animated girl person

[Zomby138]

Hello there.  I have been lurking around this forum for a few days and I must say I am very impressed with a lot of the stuff I've seen around, not only the pixel art it's self but also the quality of feedback people have been giving each other.  this seems like a good place to learn and improve, and I have a lot I want to learn.  I'm new to pixeling, befor now I have mostely been a digital painter, but I want to learn pixeling.

This's one of my first real attempt at making a sprite of sorts, I made it purely for "practice", she's not planning on being in a game.



I'm reasonabely pleased with the animation, but I am aware that the sprite it's self is extremely bland. I'd like as much C&C as I can get if that's ok.

o.o

[vellan]

is the animation roto'd?

if not, insert sound of dropping jaw hitting floor now

[ptoing]

Quite nice generally, tho overall it lacks weight and some bits (like the flying and the rotating around the sword) just do not work because of how stuff is timed.

[Zomby138]

it's not roto'd no, I sketched most of the frames in open canvas, then shrank them down and pixeled them in photoshop / image ready.

I actually have a gif of the sketchy frames here if you're interested: warnning, not pixel art.

Thanks for the crit ptoing, I'm trying my best to see what you mean, could you try and explain how it could have been done better ?

[Mirre]

Very nice animation, even if it lacks weight like ptoing said. One thing I can think of is that her boobs look a little bit too much like jelly (especially in the beginning of the animation when she swings the sword over her head). They are not that overly big and are held back with some fabric... plus, if she really can use that weapon, it is likely that she has trained her body alot and therefore they should have muscles underneath and be quite firm. Another problem is that the piece of clothing over the breasts likely would fall off if a real girl did those moves (no shoulder straps).

[Zomby138]

Thanks Mirre, everything you say it true, I guess.  she was originally naked when I animated her, and I didn't really think of how things would be supported by clothing etc : P

she doesn't have a face btw, I dunno if anyone noticed : P

[ptoing]

ATM it looks like it is supposed to be slomo in some bits, but for that to work some others should prolly have some more frames even.
Generally for stuff like the swordslash you would have less frames, as well as for the flight and the rotate around the sword.

If you want to get better at animation you should deffo get this book

http://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/0571202284/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-2686468-4080644?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175781775&sr=8-1

[Zomby138]

hmm, interesting, well I don't think I'm ready to get a book just yet, as this is really my first real animation ever I'm fairly confident I'll be able to improve for a while befor resorting to some kind of book device.

I'm more interested at the moment in learning things like the actual style of the pixeling, trying to make things look less bland and more interesting, I see things around the forum that look so awesome and detailed and stuff : \

[Fool]

It's  animated extremely wel =) might be better if you adjust timing (still have a room) to make it more dynamic - she's kind of in slow motion.=)

[kakikukeko]

Well everything I wanted to say has been said, (lack of accelerations mainly), except that, I really like it very good animation.. and the palette is pretty good too.. I didn"t really notice the lack of face as the way you did the shadow of the hair on the "face" made me think the eyes were there.. 
(and don't know why, it reminds me ICO )

[Helm]

Most of the good crits have been made. I especially didn't like the boob shakes, it seems like such fan service has to occur on any fighter sprite on capcom and snk games, it doesn't mean us amateurs should do the same also.

she doesn't have a face btw, I dunno if anyone noticed : P

That's fine, women are deceptive faceless creatures anyway.

[Gil]

Little edit. You basically forgot to apply a few laws of physics.

First of all, gravitation. She should be speeding up when falling down.
Next is acceleration. If she jumps she'll be speeding up first, not gaining her initial speed right away.

Also, you're not going to cut anybody at the speed you originally swung that sword.

This is a really great piece btw...

[miascugh]

That's fine, women are deceptive faceless creatures anyway.

I think what Helm is getting at here is... give her RED HAIR, lots of it. (I don't expect anybody to know what I'm talking about)


In my opinion a few frames, especially in the backwards-somersault thing, could be dropped, and compensated with some very subtle motion-blurring. To be redundant, the abrupt stiffness of the sword is what really threw me off. Other than that, great work on the consistency of all the shapes, way ahead of my understanding of anatomy and motion (as in poses, the timing is a bit, you know).

[ZoSo]

Give her pink panties xD.

Anyway its nice . I like the bounces. xD

[Turbo]

That's fine, women are deceptive faceless creatures anyway.

LOL misoginy never fails to bring me a smile (it's part sarcasm, i know, but lol)

Regarding sprite blandness:

If you want to keep the flat shaded, cel-shading style you have, it will be difficult to add more interest. Either that will be by adding more accessories or design elements, such as jewelry, items or tatoos, or detail (face, muscles, bone definition). Technique-wise, you could try changing the palette, applying hue-shifts, increasing the "complimentary-ness" between light and dark shades for colors.

Another way you could add interest would be by adding more colors, for highlights and darker shades, to convey more depth, both for skin and fabric.

Oh btw, saved this animation in my Reference folder

[dragonrc]

Tried to improve the framerate. Hope it helps in some way

edit:
...hmm strange, the framerate looks totally different now, but it works fine as an image on my pc. I suppose you should save the file and then look at it to see my changes.

[Zomby138]

wow, lots of responces.

firestely dragonrc, I have experience similar fame rate issues from program to program quite a bit, for me it runs differentely opened in IE than it does in windows picture viewer or image ready, :\ I think it's becase the canvas is relatively large and stuff, it is most annoying at any rate.

from what I can tell the edits people have done look better, the jumping and stuff seems more realistic, I will try and come to understand this better.

Turbo, you mentioned palette stuff, like complimenteryness in between the highlight and the shading, I'm quite interested in that kind of thing, although I didn't do anything very intereting with this sprite, I've been working on an engine to alter the pallet of a sprite to react to the enviromental lighting of the background, addressing the colours that represent  areas in the light seperately to those that represent areas not in the light. hopefully I'll be able to do some pretty interesting things with that ultimately.  also I have speculars being addressed sperately, potentually, as they can directely refect the colour of the lightsorce to some extent.

thanks a lot for all the responces overal  : )

[Helm]

Hello. On the per-frame level, the art suffers from banding. Look at frame 2 of the short animation below. Also since you expressed an interest on how to make this more... pixel-arty, I guess the only way to go from here and on would be to add more detail. However there is a level where it's just tedious work to do this on every frame unless you have little korean kids inbetweening for you in your basement. But for reference, check frame 3 of same animation. You are also using a few colors for very few pixels, therefore inoptimally, but not a huge problem. My last frame uses 16 colors.

[KonamiCode]

I wouldn't write off looking at some of the better books on animation that are out there. Richard William's Animation Survival Kit, The Disney Illusion of Life book, even Preston Blair's books on animation are all very helpful and informative on the actual principles of animation, why they work and are used, and are presented by either the first or second generation of artists who really worked to break down the rules of animation and why things work like they do.  You've got a nice first bit of animation here, but even a simple overlap in the timing of the skirt as she lands could work to really add a lot more character to the animation itself.

[Zomby138]

hmm, I am finding helm's edit extremely interesting. what exactely do you mean by "banding" ? sorry I'm really not down with the lingo.

just let me stare at the edit a while longer to try and work out what's going on.

[Helm]

dark flesh shade, light flesh shade. Between them you have a medium buffer shade. It is 'hugging' the darker shades contours, following them exactly not easing the 'staircase' jaggies at all, but rather accentuating them. Banding.

[Zomby138]

i see, good, I get it, yes

[Gil]

Dragonrc: your edit is exactly the same as mine? What's the point?

I noticed the banding too. There's two options. Either you go with a soft-shadow, or you're AA-ing the light with the dark. In both cases you need to alter the medium shade. Helm's edit is a good example of AAing dark to light.

[Stwelin]

There is a need for more tension when she's in the backflip state and she sticks her sword in the ground. Maybe another keyframe with only slight movement, to show she is straining to pull off the rest of the move. In theory it would add a presence of gravity to the animation, though i am by no means a master of the animated gif.

+ framerate displays differently between mozilla and internet explorer, etc... so someone watching this in a different browser may be basing a critique on something they are viewing differently than you, in regards to the timing, anyway.

++ this reminds me of Blood : The Last Vampire.

[Nebopolassar]

If you would like to get advice on texturing, shading and whatnot, it might be better to post a still piece.  The piece you have here is for the most part simply an animation, so that's what people are focusing on.  Not that you hadn't figured that out for yourself, just sayin!    But that is a very nice animation. If a few issues could be remedied, it would look pretty dang top notch!

[Xion]

When the sword [sticks] in the ground, it doesn't rotate at all. Looks really weird, since the tip of the sword is essentially the pivot point for everything, the handle/hand being only the pivot point for the girl. Pretty awesome, though.

[Draco9898]

That's pretty insane for just an animation- what great work Maybe more contrast? I'm not sure if I have any right to be critiqueing as I'm not that great at all 

[dragonrc]

Dragonrc: your edit is exactly the same as mine? What's the point?

No it isn't, although it looks the same now. I don't know why but the framerate gets all messed up with this piece, I think it's because it's a big and long animation.
If you save the image you'll notice the difference, that worked fine with me.

[Gil]

If you would save mine, you'd see they're exactly the same. If yours is speeded up, so is mine, remember 

[uridicy]

That's a long animation.  I really think it looks cool when she flips back on her sword.  It seems like it might snap or at least bend in real life though.

[BadMrBox]

I have been watching the animation for awhile now and I would like to say that I like it. It has it's problems but I nothing to say about that that hasn't been said already. It would be insanely fun to see animations like this in a game.

[Zomby138]

thanks a lot everyone the feedback has been good, I have learnt some stuff