Help with my 8bit style game

[shane.poole]

You're making a lot of sense! I'll edit the frames and framerate and play around and see what I can do. Thanks!

[PsylentKnight]

One big thing that's making it look like a power walk is that at no point does both of his feet leave the ground at the same time.

[JustinGameDesign]

What's meant to be happening to the character's hair as he walks? Moreover, what is that hairstyle supposed to be?

Here's a running animation of the character:


And a 1x size one just in case:


I changed his skin to a kind of odd yellowish colour. This has to do with the story that I have in mind, I'm not implying that East Asian people are yellow! (Which would be ridiculous!)
In the beginning of the game, he's skin colour will look "normal" and it will gradually change along with the rest of his body or (potentially) clothes. I'll keep the rest a secret for now.

I'm having some trouble with this animation as I'm simply not satisfied with it. If you guys can give me any pointers, it would be much appreciated!

I'll probably upload another mockup/screenshot in the next coming days, after I have implemented a tilemap system into my game.

As we say here in Japan, Yoroshiku!

[Ambivorous]

Disclaimer:
I've never animated any pixel art of any kind - whatsoever - ever before, so what I'm saying comes purely from reading other threads here on Pixelation about running animations and may thus be horribly incorrect.

So I started by blatantly and unashamedly stealing this running animation I found by googling "ninja running animation":
Spoiler

From which I made this base:

I coloured the one leg a little bit blue so that I could tell which leg was which (for readability).
Then added a body with a little bit of head and arm bounce:


Coloured his pants and skin without any shading:

Added hair (with bounce) and some shading:


Finally I tried to animate his robey thing, but it just makes things pretty unreadable because I suck at animating and cloth is sooooo damn difficult to animate (next to yours for comparison):

There is no polish, but at least it looks like he has weight and is running forward with all his might.


Important things I learned from this:

• He needs to be angled forward. The faster you want him to run, the more forward (up until a point of course) and his pushing leg (the hind leg just before it leaves the ground) usually forms a straight line with his spine at that exact moment.
• To add weight, objects need to behave after an action has occurred. So one frame after his lowest point I make his head and fist drop compared to his torso. Similar stuff for his hair and eventually his robe. The animation happens after the run changes his legs and torso.
• When running yeah, both your feet have to leave the ground at some point.
• When in doubt, stickmen.

Other than that you should just search these forums for running animations because a lot of the guys here have written some really impressive replies to peeps asking how to animate running.
The fact I could actually animate this little guy is a testament to that, because honestly I've never even tried this before, but my results seem decent enough. Everything I did was based on stuff I've read here.

Hopefully this helps you out to make some sweet running animations.

[shane.poole]

@Ambivorous - That running animation looks really cool, but unfortunately I won't be using a ninja running animation for my character... That being said, I learnt a lot from your post. Thanks for the advice! 

Here's a newer running animation. It still really sucks, but it'll have to do for now. I want to focus on programming for the next few days.

I may be going crazy, but it looks like he's running backwards...? I really suck at animation. I've been reading some of the other threads about the subject, but it seems like I still have much to learn...



The character is supposed to look like this, but i'm finding it hard to translate the hair and sideburns to pixels. I'm not the greatest artist in the world...



unfortunately, I'm an extremely busy person so updates will be very slow... It's also hard for me to give other folks advice since I'm a beginner myself. Anyway, thanks for all your great help! I'll try and post something again soon!

[CombustibleNate]

I may be going crazy, but it looks like he's running backwards...? I really suck at animation. I've been reading some of the other threads about the subject, but it seems like I still have much to learn...



The character is supposed to look like this, but i'm finding it hard to translate the hair and sideburns to pixels. I'm not the greatest artist in the world...



unfortunately, I'm an extremely busy person so updates will be very slow... It's also hard for me to give other folks advice since I'm a beginner myself. Anyway, thanks for all your great help! I'll try and post something again soon!

The running backwards is an optical illusion that you can't avoid. See http://www.maniacworld.com/Spinning-Silhouette-Optical-Illusion.html. When you character is clearly moving forward, people's brains will see it as doing so. I see it as moving forward even in static form.

As for the "ponytail", try moving it more towards the front of the sprite. Not but a couple pixels. Even looking at your hand drawn pic, it's more vertical than the sprite's version of it.