Help with animation and art

[thebombsauce]

I have two things that I would love to get some help with here considering how much good help I received the last couple of times I've posted, first I'd like some help improving the smoothness of this walk animation



and secondly I'd like help improving this sprite of the above character wearing a bra and panties (for when no armor is equipped) thank you in advance for all the help and suggestions

[Zia]

I took a stab at a quick edit of the bra-and-panties version of the character.

The gore of the bra (the bit that connects the cups) felt very wide-set in your original image. Real bras tend to have closer set and often higher gores, though a high gore would reduce readability too much and make it look like a flat straight-across bandeau.  I made the cups a bit larger and fuller, to indicate the shape of the breasts and to make a narrower gore. I also removed the really dark shading there, which I assumed was meant to indicate cleavage (?), but ultimately just looked... kind of like chest hair. I kept some lighter shading. I recommend looking at some pictures of women in well-fitting (as in, don't google Victoria's Secret or something) bras for shadow reference. Warning, the following link is a picture of a woman in a bra: image. Note how there's really not all that much shadow or true cleavage there. The art style you're going for will benefit more from looking at examples of well-fitting bras rather than trying to indicate anime-style cleavage.

At the risk of turning them into full-on granny panties, I raised the sides of the panties a bit to help indicate her waist, since I felt that wasn't particularly defined.

I also lowered her head a little bit - previously, her neck looked really broad, almost like a weight-lifter or something. Lower it allowed me to narrow it without turning it into a giraffe neck. I will say I'm not quite sure if I like this, though, as I feel as though it comes at the expense of a bit more stiffness to the sprite. The original way the neck sat felt a bit more relaxed.

Finally, I made her back arm a shade darker overall to indicate a bit more depth.

For the animation: I feel like the torso and hips are very stiff. They should move with the character as she walks, not remain static. The feet might also benefit from a bit more attention in particular - the way she sets them down and they never change shape is a bit reminiscent of a horse? The human foot is much more fluid and will bend upon impacting the ground.

[miro42]

Hi thebombsauce,
I was looking at going over your animation, but I think first off fixing the model will help, before you put too much time into multiple frames.  I think the biggest problem I see is that she is very static.  I agree with most of Zia's edits, although I think her bottoms look more like granny-panties than yours, or maybe a diaper even.

Here's my edit and then I'll explain why I did what I did.



Character design is all about character (surprise!)  And what I mean by that is that your character should always have some sort of personality.  Right now, she looks like a stiff robot.  Her arms are the same width and height as her legs, everything is just kind of hanging down.  I think the biggest issue is that her torso is the same width as her pelvis, or rather, it looks that way because her arm is coming straight down and crowding the silhouette.  Now, what I've done is probably not fitting the style of pixel art you want but I just wanted to show you that simply moving her arms and legs out will add a bit of character (personality) to an otherwise stiff pose.

TLDR: Arms should be smaller than the legs and be away from the body so the torso can show; loosen up the pose.

And just some questions/observations about the animation.  From her greater than three-quarters pose I assumed that is was meant for a psuedo-isometric style game, but when looking at the .gif her feet touch down on the same plane, meaning that she will be walking on a flat plane.  So is this a non-isometric or isometric?  I guess it can be a stylistic choice but it looks very bizarre.  You should turn her so her body's in a more profile view, assuming that it is in fact a 2D plane that she's walking on (like original Mario and Link).

Hope that helps a little.