Dinosword: Boss Animation (Critique Appreciated)

[absenter]

Here are some animations of a boss that's going to be in the game I'm working on.

Idle:

Walk:

Jump/Land:

Crouch:


Process:

Wall Grab:

Wall Slide:

Wall Push Off:

Corkscrew Jump Attack

Head Bump Off Wall transition into Landing Animation


I feel like the animations are coming along, but nonetheless. I know there are a lot of great animators that come here and would love some input good or bad.

Here is the room the fight will take place in if it helps to get an idea of how the animations will work in context. It's getting there.

[MysteryMeat]

His expression feels very static, given how bouncy everything else is! I'd put some time into giving him at least some squints, snarls, and roars, even two frames can add a lot!
The shuffle doesn't quite look right, I'd try to keep both feet firmly on the ground to keep his stance and have him slide his feet instead of the weird half-bent trot he has there.
The crouch is pretty bad and I would reccomend not being afraid of a larger pose-change for that. Instead of squashing the whole sprite you might even be able to get away with just lowering the head a bit, to imply a hunching-over. The legs there also need retooling, they look stiff and awkward.

Overall I'd say those are my biggest complaints, those leg motions.

[absenter]

Thanks so much for your help. I have been working on this game for awhile, and sometimes it starts getting hard to look at things as objectively over time.

I made some changes to both the walk and the crouch cycles. I think the new walk cycle feels a lot better, but there is still something not quite right. I changed the feel a bit from the original. I was aiming for more of a cautious looking walk at first. I think the arms still provide that idea, but the new walk isn't really a shuffle. Opinions?



The crouch animation feels a lot better to me. The legs were losing a lot of volume in the previous version. I think this might have solved it.

[MysteryMeat]

I guess I'm not quite sure what you're going for, then!
So, here's two options to reference:
the first, zangief, fits the burly physique of your tigerman here a bit better and seems to be closest to what you've already drawn:

The second, Ryu, is closer to the guarded shuffle I was picturing!


Both of these gifs involve a bit more arm movement than you've put in, but hopefully it'll give you some ideas!

The crouch still looks off, though, because the feet and arms don't change position for the crouch! Ideally the arms would spread out a bit for balance, and I'd extend the rightmost leg some to give him a more spread stance. Alternatively, pull the arms in so it's more of a squatting position! Another small thing you could do is sell the downward momentum more by raising the shoulders some, it's something I employ myself quite often!

[absenter]

I guess between the two references you are using, It's more a Ryu thing.

The context of the fight is that Chompy (The Player) enters Tuth's Home (The Boss). They have a discussion and it goes south. Tuth is a feline character, so I want to have his movements be more agile/cat-like, than say Zangief. Also, the player is significantly smaller. So I'm thinking the look is more.. like if a small animal was in his home and he wanted to catch it but more aggressive. Throughout the fight, things are going to get bounced around and broken.. but he is trying to be careful/aggressive at the same time since he is in his home. It's kind of an odd combination.

A lot of the feel behind the art in this game is that while a lot of the movements are over the top, both characters shouldn't really look very trained in anything they do. The way they fight is going to be a bit awkward, goofy.

I appreciate your effort in trying to help. I hope that gives you a bit more to go on for what I'm trying to do.

Also, you were mentioning about roars/winks/facial movements. I have a roar attack that I've been working on, but it's not really to a point where I'm happy enough with it to even put it up for critique yet. I'm going to put it up soon though.

[eishiya]

Have you looked at how big cats move? Sure, they're not bipedal, but mimicking some of their motions, in particular the timing of their movement, should help this character feel more natural and more feline. Currently, there's nothing feline about their motion, he moves like a generic cartoon human.
Pay attention to how cats balance themselves with their butts in particular. You can use this in your animations.

[absenter]

Hey Eishiya. Lo and behold, there are slow motion cat videos on the internets! I'm going to go study some and see what I can get from them.

I am going for a human/cat combination. Hopefully I can get the "generic cartoon human" part more "cartoon human". 

[absenter]

Took a look at some cat videos and tried to apply more of a cat feel to the walk cycle. The main thing I notice is how the weight shifts on the shoulders and hips. I took a couple shots messing with how much to move the hips and ran into some areas that made my progress difficult. Trying to get that hip movement to look feline and not exaggeratedly feminine is a bit of a struggle for me. I think it's the whole walking on 2 legs instead of 4 thing? At moments, it was looking very much like a model on catwalk (which I guess makes sense?) I at least feel that I made some progress in that the movement looks far more fluid than in previous versions.



P.S. Pardon the headlessness. Just trying to capture the body movement for now.

[eishiya]

Try treating the paws like paws rather than stiff boots - let them bend and rotate at the ankle! Cats don't plop their whole foot down, they go fingers/toes first, then the rest of the foot follows. That same graceful rolling motion can also translate to the arms, even though they're not stepping.

[absenter]

Gave more consideration to the feet and tried to get the weight to move from the toes to the pad of the paws. Cleaned up the legs a bit.