[WIP] Improving my character & scenery-piece

[Lakelezz]

I would be thankful for some feedback about this:


It is still not done but very close to be done. Last thing: The monster needs a dying animation.

But much more important is the way the monster is moving. The walk-animation feels not smooth enough in my opinion.
Does anybody have an idea or a thought about the walking / this whole animation?

[Seiseki]

Well, the legs aren't moving and you're moving the entire thing in a very chunky way.

The woman is standing completely still, you could have her raise the gun and sway it a bit up and down.

The GUI stuff takes up ALOT of room, it also draws a lot of attention because of the white outlines and their size. It's 50% gui 50% screenspace.
The composition/layout of the gui elements seems extremely uneven as well.

[Lakelezz]

The legs are moving, but just barely and with those table it is even more difficult.
Yes, I understand what you mean. Specially in terms of the "chunky way". I could add some more torso moving.

I will think about adding more frames to the girl. However not how she will raise the weapon. She must be carefully - that is why she will hold her weapon up all the time.
But the "aiming"-part could be interesting. However this is where question starts again: Is this more a game-mockup or just art? The GUI would stress the mockup idea.
Art would feature aiming-frames of course, but most games would not feature this. Hmmm, maybe it is time for such a feature - but that is not to be discussed here, haha.

The GUI is a case for itself. If you scroll up, you will see, that the GUI was added later on. The main reason is, the whole picture must be 16:9. At the moment there are two rows too much, but I will fix that just in the last second before publishing.
So I added a GUI, since just a pure black frame is totally boring. Merging the GUI with this scenery feels right, though.
Changing the proportion of the GUI's features is also not suitable. It would weird then.

Cleaned up GUI:


Hmm, this is a really complex piece.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

She must be carefully - that is why she will hold her weapon up all the time.

Try to hold bottle of water this way an see how long can you do it. Your arms will start to hurt after a while, and when you try to shoot you will definitely miss or you will drop your gun. You can't make her holding her gun like this for the whole time in the game.

This is example of being careful, he can lift his gun and shoot at any moment.
Spoiler

Spoiler

[Lakelezz]

Yeah, as I said, I am thinking about adding more sprites for this situation. Also it would be wisely to add a passive state, but I guess this really going out of the range of this piece,
However I also want to add, that I probably wont add a calming position, where she lowers the weapon as shown in the picture.
The is reason is because in this scene, she is aiming for the thing she hears. If I would start with a passive position (as shown in the picture), I could also add how she walks into the bar and so on.

About the bottle of water: Of course a weapon weights a lot, but since this is pure fiction it would be nothing more than a detail of realism. The whole transformation scene is totally fictional, too.
But thanks for your consideration! Is there anything else which steps up to your mind when you look at the piece?

[astraldata]

I liked the clustering of the GUI in the previous edit better than your latest one (on the top portion of the screen) with the temp and the life bag together. The life bag seems upscaled and kind of low-quality compared to the rest of the GUI. Thirst could better be represented with a simple glass of water or the like -- the rose does break it away from the rest of the GUI, but I think it really looks too mixed style-wise.

Regarding your animation -- you **really** need more frames in there.

It looks too clunky as-is and reminds me a lot of paper cut-outs walking across the screen [i.e. in the style of South Park's animations] which really kills the cool-factor you had going on with your still image.

The girl shows no reaction to the monster -- who is somehow much larger than the guy he crawls out of -- and the whole animation of the monster growing out of the body (I assume that's what he has to do to be that tall compared to his host) is just entirely too fast from point A to point B where he's shot. Not to mention he's shot in the chest -- I'd assume she'd have to blow his brains out, or at least barrage the guy with a ton of bullets in his face and neck/chest, for him to die. The host body shows no signs of collapse when he hits the ground and one arm pokes through the stool (which, in this case, maybe move him back to where his arm is nowhere near the stool).

And, yeah, show some visible leg movement and change his pose up while he grows/climbs out of the host body and begins toward the girl. I'd imagine this guy to lumber or something toward her, perhaps even lunge forward -- to move that fast being that tall and awkward just seems impossible -- fantasy/fiction or not, it just looks really bad. People are only telling you this because it's the truth. If you don't want to put the work into animating it properly, then keep it static -- but you won't get any practice with animation if you do -- and if you're not already, I suggest using a pixel art application like Graphics Gale that lets you animate easily with layers and onion-skinning so that you can spare yourself a lot of work in the case that you do decide to fix the animation.

[Lakelezz]

Thanks you a lot, astraldata!

I will move the temp closer to the life bag again. And yes, the life bag was originally upscaled. I try to add more details though. I guess I need more on it.
The rose is representing the girl and I really like the rose and how it is representing life.
Mixed styles? Hmm, I tried to keep them all close together.. Specially the organs. The rest difficult because I felt like I need different colors. Also almost every GUI element is a first-time experience for me. Do you have a good idea for this?

Of course I want to improve in terms of animation and I will continue to work on the piece. I have to admit on the South Park style of terms of animation due the mentioned lack of frames.
The monster is meant to be much larger, he is (as you realized) not crawling but "growing" out of the human.
I am not quite sure if I understand what you mean with the arm. Why should it bother? Because it cannot collide through the chair while falling down?
I will optimize the aiming, when I get back to animating this piece.

However I will take a look at Graphics Gale.
Talking about just animating, this is the most complex animation I created before already:
Spoiler

Please do not talk about the problems that this piece is carrying. I am pretty much aware of them, haha. I just do not do huge edits once I published.
I am still learning a lot but this project taught me A LOT. The animating is just the sweet cherry at the top of it that I wanted to try.

EDIT:

Just finished some little new positioning on the GUI:


EDIT 2:

I also tried to fix the upper right part:


I somehow prefer this one. Looks more accurate.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Thing I like most here is health symbol in UI, it's very original and appealing.

Now some things I that you can fix (this may sound rough):

1. There's no finger on the trigger
2. Gun blast is too small, almost unnoticeable especially for this dark environment
3. Gun in the last position is curvy, you should try to straighten it a bit, and to avoid this being noticeable bring back gun in the starting position.
4. Make recoil faster
5. Cracks on the right window are too strange which makes it looks less like glass. Maybe you should add some wooden planks over the windows so you can distract the eye from glass. Generally glass is the one thing that bothers me the most. Glass on the door on the other hand is good and transition is very subtle.
6. I think that guy that enter room fall to fast, he should at least say something or walk a bit toward her.
7. Process of monster getting out is also strange. I think that if it already cut his stomach open it should go out trough there but not with head first but with his back.
8. Cloth on mans leg while he step forward before he falls down is too wide like there's two legs instead of one.
9. Bottles and glasses on bar are almost unrecognizable.

I'm glad to see that you achieved some progress form first version. I think that you should continue your work and don't run from big changes. I know that it's hard to scrap some of your work but usually that's the moment when you make biggest progress.

[Lakelezz]

Thanks for your comprehensive help. I will just do the same and answer to 1-9.

1. I guess this is not that important, I wont change that.
2. Too small? I was afraid of exaggerating, haha. I will look into this.
3. The animation is not done yet. I just stopped working on that frame.
4. I guess you have a good point here.
5. Wooden planks were considered before. But I do not know if this was said in this thread. I ended up with not adding the. They would have to be very large. Also when nobody lives in the bar, why should there be wooden planks? But I will look into the right glass.
6. The guy is actually holding his hand up to prevent to get shot. But I get your point. My whole animation is pretty much rushed.
7. I like that idea pretty much!
8. Yeah, you are right here.
9. I do not see a problem with this? They are standing inside of the bar, shadowed. Also they are not even close to be secondary but details.

Do you have any further thoughts about the static image? You said, you like the health symbol the most. Does this mean the rest is not good?
Also I am working for a long time on this piece and feel like I should come to an end. Becoming better in animating is a valid point but this is getting too much.
I might finish the static image first and then start something new, before I feel like returning to this piece. But this still to be thought about.

[astraldata]

The position of the dead guy's arm makes the perspective look really off -- as suggested before, you should really consider moving it/him as the lighting looks really bad too, like how the closer chair is dark but his arm is bright. You could consider making the dead guy laying across the stool as it stands up though since his arm appears to be hanging/dangling anyway?

As for the GUI, I suggest doing something else with the rose -- it just doesn't work here in this context -- every other GUI element is cold and 'clinical' so to speak -- single-colored and medical-themed -- the warm red of the rose, it just doesn't fit. Not even the size fits.

Perhaps a large wilting leaf instead? Maybe X-Ray where you can see the veins inside, but the leaf edges are wilting and cracked the more thirsty you get? That, or a glass or container as mentioned before, but the x-ray leaf goes with the bio-theme imo.

The text on the 'life' is too thick and blocky, as mentioned before. Make it 1px width line-wise.

Finally, draw some sparks where the gun was when it was fired, and some blood popping from the creature being shot to show off some action without explicit animation.