UPDATE: new walk animation (character sprite)

[ArzNova]

Hi! I'm new here.

So I updated the colors, height, and walk cycle and would appreciate feedback from people. Literally anyone. Single adjectives or anything. Share your two cents. Or even one cent, if that's all you got.

OLD Walk:


NEW Walk:


Stand:

Run:

Sprint:

[wzl]

Managing different animation exports in one projectfile is not working as nice as it should right now with aseprite.
However you can convert your sprite strip to animation frames through file>import spritesheet and setting the frame dimensions appropriately.
The same works in reverse using file>export spritesheet.

You can handle several animations in your timeline with tags. Mark several frames in the timeline > new tag or loop for a temporary tag.
If you export your file as gif, it unfortunately exports the whole timeline. you cannot export individual tags, which is quite the oversight imo.
To circumvent that you can copy the desired frames to a new file temporarily for exporting purposes.

The sprite looks very much like it is inspired by irkalla. aside from the shoe profile, which is unnecessarily detailed, there are only a couple nitpicks i could throw around.
Looking forward to the animated version 

[ArzNova]

Thanks! I did the export and save thing you suggested. Hopefully he'll fix that in an update.

And yeah, I've actually been in contact with the guy behind Irkalla and wanted to redo a sprite of mine that had a similar style. So this is the result! The baggy pants and hair similarities are a coincidence, but aside from that is the style too obviously derivative?

EDIT: For the clothing, I was going for Harem pants and geta shoes, which is why they are so detailed. I couldn't think of another way to do that without them just looking like slippers or something. 

The top is a simple robe and the arms are meant to be bindings (as worn in sports / martial arts).

[wzl]

Looks like a good start. There are some major issues on your cycles though.
Especially in walk and run it looks like she's stiffening up her knee's, almost like they're stilts. Also, in those two animations, the perspective of head, torso and hips are off, always tilted towards the camera while the motion is straight to the right.

The leg movement is.. interesting.
The walk seems like a locomotive engine, the run is like happily wading with straight legs through mud.
The sprint is actually pretty good. It just seems a bit stompy when the front foot comes down. Looks like it would absorb too much energy through the ground instead of boosting her up.

I'd suggest to make the animation frames locked-in-motion for testing how it would look. still animations can often deceive you, or rather, you can get more info if you're seeing it in motion, and if it would look properly ingame as well. Here's what i mean:


I like the subpixel animation on the torso in the idle. The arm movement is a bit weird though. i kinda get what you were trying to do, but try moving and bending your arm like that. movement of the shoulder also translates to elbow and wrist.
it is difficult to show in such low resolution sprites, so you might be better off with idle animations like tapping the foot, scratching the head, arranging the belt. stuff like that. normally idle people don't move all that much aside from actions like waving hands, changing poses/shifting weight, etc.

On the sprite itself:
Generally the upper legs seem disproportionally short which makes her look rather comical.
There's a weird mix of flat shading and details going on. compare shirt to trousers to head. I'd either simplify shading on the shirt, or advance it slightly on the other parts to get it more unified.
overall the sprite has a very brown palette:

Here's a suggestion for a more colorful version

This forum is a good sample why working in largely the same hues is a bad idea. she almost vanishes on that background. Keep in mind to maintain a good readability on different backgrounds if possible.

Hope this helps!

[ArzNova]

Wow, I just did a double check on the proportions, and I made a mistake I've made before: I didn't account for the waist. Here is a new version with new colors and height:



I don't think I want to go as extreme with it as you had in your version (plus she needs to have the red bands on the wrists / ankles), and I kept skin the same color because she is not caucasian. But I think it looks waaay better this way than how I had it originally. The animations will take a while to update.

Oh yeah, and I strapped her sword on her back.

EDIT: The reason I kept the pants darker instead of lighter was because when I extended her height it presented some problems. Because the pants are baggy, having pants that big and that bright drew waaay too much attention to them. But I change her arm wrappings to a new white that is lighter than both her leggings and shirt so you can always see them moving.