First time pixel animation

[wezzulus]

Hello,

This is my first time posting on this forum. I stumbled across this board when looking up stuff about pixel art and thought it would be a great place to get feedback and share my work.
Next to it being my first time posting on here, it's also my first attempts at pixel art and animating it.

The character I'm working on is going to be used for a game I'm working on(something that's a first for me as well) for a selection procedure at a game art course. I don't think it's too bad for a first try, but I'm feeling quite insecure about it and would love to get critique and feedback so I can learn and improve.

I left them all the original size, I think I have seen it mentioned in some threads that that is preffered.

Thanks,
Wezzulus

[Gil]

I think that's pretty good, certainly enough for a selection procedure if you ask me.

The simplicity of the colors in large clusters is a very good way to get solid animations going, you can always add detail or shading later if you want to. Personally, I'd add hand-pixeled normal maps to this, that'd be a great way to score points. I'll try to provide you with a sample of that, PM me if I forget.

The animation feels a bit stiff, but is pretty solid. The fabric motions feels like the strongest part, the head movement is the weakest. Could use a little more hip rotation.

The sword feels very aliased because it's pretty thin with two contrasting colors. This doesn't quite work for me. Is it a glowing, thin sword or a highly contrasted sword?

The big clusters of color seems to work best, so I personally think the design would work best if everything is at least two pixels thick. I'd make the white line in his hoodie wider and I'd make the blue line that caps his sleeve thicker.

One final comment, I don't think people actually swing handheld items that much when running, especially swords. I'd expect there to be a rigid counter motion trying to counteract the sword from moving too much. This is minor though, the current running-with-scissors animation is pretty ubiquitous and probably just fine.

[wezzulus]

Thank you ever so much for the reply and for giving feedback. You saying it's good enough for a selection procedure really boosts my confidence and motivation on this.

It's funny, I actually had a more shaded version before, but decided to go for simplicity, and I quite like how effective it looks. Again I'm new to this, so if you could tell me about the normal map or provide me with that sample, that would be greatly appreciated. It does peak my interest and anything to make the sprite look better.

I will try and tweak the animation later today, see if I can make the head a stronger point as well. Before I ended up with this I had the head turn around more, with the other eye being visible at a point in the animation as well, but I thought it was maybe too much. Definitely will adjust the lining on the clothes and make them 2 pixels thicker and the white wider.

This is my quick concept for the swords, in the end the character is supposed to dual wield twin swords. They do have a tad of a glow on them.



Also for the character holding the sword when running, originally I didn't have him hold it, but in case of time constraint, only have a few weeks left, I decided to put the sword in, just for if I can't get a different walk cycle done in time with the sword. Here's the originals, except for the sword there's no difference.

[lachrymose]

Might wanna increase arm length for your run animations a bit. Seems like things got shortened in there somewhere. Or shorten the torso a bit, either or.

[Gil]

Hopefully I can find some time to do the normal map example. In any case, here's an edit with bigger clusters to avoid the one pixel noise:

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Hi, here's my edit of your run animation. I think that this looks nice for first pixel animation but you have some glitches where pixel is present and the same position in next frame which looks like it's stuck. You should go trough Pixel Piledriver's previous post there are some great step by step explanations of how to avoid these situations.

Torso in run animation is way longer than torso on stance drawing, this should be fixed. In your drawing where character is viewed from the back you can't see inside of his hood cause in all other drawings top of it is very close to his neck. I would suggest different darker color for his further leg and arm during run animation cause it will increase readability and add more depth to it. Since it's not defined with your original design I didn't wanted to change that.

There's a lot of banding in your sword that doesn't look very nice and I think it should be altered.

[wezzulus]

Both those edits look great. If I may, could I use them both to adjust and improve on? It's great to get this feedback.

And thank you as well Harvey for the edit on the animation. I'll go trough Pixel Piledriver's posts right away. Would love to learn more about this all and get it right, so glad I came across this forum.
Also glad you all point out the flaws that I overlook, I knew something was off but just couldn't place it.

Edit:
Modified your editted sprite a bit Henry, also gave the back leg and arm an darker colour. Absolutely love what you did with the hair.

[wezzulus]

Have played around with the Side view animation, giving it an outline to see what that would look like. I'm not sure myself if it looks better or not than the original. And just tweaking the animation more using the edit that HarveyDentMustDie provided me. (Thanks again)



Also started working on a front run cycle:



And using the same "block out" kind of style I did another side run animation for practice:



Edit:
Some more tweaks on the side view and mostly done with the front cycle, just needs more tweaking. Glady will take crit and feedback.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Front run looks much better than first time I saw it, so you made nice progress.

But there's a problem with jacket in both animation. It stretches out and moves all around like it's made out of latex or some thin rubber material. Movement needs to be more controlled to make it more believable.

This is not best edit but just to show my point. 

[LeuxTheory]

Hi I'm currently working on making sprites for my game and i uploaded my sprite to imgur and I was about to upload but...its super blurry
Any tips?