[C+C] [WIP] Flying dragon

[Hagane]

I'm doing a dragon for a vertical scrolling shooting game. This is the neutral flying animation. I'm happy with the timing of the flap and tail, but I feel that leaving the rest of the body still like that makes the animation stiff.



The problem is, I can't come up with much for the rest of the body. I thought of making the head move a bit, particularly on the down extreme, but I think it looks silly.



Any suggestions are welcome. Palette is lifted from Dragon Saber. I'm bad with colors.

[Roach]

A dragon wouldn't really fly like that unless it's taking off or trying to raise elevation, or decrease falling speed. A neutral flying, would actually be more like a glide, where the wings are still.

[Hagane]

I have a glide for moving to the sides. For a neutral it would be a bit boring to have no wing movement IMO.

[Gil]

Having the spine animate vertically in a sine wave is a classic. Because we see it from above, you'd do this almost purely with shading of course.

[Shipright]

The head should move, but not up and down, rather it should stretch out on the down flo, and compress on the up.

[wolfenoctis]

I think the wing flap should be reduced to a sort of semi glide, I don't think the head should move, an edit to illustrate:

(no detail just framework)

Hope it helps 

[trough]

Spoiler

Here is a bat flying cycle in four frames.  I think the important part you are missing is the "tuck".  When a bat or a bird raises their wings, they would want to decrease their surface area, so they are not pushing themselves downward.  This would probably apply to a dragon, too.

[PixelPiledriver]

Use a double or triple loop.
Make a flapping animation.
Make a gliding animation.
Code it to randomly cycle between them.
Or glue them together as a single animation.
Do 5 loops of gliding, then 2 loops of flapping.
Or whatever feels pleasing to you.

[Hagane]

Thanks for your tips. I tried to implement some of the advice given here, but I dunno how well I was able to do it. My attempt at getting the "waving" motion is rather clumsy but the best I've got so far.

I like the idea of mixing flaps with glides, I'll try to get that done for the next time I post.

[astraldata]

This is probably a bit too old to reply to here, but I want to suggest (in case others see this) that the reason your animation doesn't resemble wolfenoctis' animation even with your edit is simply because the silhouette doesn't change enough during the animation.

To check this, get his animation and black it out to see the silhouette (i.e. black body white background) and do the same with yours. You should notice that his back legs appear to get wider as the butt comes up toward the camera, which changes the shape of the silhouette of the hips and feet creating more CHANGE in the silhouette of the dragon. Additionally, the upward movement of the glide in his edit of the wings changes the silhouette of the wings too by changing their SHAPE a lot more. The biggest issue with your edit mainly is that there isn't enough change in overall shape of the wings to make it seem as fluid and flexible as the type of creature in which you're trying to represent.

Flexible creatures, in general, have lots of arcs that change when they move -- these arcs rarely stay the same, especially on longer appendages, and even more-so on long/lanky snake-like creatures. You need arcs that overlap lines as well as opposing arcs to overlap. Get this down, and you've got it. That is the sort of thing that can help you change the silhouette most easily.