Having a bit of trouble animating a very very low res stick figure.

[Tycho Magnetic Anomaly]

Hi folks, I am experimenting with a game design in which the player character is a tiny silhouette style sprite. The sort of game I am doing might have a Limo feel.

I know my biggest weak spot is character design but most specifically animating and I am really struggling to animate this character.

Ideally the game will be 60fps and the char might have a range of abilities like parkor, climbing, jumping,  sliding, run jumping, edge grabbing..etc  something a kin to flashback but faster in pace/action.

Here is my attempt at a simple walk cycle, and as you can see I am really finding it hard to do, I think this time around for me its extra hard because of so few pixels to work with.


The example above is only using 7 pose frames so the walk should be smoother, but I didn't bother expanding the frames between these 7 key frames because it already looks bad.
I also tried a climb up ledge and it came out just as bad.

I recently saw this post
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=22427.0
And I am very impressed and I realize this persons resolution is much higher, but it its the sort of smoothness and variety of movements I am looking for with my tiny sprite.

Dose anyone have any tips?

I am considering scaling the char up 300+%  for the game so I can link/tween the animation in something like spriter, but I might end up loosing the pixel art feel of the animation.

Anyway If anyone has any advice ,  is the quality and smoothness of movement I am looking for just unrealistic and impractical for such a low res sprite?

The game I am working on I "think" is a potentially strong idea and my hope is to get it produced with a month or two at most, so while I am posting this I may as well ask if there is anyone who might help me with the player characters animation alone. The game will be sold so naturally there would be some reward eventually.

Anyway.. I hope someone can offer some advice or even hop on board.

[32]

Main tip for animating very small is to make sure you animate pixel by pixel and make sure key points are always moving. Your arms just kind of lance in and out of the body. They don't even swing. Similarly the legs are always at 45 or 90 degrees. In a silhouette animation you only need to animate half of the movement, the left and right stride will look identical (assuming your perspective is truly side view) Which is nice but also makes it extremely important to make the motion from side to side very clear or else it will look like the character is just pulsing with their legs spread wide.

Smaller is not necessarily easier. This resolution is fiddly and takes a really solid knowledge of animation and how pixels work in order to create legible animation. I'd suggest making it a bit bigger.

[Tycho Magnetic Anomaly]

cheers for the advice 32, and yes I was quick to discover less pixels and even the solid color wasn't going to make this easier.
I had a few more goes myself but it just was not looking great, so had to hand it over to someone capable, this is their fantastic result (its been upscaled , sorry about that)



we did have to end up making him taller by i think 2 pixels compared to my original just to define the joints better, but what he has done is really great and shows you can make sweet slick animations using so little pixels.

This character will ultimately be used for a side scrolling platform game in which will involved parkour type movements and the transitions between the movements so this run test is a good indication that the more exotic movements wont be an issue considering the low res.

thanks again for the advice it factored in to the result


rony777 which part do you not understand?