AuthorTopic: Need help on limping (walk) animation  (Read 3913 times)

Offline BadMoodTaylor

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Need help on limping (walk) animation

on: October 09, 2016, 02:47:51 am
Just bought Aseprite today and trying to make a walking animation with a limp (due to hurt leg).  Could use some pointers as have been trying various edits.



Sprite sheet:


In Scenery:


Should I try having injured leg swing out in front of other leg?  Less upper body movement?
Here to learn pixel art.  Feedback always appreciated.

Offline Retronator

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #1 on: October 09, 2016, 07:52:07 am
I think your walk looks a bit more zombie-like where he's dragging the foot behind him. I would just look at references of limping walk cycles you can find on youtube and match those with a wireframe skeleton. So first do a wireframe of all frames and when you feel it works OK, then go on to give it volume and eventually color+shade it.

Reference 1, Reference 2

So he should still be walking with each leg passing the other, but on the bad foot you have to make his body weight drop down as the leg can't sustain the pressure as well. Also that frame needs to be quick because he'd collapse otherwise, and when the good leg is down the movement is slower in contrast.

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #2 on: October 09, 2016, 10:34:50 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DysUR9PIygI
This is also a good style to go for, you can keep the pace up and give him just enough of a shamble to imply injury, while still keeping a hand free for the gun.
Remember that you want to keep weight off the injured leg, it seems obvious but it's something I find myself forgetting a lot!
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
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Offline BadMoodTaylor

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #3 on: October 09, 2016, 03:29:00 pm
Update:



Thank you both for the comments.

@MysteryMeat that reference was perfect.  I saw other limp walks for reference but they didn't make sense to me because if your leg was recently hurt and you are in a hurry you aren't confident to throw it out in front of you and put your weight on it. I acted it out myself but obviously hard to use yourself as reference (didn't have to act much, recently had knee surgery)

@Retronator I shortened the frame where he is only on his bad leg.  Also, I'm pretty new to animating so I know what you are referencing about wire-framing but not sure how to do it exactly.  And new to Aseprite.  Basically, don't shade anything until after?


Thanks
Here to learn pixel art.  Feedback always appreciated.

Offline Gragh

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #4 on: October 09, 2016, 08:56:33 pm
I think the part that bugs me is how the upper body is facing perfectly forward in every single frame, like a in a march.  There isn't a lot of shoulder rotational movement.  It is hard to keep your upper body aligned like that if you're dragging a limb.  If he is actually limping away from zombies in a hurry,  his opposite arm should be swinging forward to act as a counterweight for when he pulls his injured leg forward.

Offline BadMoodTaylor

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #5 on: October 09, 2016, 09:43:21 pm
I think the part that bugs me is how the upper body is facing perfectly forward in every single frame, like a in a march.  There isn't a lot of shoulder rotational movement.  It is hard to keep your upper body aligned like that if you're dragging a limb.  If he is actually limping away from zombies in a hurry,  his opposite arm should be swinging forward to act as a counterweight for when he pulls his injured leg forward.

Are you looking at the initial post or the first edit I made?

Anyway, on both I see shoulder rotation but can see how the last frame could use an edit to have the far shoulder showing in front of him:



What do you think?  Thanks
Here to learn pixel art.  Feedback always appreciated.

Offline Gragh

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #6 on: October 12, 2016, 06:43:05 am
The other thing that bugs me is the abruptness of the animation due to the fact that it is only 4 frames long.  When I picture a limp,  the latter half where you're dragging the leg is going to take longer than the initial step with your good leg.  MysteryMeat's reference video kind of illustrates this too.

Offline Retronator

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Re: Need help on limping (walk) animation

Reply #7 on: October 12, 2016, 10:24:09 am
@Retronator I shortened the frame where he is only on his bad leg.  Also, I'm pretty new to animating so I know what you are referencing about wire-framing but not sure how to do it exactly.  And new to Aseprite.  Basically, don't shade anything until after?

Even less than no shading, just do a stick figure at first. Here are examples from CT at various stages of refinement.











Only when he's completely happy with the flow at one stage does he continue into the more detailed stages. Although to be honest, I'm not certain that this technique translates 1:1 to pixel art. Since messy sketch lineart in pixelart can be quite unreadable, what I see a lot of people do is paint in shapes and have them color-coded to have nice separation of body parts. But again, I am not an expert in animation so these are just my observations, not speaking from a lot of experience.

« Last Edit: October 12, 2016, 10:34:43 am by Retronator »