Animated Pogo Man

[MysteryMeat]

So, i'm working on a rather large commission (for me, at least) and it involves this man pogoing past a group of people.

I'm not quite sure how to make this look better, however. I've spent a lot of time on it and I can't quite get the whole of it to look right.
Any suggestions?

[32]

A person on a pogo stick is essentially jumping. You jump by compressing your body and then decompressing. Especially your legs. Add more of that compression and decompression to the whole figure and you'll find it looks a lot more interesting. Remember to stagger the motion through the whole figure as the energy travels from the ground up through his body. First the feet and the pogo, then the hips, then the shoulders and then finally the head. And then spring him back out upright as he bounces into the air.

The key is motion through all points of rotation in the body, don't try to cheat it you'll just waste more time fiddling with stiff animation. I would suggest as an exercise to try simplifying the body down to it's four main points of rotation, head, torso, hips and feet/pogo. Draw each as a simple circle off to the side of your animation and then just animate that. Each one is just a simple bouncing ball with the animation staggered backwards by a frame to the one beneath it. Once THAT looks convincing it's as simple as translating that motion to the figure.

Good luck

[MysteryMeat]

Problem is that I HAVE to be economical here. Despite the scale I'm expected to be doing this pretty cheap, and while it may seem pretty cynical I'm not really capable of doing a whole lot of extra frame-by-frame work when I agreed to be doing something otherwise simple and most importantly within my skills as an animator.
 I need to find some better shortcuts, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Spoiler

A longer aside, I really do hate having to do this kind of thing. I have to draw six other small 2-frame character animations in addition to this, and then have them sync with the bounce as he moves on past. Without object oriented animation programming this becomes a lot more difficult to accomplish, and on top of that I'm just...
kind of not great at animation, when it comes to putting pen to paper. I understand the concepts and have solid ideas in my head to translate, but that translation part always falls apart because I can't make my hands do the things I need them to.
To date my most complex animation was this here, which to be frank just doesn't look all that good AND took me several months to get done, meaning I can't do this on commission until I find some way of speeding up and refining my process, which despite numerous attempts since just hasn't been happening.
I want to get better and faster with my animated work, but I am also very attentive to my pricing and don't want anyone to feel like they've gotten ripped off, both the commissioner myself included.
Hence why I seek out viable "shortcuts" to make things that, while not technically superior, will still look good to the majority of people viewing said art. Like homestuck's use of sprites and spastic motions, to paint the kind of aesthetic I shoot for.

[32]

There are no real shortcuts in animation and I tend to find that you'll waste more time trying to find a shortcut than you would just patching up new frames. Just animate cutout, and figure out which pieces absolutely need to rotate and commit to drawing a couple of unique frames for those, in this case you could probably get away with just the thighs and the forearms. Other than that the lower legs, upper arms, hips, torso and head can all just be swapped out for the bouncing balls you do in the test animation.

You just need to accept that if you want to make the animation look nice you're going to have to re draw some parts, pixel animators don't have the luxury of perfect rotation like cut-out animators do. If you're smart about it you'll probably be able to get away with only 2 or 3 substitutions for the thighs and forearms. And you've already got some of the work done on the arms. You really just need to get those legs going and there isn't really a way past that.

[MysteryMeat]

Augh, you're probably right.
I can't do much more for this one right now, it's already astoundingly late work for me, but I'll put some extra time this month into animation to try and get my hands flush with my head.

[nessx007]

Just wanted to drop in and say, I feel your pain! And godspeed on finishing the job. I've been in similar work situations and yeah it's quite an uncomfortable situation to be in for the reasons you listed. I can attest to the fact that you will get faster though as you do more work. I was new to animation when I started my first animation-heavy project and I spent way too long on my first ones. I still probably spend too much time (as someone who is overly self-critical) but it's a lot less than when I started, and I've learned shortcuts like using video/image references when I'm lacking motivation myself. At the end of the day, hired gigs are just that, a job, so there will be those pieces you won't ever be satisfied with personally, but as long as the client is happy, that's a wrap! Then you move on fresh to something else.

[PixelPiledriver]

Work way dirtier.
Make 5-10 versions.
Use different a different approach/theory for each.
Compare.
Pick the best few.
Develop them further.
Compare.
Pick the best one.
Finish it off.

[MysteryMeat]

At the end of the day, hired gigs are just that, a job, so there will be those pieces you won't ever be satisfied with personally, but as long as the client is happy, that's a wrap! Then you move on fresh to something else.

Aaah, yeah I suppose you're right. I'll keep this in mind!
And piledriver, noted! I'll start doing that more, I need to stop relying on overcorrection so much anyways.

[MysteryMeat]

Alright, so now I'm at a roadblock I don't think I'll be able to conquer through effort alone.
Namely, stitching the foreground animation and animated background crawl together.
I somehow need to get this:

To scroll behind this:

so that it LOOPS.
I'm working in aseprite and no combination of frame timings, layering, and manual copypasting seems to be working, does anyone have any ideas?

Feel free to throw in other critique too, I really want to get this done well but I'm also VERY SPECIFICALLY looking for advice on stitching these two together.

[PixelPiledriver]

Modify what you have so that the math fits together.

Backdrop doods are 6 frames.
Pogo guy was 30 frames. --> changed to 18, a multiple of 6

Backdrop doods are 300 pixels wide. --> changed to 288, a multiple of 6 and 18
At 1 pixel per frame scroll speed, backdrop will wrap in 288 frames, same number as pixel width.

Now that all the math is right do the scrolling motion.
Place a duplicate of the backdrop next to itself.
Backdrop1.x = 0
Backdrop2.x = 288
Now move both backdrops 1 pixel per frame until Backdrop2 replaces Backdrop1.
Keep in mind the journey for B2 to replace B1 will take 1 more frame than the width.
The last and first frames will be duplicates, so delete the last frame.
I used Flash to created the scrolling with a tween, much faster than moving the backdrop per frame by hand.



Export pngs, import into GraphicsGale as animation, check the pixels, save as gif.

Messed with the pogo guy.
Try to focus on improving his motion
Make him shoot up, slow, hang at the peak, slow, drop down, compress, loop.
Didn't change any of the drawings, only the positions and frame count to adjust the motion.
Having the frame multiple limit in place will help you make choices.

The colors could be improved.
There are some clarity issues.

Here's the edited images:

[MysteryMeat]

Oof, flash. I should get a copy but it's such a pricy bit of software...
Regardless though that's some excellent work, pile-driver. Thanks for the pointers!
Do you have any tips specifically on the colors? Having troubles with that here since there's so many characters.

Actually, are there other programs with similar features to flash? Might be worth weighing my options, the software format is slowly losing support so it might be more helpful to start elsewhere.

[PixelPiledriver]

Oof, flash. I should get a copy but it's such a pricy bit of software...

Yah not sure how their prices are these days.
I still use CS3 from years ago.
Works fine.

Actually, are there other programs with similar features to flash?

There are but the ones that come to mind are paid: Photoshop, AfterEffects
For a free option maybe try Blender?
Someone else might know of something cheap or free.
Look and ask around.

You don't need to use a program that has position control.
You could just brute force do all the frames.
But it will be much faster and flexible if you want to change anything.
With the motion in place, I could refine the backdrop characters and then put in the new version without needing to redo the scrolling.

If you're really in need, post your final art and I'll put it together for you.
Find something you can use yourself in the future tho.

Also I wrote my post somewhat backwards.
Your frame count and backdrop width were already multiples of 6.
However I found the pogo animation had too many frames so I cut it down a bunch and then had to find a new multiple.
Settling on 18 I then had to find a new multiple width for the backdrop as well.

Do you have any tips specifically on the colors? Having troubles with that here since there's so many characters.

Sure, I'll make an edit and post it here later.

[MysteryMeat]

Thanks pd, i appreciate all this help a ton.
I'll do some refinements on the individual parts, try and fix my pallete issues some. I'm thinking the amber and green can work, i just need to do better than checkers for a pattern. Possibly an actual bg, might be worth the effort.
I also gotta add a character too, so it loops without duplicates, i'll keep the math in mind for that too.

[MysteryMeat]

Alright, finally got time to work on this again! woo.
So, for starters, some mild tweaks to try and fix up some anatomical issues on pogoman (unsuccessful)

And an attempt at improving visibility and adding another character within the constraints of the multiples so it loops smoother without repeating characters, not sure how that would work though so here's hoping that doesn't ruin anything.


Thanks again for the help you offered piledriver, and if that isn't a thing you can do don't sweat it, I'm trying to find documentation on looping gifs so I can figure this out on my own better (nothing for any programs I own right now yet, but hopefully it pops up soon!)

[32]

http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=16195.0

Flash info from PPD. After Effects tutorial by myself. Tools by Surt and Crow

[PixelPiledriver]

Done.
I checked the pixels, but let me know if you find any problems.



You had a couple mistakes.
Pogo man canvas needs to be the same as the backdrop.
Pogo man had a couple frames that were on 6 delays and all others were on 3 delays.
This makes it so that even tho you have 18 frames after normalizing the 3 delays, the two with 6 delays count as 2 frames each, so he ended up as a 20 frame animation.
That throws the math off so I changed the 6 delays to 3 delays like the rest.
The animation is only slightly altered so I think it's fine.

Still think the pogo guy needs more saturation, backdrop guys need less, or some other way to bring him forward.
It's easy to swap edits into the Flash file as long as you dont change frame count, or image sizes.

Also here's an alternate version that better simulates the pogo stop and go motion.
When on the ground he shouldn't move forward.

[PixelPiledriver]

Here's one more cropped to 300.
Just remembered you were trying to remove character duplication, so the pogo man canvas size probably wasn't a mistake.
There is still slight duplication but its much better.

[MysteryMeat]

Thanks a ton, PP!
I did as you mentioned, thankfully Aseprite is BRILLIANT for quick colorchanges, so with a bit of settings fiddling I got this: