Naomi Animations

[slym]

Struggling over here! I am apparently still god awful at animating and am trying to figure out this idle cycle and pistol fire animation situation.





How do I make her move like an actual human being 

[Rosier]

For the firing animation, I would either add a frame in between the arm movements to make it smooth, or put a bit of blur to make it snappy.  I'm leaning towards snappy, but never hurts to try both.  Also, I feel the bun should move a tiny bit if the front is so animated.

The idle's hair on the other hand is a bit to animated.  I feel like it's flying too much without enough movement.  Don't remove it, but that amount of bounciness feels like it's for a run.  Otherwise the right/darker side could use another frame for the arm and pant leg when it extends.  And there may be a stray pixel right underneath the right arm where it should be black and not orange, but it might be intentional.

[ErekT]

Good looking sprite, I like the hair animation Here's an idea on adding recoil and fluidity to the shooting anim:

[wolfenoctis]

I think the sprite looks a little manly for a girl:


Some thoughts on the idle animation:


Some thoughts on the gun animation:

[PixelPiledriver]

Yo slym. 

The idle pivots from the knees.

Get up and sway your hips.
The primary pivot is the ankles.

This isn't a super clean or correct edit in terms of context.
I'd probly do it differently on a second pass.
Less like a fighting dance perhaps.
But might give you some ideas about pivots and flexibility.


The follow thru is decent but could use some more distinct forces.

[Tidbit]

I think the sprite looks a little manly for a girl:


Some thoughts on the idle animation:


Some thoughts on the gun animation:

Personally, I like the idea of a beefy girl character. I think I feel that some of the changes you made (super slim, breast jiggle) are kind of overkill and make her feel like any other female character now days.

Good looking sprite, I like the hair animation Here's an idea on adding recoil and fluidity to the shooting anim:

I feel like this is a big improvement to the gun animation as well. I might take a crack at the recoil animation in a short while once I have time to spare, but great work so far! I really like it. 

[slym]

Woah!! Y'all are seriously the best <3 First off, try to ignore how much lack of knowledge I have about animating. I'm much more used to producing environments for games. I'm still working on the idle and will post my new version soon. But I just had to throw this out because I completely missed it:

The entire game is based on the idea of individuality and the main character, Naomi, is based off of my mother. She is meant to portray no ethnicity and no race. This is why her hair is white (everyone's hair turns white eventually.. I think.. ), and is also why her skin color is so medium. She is strong and proud of her biceps

Naomi is also a lowly recruit of a military group that is part of a last ditch effort to save her hometown, but her movements are meant to be extremely well executed and exciting. The game is action-packed and meant to feel like she is a superhero, as she is meant to be a symbol of the feminist movement.

I also have been generally annoyed of boobs being the center of animations for female characters, which is why I chose to give her a black shirt. It leave it as ambiguous as possible.

[Fizzick]

During the idle animation I would say she jerks backwards too quickly and too far. I like the changes though 

[Gil]

I have problems with the arms being bent and such in the shooting animation. If you try that IRL, wouldn't you break your own forehead?

The edit also uses insane recoil, but with the arms straight and that works better for me.

[slym]

Yeah, I think the straight arms definitely make her look more skilled with the gun now:

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Now when you've changed stability of her arms and elbows, you can't leave gun jumping like that in her hand. It doesn't even look like a gun now. Try to add reload mechanism this will maybe make similar effect. Also you can't change length of her arms like that, it looks strange. Here's a small edit.



[Edit] Maybe arms in my edit are just a bit longer then they should be, but you get the idea.

[slym]

Thank you so much for the critique so far!

Right now I'm working on trying to get the character to fit my environment more.



(Sky is intentionally dark, I will be adding clouds soon)

[Gil]

Hmm, you'll have to go for skin highlights I guess.

[NowvaB]

Does the environment fit the character?
as nice as the sprites look, it looks like Lara Croft in OwlBoys world.

[Decroded]

Does the environment fit the character?
as nice as the sprites look, it looks like Lara Croft in OwlBoys world.

They are some nice rocks though.
I can imagine the workflow for this but still I'd be interested to see a progress animation.

The tiles are pretty don-descript right now anyway so too early to say they don't fit.
I imagine there'll be some scifi theme added. Perhaps there'll be a mix of organic and man - made structures on this alien world or something.

[NowvaB]

^^^Eh, you would be right in that case, there is only 2 objects on the screen.
but at least its something to thing about. just in case

[Ellian]

It looks way better, but lacks a little impact/punch/energy; I mean, your idle stance is super dynamic, and it feels to me that this lack a little something, maybe exaggerating movement, or make her flash even more/brighter on the frame where the gun is fired...
Also add the bullet shell flying.

[Decroded]

Great work slym I'm digging it.

My issue with this animation is how suitable it is to gameplay.
It would be pretty annoying to wait for that long between shots of such a small gun.
Perhaps consider modifying it so the gun also recoils upwards a little bit.
This is so you can segway into another loop where she's firing repeated shots.
Then you would go back to the end of this current animation where she needs to reload.

I also think the fade out line of the gunfire looks cool but is just a bit too slow.
And I think you could emphasize the gun flash more by lighting the front of her black shirt.
And see how it looks with a bit more on her face and a touch on her hair perhaps?


I'm dying to know about the environment   
Have you got much ideas yet? Or still thinking about it?

[wzl]

I think the shot animation with straightened arms like that doesn't make her look skilled, quite the opposite actually. It seems like she bends her elbows almost inwards, leaving no stabilisation from her muscles. This would hurt your joints after a while, so i'd suggest make her arms bend a little so imply a firm grip around the gun if you dont want to add recoil frames (although i think they look awesome and make the animation more dynamic).

Edit: On further inspection, the two frames just before the shot, she leans back in anticipation of it? it would seem that she'd be more likely to lean forwards to counteract the force of the shot.


Bent her arms a bit, adjusted her torso movement (removed frame 6 in the process). And fixed the leg movement to fit the changed pose a little better.
I also added a very slight kickback on the gun to get just a bit of movement in there.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

I still think that arms are too short when she lift them up in horizontal position.

[Cruckz]

I also have been generally annoyed of boobs being the center of animations for female characters, which is why I chose to give her a black shirt. It leave it as ambiguous as possible.

I like that! I agree with harveydentmustdie, I think the arms could be a little longer when straightened as they look a little stubby atm. I also thing that giving some highlights on the arms would help her fit into the environment. Keep it coming