AuthorTopic: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.  (Read 8431 times)

Offline daramon

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #20 on: July 06, 2019, 07:03:14 am


This is a rework of the jump animation using the deeper shading inspired by Pistachio and a more dynamic jump inspired by Mystery Meat, followed by a hard landing.

I can see a few issues still, but I'm really excited about this development. Massive thanks to everyone who's commented on this!

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #21 on: July 08, 2019, 12:39:43 am


Legs paused in an awkard spot and his jump didn't kick his leg far forward enough! Hopefully this helps illustrate that!
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |

Offline daramon

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #22 on: July 08, 2019, 08:31:39 am
Ah yes, looking at it the landing doesn't really make sense on mine. I see where you're going with yours and the more extended leg combined with the shortening of the knee protrusion at the end helps a lot.

The pauses are to represent the three stages of the animation: up, down and land. I'm working on the movement code right now, and the plan is to trigger animations on jump (obvs), reversing direction at the top and reverting to grounded state. I don't know if the animation would make sense playing out completely on the way up, and there aren't enough frames to spread it out evenly.

If you're saying the first paused frame just looks awkward then then that's a shame as I kinda liked it. Still, I could relax the leg a bit and make it more of a right angle rather than tucked in. Or I could generate a lot more frames and make it smoother, at which point I could probably get away with just triggering it on jump and leaving it.

Food for thought. Thanks (again) for your time!

(I have a feeling that I won't have finished working on this character's movement until I finish the project...)

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #23 on: July 09, 2019, 06:09:49 am
I actually took that into consideration, try implementing the frames as I've posted as a sequence of pauses Along a jump arc
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |

Offline daramon

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #24 on: July 10, 2019, 02:49:03 pm
I will do, thanks!

I'm currently battling with wayward Unity character controllers, I'll let you know how it goes once I've bashed out something stable to hang it on.

Offline pistachio

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #25 on: July 14, 2019, 11:24:58 am
Just wanted to add your progress is looking neat, kind of beats even my edit there :P

MysteryMeat is right, building off of his advice I'd tweak the first few frames of that jumping anim to be less linear. Probably I will make an edit much later to demo this, but look up animation terms like slow-in and slow-out.

Offline daramon

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #26 on: July 16, 2019, 08:55:50 am
Thanks Pistachio! That's very kind. I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near those results without your edits.

With "slow in" and "slow out" are you talking about what I'd call "easing" in web UI design?

Offline pistachio

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Re: A first go at a character: animated spaceman.

Reply #27 on: July 18, 2019, 09:15:26 am
Thanks Pistachio! That's very kind. I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near those results without your edits.

With "slow in" and "slow out" are you talking about what I'd call "easing" in web UI design?

Yeah, ease in and ease out was the lingo, and yeah, it is everywhere right now even way beyond web design. :huh:
BTW there's good stuff in The Animator's Survival Kit, not only easing but about arcs and timing. Look into those two on the side, it's gonna help your other animations.