frame I added.

As far as Pixel Pile Driver's stuff, I learned animation way back on the old pixelation (RIP the Bruce Lee banner. ;P) before I knew of him, so I don't have any links to his work, though it shouldn't be too hard to find. He's got a little website with a lot of animation tutorials. Just google him.

Okay, that's what I thought you meant.  Just needed some confirmation.


Also, I am pretty new to this forum.  I don't know acronyms like PPD quite yet.  I'll look at some of his stuff when I get the chance.



Edit:

Made his arm arch back right before going forward, added some more advanced effects because the ones on coffee's looked nice and simplified the design a bit/colorized it.  I didn't use the torso thing because it just made him look like a section of his spine shifted a bit to the left.

The next animation will probably include a lot more individualized frames and more movement altogether.

[coffee]

As for colors, I have zero talent other than washed out.  You mind if I touch on your palette?

I see you went ahead, but yeah that's absolutely no problem : P

[Rosier]

As for colors, I have zero talent other than washed out.  You mind if I touch on your palette?

I see you went ahead, but yeah that's absolutely no problem : P

...Whoops...
Sorry bout that. 


Anyway, it definitely looks better after that.

[Pyrovisionary]

I cannot think of much criticism, but I will say that I absolutely love the palette and style. Also, maybe those blue pixels on his feet aren't very necessary? I dunno but they just don't look right to me.

[Rosier]

I cannot think of much criticism, but I will say that I absolutely love the palette and style. Also, maybe those blue pixels on his feet aren't very necessary? I dunno but they just don't look right to me.

They're supposed to be boots that allow him to move faster, but looking back at it, they didn't turn out how I wanted.

[Asphidel]

I actually kinda like the lit up boots. It's a small thing, but I feel like it adds a bit of character to the animation without being too distracting.
While I like this, and think it's fairly solid, I think you could definitely make the upper body more expressive while he's charging up. He does a really quick motion with his left arm, but then he just sticks it down by his side and it becomes dead weight, which seems kind of odd to me. I would think if he were gathering energy, he would show it in more ways than just a bright blue ball, maybe by drawing himself in, or shifting a little to the side.
Although, I don't really understand the personality of this character, so that non-telegraphed sort of motion might be appropriate?
Also, I have mixed feelings on the palette change. I feel like the blue on his coat is a bit too saturated, although I like that the purple is pulled out a little bit more. And I'm not sure if it's because of the palette change or if you actually changed the frames, but the blur feels toned down, and the impact looks weaker because of it.

Anyways. I'm pretty new to spriting and animation myself, so take everything I say with a couple grains of salt, but I hope at least some of what I said was helpful!

[Rosier]

I actually kinda like the lit up boots. It's a small thing, but I feel like it adds a bit of character to the animation without being too distracting.
While I like this, and think it's fairly solid, I think you could definitely make the upper body more expressive while he's charging up. He does a really quick motion with his left arm, but then he just sticks it down by his side and it becomes dead weight, which seems kind of odd to me. I would think if he were gathering energy, he would show it in more ways than just a bright blue ball, maybe by drawing himself in, or shifting a little to the side.
Although, I don't really understand the personality of this character, so that non-telegraphed sort of motion might be appropriate?
Also, I have mixed feelings on the palette change. I feel like the blue on his coat is a bit too saturated, although I like that the purple is pulled out a little bit more. And I'm not sure if it's because of the palette change or if you actually changed the frames, but the blur feels toned down, and the impact looks weaker because of it.

Anyways. I'm pretty new to spriting and animation myself, so take everything I say with a couple grains of salt, but I hope at least some of what I said was helpful!

Well at least I have both of them hanging around.

It might not come super clearly in the animation, but his arm doesn't become dead weight.  He kind of flicks it down in order to fix his sleeve, which was rolled up.  Otherwise, his lack of motion was intentional.  Excessive motion doesn't fit his character much.  If and when I make another animation in this style, it's going to be a different character with a more pronounced personality.

Personally, I like washed out colors like in the original animation.  Everyone else seems to be a huge fan of the bright colorations, so I try to go with that.

If anything, I made the motion blur more pronounced.


The original just has a couple of streaks, the new one has a huge collection of energy more in line with coffee's animation.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

For me he somehow it looks like he's uninterested and bored, "let's get over with this already" posture, or like he is some spoiled noble "now I will kill you and you should like it". coffees animation speaks "you made me do this...".

All this is due to his body position during animation. He is to stiff. Through all this edits you are trying to improve it by adding small details, but you can't make it perfect until you improve base. Every good artist should be capable to destroy his work in order to create something better from it. I know that sometimes that can be hard (very hard) to do, but by doing this you are making big step forward.
You can make excuse that he is supposed to be that way and do nothing about it (which will nurture your ego), or you can try to make him even better. Stiffness can not be represented as elegant and reduced.

I don't have intention to offend you, I just want to motivate you to go extra mile and don't be afraid to make big changes. 

[cels]

I agree 100% with what HDMD said.

To be honest, I've been skimming through this thread a few times and only today did I notice coffee's edit. I was very surprised that you didn't try to copy some of the awesome stuff he did, because he really gave this sprite what it needs. If you want to make it a powerful attack, study what he did. If you want to make the attack look completely effortless, then you still need to make major changes. Right now, unfortunately, the movement just looks unnatural.

Go the extra mile, bro.

[Rosier]

All this is due to his body position during animation. He is to stiff. Through all this edits you are trying to improve it by adding small details, but you can't make it perfect until you improve base. Every good artist should be capable to destroy his work in order to create something better from it. I know that sometimes that can be hard (very hard) to do, but by doing this you are making big step forward.

I have deleted things I've spent hours upon in the past.  That was because they didn't turn out anything near what I wanted.  This one did, and so I didn't delete it.

For me he somehow it looks like he's uninterested and bored, "let's get over with this already" posture.

Because he's supposed to.  His character is emotionless and bored.



I am going to make another animation with one of the other characters I made up above.  To be specific, number 3, who is the complete opposite of 7, and has an animated personality.  It's fitting for her to fit into the descriptions you guys are giving me.  We'll see how un/animated her animation turns out.

[PixelPiledriver]

I quite like the personality.
I like fighting characters that have form over function.

Of course there's always things that can be improved.
Even if you've reached something you like it's always good to start from scratch one more time.

A couple frames seem off in placement and speed.
They are working against the motion.
Sorry no time for edits or explaining.
Consider looking over the frame times and positions again.

I'd say definitely sketch in a dummy to take the hit and react.
It will help tell you more about what the attack can do.
Is it a knock down?
A stun?
A combo starter?
A combo linker?
A combo ender?
A one off power move?
Can it be used in more than one context?
etc.

If you told me this was some sort of mid power attack that stuns enemies with a shock for 3-5 seconds, I'd believe it.
If you told me this was his heavy attack... I would probably want something more out of it.
Surely a guy this cool has another trick/knife/sword/thing that is more flashy and powerful.

[Rosier]

A couple frames seem off in placement and speed.
They are working against the motion.
Sorry no time for edits or explaining.
Consider looking over the frame times and positions again.

An elaboration on this would be appreciated.  Timing I can see, but placement?

A stun?
A combo starter?
A combo linker?
A combo ender?
A one off power move?
Can it be used in more than one context?

If you told me this was some sort of mid power attack that stuns enemies with a shock for 3-5 seconds, I'd believe it.
If you told me this was his heavy attack... I would probably want something more out of it.
Surely a guy this cool has another trick/knife/sword/thing that is more flashy and powerful.

I get the impression a major factor might have been lost in the low res translation.
He has cyborg arms, so that's why I count it a bit higher in terms of damage compared to his sword which can marginally be seen in the animations at the top.  It's an electrically empowered gore.

In terms of it being a final attack, the animations are what I envision it being like depending on the desired outcome.  The animation is better suited to the first one (Slowing/damaging/cool delayed damage), where he quickly tears through his side as he turns.  The second use (Meant for pure lethality/brutality) typically wouldn't involve such a dramatic turn, but you get the point. 

Either way, it's designed to be a finishing move, if not just a strong one.

[astraldata]

If he's zipping across an enemy during the blur, I can go with that being the first attack. The issue is, with the added time to draw in the energy visually, it seems to zap some energy from the attack itself -- nobody's gonna take that long to execute an attack, and if they did, that wind-up better be epic after the energy is drawn in visually, or it loses power (as you should be able to see now).

The arm/windup anticipation was done well, but the drawing in of energy, as stated above, ends too quickly before the attack is executed (due to the frame-timing, in part, most likely, but also there's just not enough difficulty in him pulling his fist back and moving his arm forward with all that energy stored in it to be believable.) Maybe that will give you a bit more direction on this. Otherwise, your animation is shaping up nicely.

[JoeCreates]

One thing that stands out to me as rather odd is the limpness of the left arm. It might help if he used it for counterbalance, bending at the elbow, for example.

[Rosier]

The issue is, with the added time to draw in the energy visually, it seems to zap some energy from the attack itself -- nobody's gonna take that long to execute an attack, and if they did, that wind-up better be epic after the energy is drawn in visually, or it loses power (as you should be able to see now).

You clearly haven't watched enough anime.
That's probably a product of me changing the draw in effect from a few sparks to a grander absorption.  I can probably add/slow down some stuff and make it feel heavier, but that'll be later.

One thing that stands out to me as rather odd is the limpness of the left arm. It might help if he used it for counterbalance, bending at the elbow, for example.

You raise a good point.  It didn't occur to me that his arm just hangs there...  I'll fix it if I ever go back.




And now, time to critique a new animation. 

Definitely tried for more unique frames, even if I did have a handy time with minor edits to improve fluidity.  In order of what's happening, it's slide in, crouch, jump, float while prepping armor, connecting armor, landing while throwing out blades, then a cheery pop back into idle.


Sorry for double posting, but I thought I'd mess with the speed a little bit.  This one looks a bit better IMO.


Also, playing with so more vibrant colors for her standard clothes.

[astraldata]

Any particular reason for the crouch? It seems a bit extraneous for putting on armor. I'd also bring the arms up into a more pronounced pose if I were you, perhaps by putting the body in the form of an 'X' sort of pose to emphasize the energy. Atm, the whole animation just looks like you put a lot of frames in there, but none have any real speed or sense of impact (major problem with most oldschool disney animations for example.)

Anime is an excellent example of how to counter the failings of Disney since they've honed the technique of very high-impact actions with very low frame counts. You seem to be falling into the Disney trap here unfortunately, with high frame counts to cover up your weak keyframe poses. Anime focuses on strong and dynamic keyframe poses, and only adds in the number of inbetweens necessary to convey that pose convincingly. In effect, the original keyframes are choppy and move sharply from one to the next, but proper spacing in your movements can cover up the seeming 'need' for more frames.

Just some food for thought.

[Mathias]

What a good way to put it, astraldata. I'm going to remember that.


And I agree with the crouching-jumping-ice-shards-stuff-animation thoughts.
While the action occurring is interesting - the way it plays out feels very undynamic - it's merely a monotonously spaced sequence of movements. There's no force, no vigor.
Stand up and follow through with that same action. Don't you want to make it really snappy and interesting? Vary speeds. Let a slight pause of anticipation happen before a prominent movement and execute the movement with no ease in, but but give it a slight ease out.

What you have is a nice rough draft. You've chosen a concept and you've got the choreography established. Now add some exaggeration, some eccentricity to it. Make it fun to watch.

[Rosier]

Any particular reason for the crouch? It seems a bit extraneous for putting on armor.

As I mentioned, she's the opposite of Roman (The guy up there).  Extraneous is in her job description.  Plotwise, she's an future athlete who gives her fans a show.
The reason she's crouching is that she's jumping up really high into the air, which doesn't come across too well cause the animation is still.  The fuzz is supposed to insinuate that.

I'd also bring the arms up into a more pronounced pose if I were you, perhaps by putting the body in the form of an 'X' sort of pose to emphasize the energy. Atm, the whole animation just looks like you put a lot of frames in there, but none have any real speed or sense of impact (major problem with most oldschool disney animations for example.)

Anime is an excellent example of how to counter the failings of Disney since they've honed the technique of very high-impact actions with very low frame counts. You seem to be falling into the Disney trap here unfortunately, with high frame counts to cover up your weak keyframe poses. Anime focuses on strong and dynamic keyframe poses, and only adds in the number of inbetweens necessary to convey that pose convincingly. In effect, the original keyframes are choppy and move sharply from one to the next, but proper spacing in your movements can cover up the seeming 'need' for more frames.

Is this the kind of thing you're talking about?  All I could think when reading this was Tony Stark putting on the remote armor, the force of which flicks his arm a bit.

Otherwise, what I'm gathering is less 'smoothing' frames and more 'sharper/action' frames.

While the action occurring is interesting - the way it plays out feels very undynamic - it's merely a monotonously spaced sequence of movements. There's no force, no vigor.
Stand up and follow through with that same action. Don't you want to make it really snappy and interesting? Vary speeds. Let a slight pause of anticipation happen before a prominent movement and execute the movement with no ease in, but but give it a slight ease out.

What you have is a nice rough draft. You've chosen a concept and you've got the choreography established. Now add some exaggeration, some eccentricity to it. Make it fun to watch.

I tried playing with different speeds in the second one, but clearly not enough.

And I can't really play out the animation IRL.  It's a super soldier doing high jumps and then floating.  I can go back on it in my head, though.

[Conzeit]

EDIT:
Everytime I make a long ranting crit like this I'm a bit scared I'll scare the artist away from whatever subject they're attempting...so even though I really shouldnt (JOBZ!) to make up for it I ended up making an edit. That I have animation blue balls from concepting areas for too long (which I had never done before and I'm finding a bit hard) probably has some hand in it too:p

Click to see my gif edit of the transformation part
Spoiler

I did this after writing this bigass post. The post contains many of the ideas I used here, although I do go a bit effect crazy :p but really, until you get timing effects are more of a distraction, focus on that.

The effects went a bit in the gurren lagann/Imaishi style. watch that or something by studio trigger, they're the biggest exponents of anime intensity so try to aim for that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQrvmNz6STE hell, just try for any style of animation you admire (mitsuo iso is very cool too!)  just dont...keep on making movement where limbs move at an evenly spaced rate.
I'm a little bit...shocked that the only  "put on uniform while posing exageratedly " action you could think of was ironman...? anime has loads and loads of the stuff, they call it henshin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HtLiL-uDz8 personal favorite from my childhood. heh, the influence kinda shows

The reason we dont get that she's jumping is not because you dont have room in your canvas to actually move her upwards, the reason is because you made a very halfassed buildup pose for her jump and you also dont leave her jumping long enough to convey that she's in the air and she's moving.

Look at her crouch, she is crouching still with her torso almost completely vertical, you DO NOT see that in anime, their crouching stances are always as extreme as they can be, you cannot do that by keeping most of the pose from the last frame, you need to redraw a lot of it. I'm not really sure at this point, can you draw a head tilted downwards? you need to do that for that pose. Also, this IS something you could benefit from doing in real life, super soldier or not only someone doing a dance or a yoga pose ducks like that, your animation here much like your animation of that fire kick still has that sort of dancey impactless floaty quality to it because you're not being extreme enough with your poses.

Here is a post by pixel pile driver about timing, this is what's missing from your animations to really make them look like out of Hyper Light Drifter.
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=14964.msg137576#msg137576
Try easing up on all the effects and focus on injecting simple movements with a lot of energy, your animations wont really get better until you do.

http://afraux.tumblr.com/
Try looking at one of his gifs and pay attention to how many frames he spends at the beginning of the action and how many he spends at the middle, how many at the end. You'll find it's completely different from what you do, this is why you cannot do what he does by making your animations the way you always did and then tweaking each frame's timing afterwards

in fact, dont tweak the frame's timing at all. just draw the frames while being more mindful of timing. try setting all the frames to 10 (GIFS divide seconds in 1/100) so you KNOW you're doing the timing with the chanes in each frame, not with how long each frame lasts.

What program are you using to animate? I'm starting to think you're not using something that lets you animate as you draw. you need to use onion skin if you have it to see how much each frame is changing compared to the last one, or atleast flip back and forth so you have the best chance possible to improve your sense of timing

[Rosier]

I'm not gonna bother quoting that. 


It's gonna be hard to knock me away.  You guys know what you're freaking doing.  I may have some of my own way of doing things, but I've gotten better crit here in a few months than anywhere else.
From that animation, I'm gather that when something's moving, something's freaking moving.  Also, increase intensity.  The scale of the effects is a bit much for my tastes, but I get the point.
Also, I watch a bit of anime.  I just finished Gurren Lagann not too long ago, as well as Kill la Kill.  Saint Seiya is a no go, though. 

-Jumping and airs need better definitions.
-It's been a thing of mine to make motions smooth, which is why the crouch has a lot of similar frames.  It's clear this is the wrong direction.
-Tilting her head to more extremes will be easy now that I know to.
-PPD's tutorial/Afraux ought to be useful.

To animate, I use Game Maker's animator, then use Beneton to save it as a GIF and play with speed.  It doesn't include onion skin, but my process involves a heck of a lot of back tracking and side by sides.

[Conzeit]

Good, I'm glad you're not discouraged. No one's suprised you're not quoting me, dont want you to smother under the wall of text :p

I understand the desire for smooth movement, but what you have right now is movements that always have the same amount of smoothness, it has to go up and down according to how much inertia there is. The constant speeding up and down in an animation according to the actions is what makes this sort of fight action interesting. dont show the frames between when an attack starts and it hits, pause for dramatic effect when your character is going to put on it's armor, etc.

Did you like gurren lagann? notice what I was trying to copy with their constant use of exagerated motion blurs? man, you prolly have all the examples of henshin you'll ever need in kill la kill, they get a new armor like every episode. 

lol you dont have to watch Saint Seiya just because I did when I was a kid! I was just suggesting that you choose good actions within an anime you like and watch frame by frame, see how much changes in each frame and try to put what you learn from that in what you do. That is a lot easier to do with gifs, that is why I suggest Sean Leslie Ward's stuff over and over. there's a game called CRAWL which has a blog with cool gifs too. if you're going for pure smoothness Metal Slug or Street Fighter 3 is probably your kinda thing too :p

Even the edit I made, check how all the frames have the same delay but it has good rhythm. Try that exercise, try making an animation with better rhythm without tweaking the frame delay.

[PixelPiledriver]

Try that exercise, try making an animation with better rhythm without tweaking the frame delay.

Just to add to that:
If you need a frame to last longer just duplicate it several times.
This makes it easy to add new unique drawings without having to change the overall timing of the animation.

Also I recommend giving Graphics Gale a try.

[Rosier]

Before I start playing around with better animations, I was working on this over the last week or so on and off.  It's not really HLD style in terms of the actual in game backgrounds, but more of me just trying to make an environment establishing scene with a HLD style.

It's obviously really simple in terms of design and color, but the main idea around it is 'Cheery Futuristic City.'

[astraldata]

I second both Conceit and PPD's suggestions.

I use Graphics Gale and it is great for the sort of thing Conceit is mentioning about frame to frame timing staying the same. Although you *can* change the timing per frame, you can also set all frames to the same timing to get a better sense of spacing and movement. The roundabout way you're doing it now apparently is causing you a lot of issues when coming down to timing and spacing without being able to see it all in realtime speeds (GM speeds are garbage for true previews unfortunately, and needing to tweak spacing by a pixel or two during flipping through an animation after you've already exported it sounds like a nightmare of a process.)

Animation aside for the moment, as far as your BG goes, I don't really see a lot of life to it, which would give the impression of 'cheery' to me. The other NPC people are standing there like robots, and if your main char is all stoic or smth, that's understandable, but not everybody in a 'cheery' city should be stoic.

Try making the woman talking on her cellphone with the bag at her feet and the mime in a pose as if he's in an invisible box or something. Just stuff to give them character. I'd also suggest some additional rooms / sections of the buildings to give them some sense of depth or shape. Atm, they look like cardboard cutouts.

[Rosier]

Admittedly a bit minor, but changed the characters around.  Red's now mid walk and on a holo call, Blue's engaged in friendly bartering, Not/Mime is being attack hugged, and Ginger's recording something. The Arch building also has a bit more movement/interesting things going on.

[astraldata]

Looks a bit better, especially the gym building windows (big improvement there.) Though my original point still stands about the overall "squareness" of the buildings. Either make the middleground buildings have some sense of 3d space by adding in some sense of additional rooms/sections (or give a psuedo-almost-3d perspective on them to give a hit at depth), or at least imply that depth in the skyline.

If you are just totally against any sense of depth in your image/scene/etc., at least vary up the "squareness" of the skyline by adding some futuristic shapes to the buildings or something -- atm there's just too much pure, flat, blocky nothingness there to the point that it sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the time you spent on the character plane. Even just a little time spent on the skyline will help this loads.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

You should make your buildings wider, especially gym, and maybe add another gray plane between front ground and black background. Now everything looks very flat and just cut/paste placed (there's no cohesiveness). Also thing that torture me the most is gym windows. Why characters in the gym aren't in proportion with the rest of the character, and why is basketball court so short? If you want to say that's because building is far away, you should emulate that by moving it behind something and by darkening the colors. If you succeed to achieve depth this will look much better. And you should change colors of fruit stand they are too distracting for a background.

[Conzeit]

You probably want a lot more background layers than that if you want to give the impression of a true city. Take advantage of the flat colors and make it sillouethe-ish http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/332228-future-wars-adventures-in-time-amiga-screenshot-this-whole.png maybe like this Future Wars city from Delphine software except not ruined?

Also. Samurai Jack. DeadLeaves. Panty Stocking This flat-style is pretty popular in imaishi backgrounds, and they gravitate to futuristic cities. You could also go neon lines styled and do something Tron-like

[Rosier]

Could probably do with a bit more lights, but I didn't want to overdo it, and yes, I wanted it completely 2D/flat.

[Rosier]

I was sooooooooooo close to completely losing 80% of my progress on this.


It stutters a bit which could probably be improved, but definitely more action shots. 

It goes Summon Magic, magic scythe prep, jump slash, jump off ceiling/air, and then land.

[astraldata]

Solid improvement over your previous animations.

Two things -- I don't get a sense of a scythe slicing due to the T shaped nature of the slash, nor do I get a sense of 'kicking-off' of anything in the air as you mentioned you were going for since there's no delay on the squash/stretch portion of that to dissipate the energy a little before he comes back downward.

To fix the former, I suggest making the rear portion of the 'slash' more like a squared blur (think back to your dude with the electric-hand attack -- kinda like the way you turned his body into lines, but putting those on the back portion of the blade as it swings -- the front of the slash looks fine though as-is.)

[Fizzick]

why do they all have white hair?

[Rosier]

why do they all have white hair?

Short answer, I'm weird like that.

Long answer, each of them are the protagonists of seven different personal series.  After designing the third one, I noticed that, by coincidence, the three all had white hair.  I went with it.  That's also the reason why they're all have blue in their color scheme as well.  In my mind it's like some sort of cosmic link between them, signifying that they are the hero.  Other characters, like the one down below are the side characters and can be whatever color, but the protagonists can easily be picked out.




Edit:

Also messed with this.  Removed the stutter, made him move upward like an actual jump, and added an extra frame to the air step.

[Rosier]

http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Takamaru


Originally, I wanted the old sprites from this character's original game to transition to the new one I made, but that was before I knew it was literally two frames.  So I just made a couple different versions.

[Gil]

You're starting to get it man

That jump anim has beautiful timing, tight clusters, pretty decent keyframes. Good job!

[Conzeit]

yess =D much better heh, now it looks like you're actually putting yourself into the animations I'm glad 

been meaning to give you some c&c but kept putting it off, so I thought I'd atleast give you a  for the progress, although I suspect you dont need me to say it since you've clearly reaped the rewards already  hope you're having fun with it. making that edit certainly was!

[Rosier]

I had to mess with the individual frame speeds for the running part.  It just felt like it needed to emphasize how fast she was going.

The idea worked visually a bit better in my head, but she's squatting, kicking off to run, stopping and then using the momentum to palm thrust.

[AteOneZero]

The transition from the squatting to the running is a little awkward. I'm thinking you need to make her turn her body to the side as she squats.

For the actual running itself, it seems too fast. If you want to keep this speed, it might be a good idea to push the body and head a little more front so that there's more weight pulling her forward.

 I don't understand why the hand punches upwards when she stands.

[Rosier]

The transition from the squatting to the running is a little awkward. I'm thinking you need to make her turn her body to the side as she squats.

For the actual running itself, it seems too fast. If you want to keep this speed, it might be a good idea to push the body and head a little more front so that there's more weight pulling her forward.

 I don't understand why the hand punches upwards when she stands.

Added a ducking frame, but it still might not be enough.
Moved the head forward a few pixels.
Because that's how I wanted it?  In my head, I saw run, sudden stop, upward thrust attack.

[PsylentKnight]

If she's supposed to be using the momentum of her run to jump and thrust upwards, she's losing a lot of that momentum when turning towards the camera. Is the palm thrust supposed to be an attack? Why not a punch?

[Rosier]

If she's supposed to be using the momentum of her run to jump and thrust upwards, she's losing a lot of that momentum when turning towards the camera. Is the palm thrust supposed to be an attack? Why not a punch?

The intention was that she slid to be facing the front, but putting too many sliding frames would take too long.  I suppose that could be fixed if I ever go back to this.
And it's a palm strike because an open hand looks a heck of a lot better than a fist when pointed upwards.

[Fizzick]

If she's supposed to be using the momentum of her run to jump and thrust upwards, she's losing a lot of that momentum when turning towards the camera. Is the palm thrust supposed to be an attack? Why not a punch?

The intention was that she slid to be facing the front, but putting too many sliding frames would take too long.  I suppose that could be fixed if I ever go back to this.
And it's a palm strike because an open hand looks a heck of a lot better than a fist when pointed upwards.

Due to the directional properties of momentum, she would lose all momentum by stopping to turn. Also, very few people can stop on a dime like that from a full sprint, let alone turn 90 degrees.

[Rosier]

Friend asked for a Zelda II redux.

Opinions on the palette?

[rikfuzz]

Pretty interesting you're inspired by hyper light drifter, with its high contrast neon palettes when yours are so flat and grey.  When you don't have any shading or outline separating your forms, you might have to push the contrast a bit.  (Yeah, it does look better in motion, especially with the relatively high frame rate but it certainly can't hurt). 

Besides that, the pose looks pretty weird.  His legs look small, his body looks long and leaning back, and he has no neck.  It's pretty confusing to look at - the highest contrast on the sprite is the least important detail.  I would drop that diagonal belt thing all together, but maybe make it 2px wide and dark green otherwise. 
It's also a lot smaller than the original sprite. 

I really love the original artwork for Zelda 2, maybe you can take more from it?

[Rosier]

Pretty interesting you're inspired by hyper light drifter, with its high contrast neon palettes when yours are so flat and grey.  When you don't have any shading or outline separating your forms, you might have to push the contrast a bit.  (Yeah, it does look better in motion, especially with the relatively high frame rate but it certainly can't hurt). 

Besides that, the pose looks pretty weird.  His legs look small, his body looks long and leaning back, and he has no neck.  It's pretty confusing to look at - the highest contrast on the sprite is the least important detail.  I would drop that diagonal belt thing all together, but maybe make it 2px wide and dark green otherwise. 
It's also a lot smaller than the original sprite. 

-Brightened it significantly.
-Added his collar/undershirt to help distinguish a neck.
-Axed the shoulder belt.

The pose is standard for Link.  It's based off Zelda II's sprites, plus his Smash Idle is the exact same except his sword is a bit lower.  One leg facing the screen, other bent forward, and slightly hunched over:  http://www.ssbwiki.com/File:Link_Idle_Pose_Melee.gif
I didn't go in trying to match size; it's a remake.  The heights of all the characters I've made so far are based on the actual Hyper Light Drifter's size to this scale.

[Fizzick]

if the intention is to further your artistic prowess, following the dimensions of a single sprite in a single game so much as to ignore jarring oddities in a character's pose will not help you in that regard. just try to fix it.

[Rosier]

if the intention is to further your artistic prowess, following the dimensions of a single sprite in a single game so much as to ignore jarring oddities in a character's pose will not help you in that regard. just try to fix it.

It isn't a single game though. Aside from the angle of the sword, that is his pose in Zelda II, the Smash games, and likely others. 

[rikfuzz]

Fizzick means HLD being the single game you're restricting (/excusing) yourself with.  Latest edit is an improvement, but it still looks like his short legs are running away from him.  Don't have this issue with the Zelda 2 sprite or Smash Bros gif you linked to. 

Maybe it'd help if you explained what is it about HLD you're inspired by?  Assume it's not the exact sprite dimensions?  Just general rendering style with solids?  IMO all the really special stuff about HLD is design stuff, so there's not much of interest left if you switch all the design stuff with a different character's.  But there's still plenty of style-guide type stuff you're skipping, if that's something you want to explore further (eyes, general anatomy shape, thinner limbs etc).  If I saw your Links now I would sooner think of a 1980s arcade game than Hyper Light Drifter, like Jungle King or something. 

[Rosier]

Fizzick means HLD being the single game you're restricting (/excusing) yourself with.  Latest edit is an improvement, but it still looks like his short legs are running away from him.  Don't have this issue with the Zelda 2 sprite or Smash Bros gif you linked to. 

Maybe it'd help if you explained what is it about HLD you're inspired by?  Assume it's not the exact sprite dimensions?  Just general rendering style with solids?  IMO all the really special stuff about HLD is design stuff, so there's not much of interest left if you switch all the design stuff with a different character's.  But there's still plenty of style-guide type stuff you're skipping, if that's something you want to explore further (eyes, general anatomy shape, thinner limbs etc).  If I saw your Links now I would sooner think of a 1980s arcade game than Hyper Light Drifter, like Jungle King or something.

Inspired just because it looks more or less (or at least the end goal is) looking like Hyper Light Drifter with the no shading, easy to see sections of the parts, general low bitness, and animation style.  I took some liberties like the eyes and limb thickness because it doesn't work as well with other characters, as they have a defined appearance that originated in another game.  A character like Fin from Adventure Time would look better with 1 pixel wide limbs because of the style.

I'll look at the legs again, but developing a separate style isn't a terrible thing.




Made it a bit more akin to Smash Bros rather than Zelda II, lengthened his legs and messed with pants/boot color.



Also, Finn to prove a point.  He's a character where it makes sense for spaghetti limbs.





With Portal colors for the Sword Beams as they were originally.




The others are better in my opinion, but I got stuck creatively if that makes sense.

Also, seeing as he's actually in Smash 4...

A very-slightly-more-than-a-recolor of Takamaru.
https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/zlCfzSOWtkMYV5tSrg

[Rosier]

More reduxes, this time Kid Icarus. 

Original, "What it would look like now," current design (bonus Dark Pit) in the style.

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