My first ever animation

[Snippa]

Slight update:
->
(old)
Did alot of reshading, though it is probably hardly noticable, moved the "left" leg a few pixels higher, as well as the left hand.
I still see alot I need to do with this before I can consider it finished...

I'm not completely sure about the shading on the head.
In Adarias's edit, it seems like he changed the light source on the head when turning the character. It does seem to help a bit with perspective oddly, but I'm wanting the light source to be pretty much directly above the character.

I'll probably mess around with the shading on the head some later today. I think I may also need to thin out the legs a bit for perspective, or change how they move, I'm not completely sure.  Think I'm starting to get a headache from staring at this animation too long trying to figure out how to fix it.

[AdamAtomic]

What's the deal here?  You've gotten multiple, very detailed crits explaining every problem with your animation, and yet you've taken next to no action on any of them.  You still have senseless dithering, bad perspective, stiff movements, a bad palette, and your front anatomy still doesn't match your side anatomy.  If you want to continue to improve, get off your high horse and start making some of these big changes!  You've been posting the same animation and the same excuses for weeks now.

[Snippa]

What's the deal here?  You've gotten multiple, very detailed crits explaining every problem with your animation, and yet you've taken next to no action on any of them.  You still have senseless dithering, bad perspective, stiff movements, a bad palette, and your front anatomy still doesn't match your side anatomy.  If you want to continue to improve, get off your high horse and start making some of these big changes!  You've been posting the same animation and the same excuses for weeks now.

I have been applying what I see needs to be applied... such has reshading, reshaping in certain areas, moved things that have needed to be moved that were screwing up the perspective.
How does the anatomy not match? I have followed guides shown to me to make sure everything is in place where it should be . I am on no high horse Adam, I just work slow and have been extremely frustrated with this.

My dithering has been pretty senseless yes, which is why I removed the majority of it in my most recent edit. My dithering is always senseless until the final product o.O heh
What is wrong with the movements? Seriously, you don't think that I should swing the arms back unrealisticly too do you?

My palette, will probably never suit most people on these forums, and I don't intend it to suit anyone but me, because that is my taste in colors/shades. Definately not perfect no, but the colors I choose are part of my style.

I am seriously trying... and aparently failing, at least when it comes to most of the people who have posted in this thread.

Also to Adarias: been wondering, what is the math used behind the 2nd set of guides you have there?

Edit: not to mention, probably 500~ of the views on this thread so far have been mine, studying edits and crits made on it... its really driving me nuts.

[AdamAtomic]

These are the changes you've seen fit to make so far, in spite of:


Mangust's VERY helpful mockup of how to add a little more liveliness to the motion...



Adarias' fabulous example of the perspective and anatomy issues to reconcile your two views.

I know that this is your first animation, and you're right, this stuff is NOT easy.  But I'm seeing a lot of typing about "oh i want it this way, even though it obviously looks worse" and not a whole lot of actually paying attention to the loads of effort that people are putting into helping you grow.  No one is insisting on style changes or even attitude changes for the character.  All of the best crits have been for the character as you have designed him, according to the way that you want to do this project.  You have perspective, anatomy and motion issues, period, and people have illustrated for you exactly what these problems are.  Yet, you continue to edit a few pixels at a time, and then post excuses?

As far as the colors go, no one is critting the hues you've selected.  However, within those hues, you do not have enough contrast; it muddies your design and makes it very hard to read.  Also, you appear to be working on black, which is not helping you any; try working on gray and seeing if some of the contrast issues are a little more apparent!

I know that some of the artists on here sometimes crit things according to their personal preferences, but the advice you have received thus far is artistically sound an stylistically unbiased.  Cast a critical eye on your work, and you will continue to advance as you did when you started this sprite!

[eck]

honestly, theres stylistic shading and color choice, and then there is just plain BAD color choice and shading.  my sprite introduces 1 new color, re-uses that one highlight tone you had on only one of his shoulders, that was exactly the same as the color right next to it XD, upped the contrast, hue shifted a bit, and reshaded much of his chest.



its a good thing you didnt pillow-shade, as i have seen done in sprites of a similar style, multiple times, because if you had, i think it would have looked a bunch worse XD

[edit:] [rephrased the last sentence a bit, as it was rather obnoxious before]

[Turbo]

Better palette, bad torso anatomy.

[Feron]

  - that edit does nothing for this piece.  At least the original has a plausible skin pallete, plus he did need over-contrasturisation.

I would work on your animation skills considering that is why your started this thread, and look at the techniques used on the individual frames when your more experienced. 

Keep going, theres so many helpful resources in this thread - all it needs is a little elbow grease and your animation will be a lot better.   

[eck]

right, so you prefered his better?

[AdamAtomic]

Getting off-topic here fellas.  Eck, the extra contrast you added helps the sprite, but little else.  I don't think you're ready to throw around comments like this:

the only way i think your sprite could have looked worse would have been if you had pillow shaded XD

...especially with an edit that barely helps anything.  Beyond that, your edit does not address anything that actually NEEDS changing that is of importance.  Snippa's focus right now should be perspective, anatomy, and motion.  Your edit addresses none of these things, and you threw in a rude comment on top of that.

Snippa, keep thinkin on the stuff we talked about on IM, I look forward to your next update!

[ndchristie]

there's little math to it, other than it is based on the idea of a 2:1 isometric projection, an angle close to your original sprite, which means that a square in this projection resting in a horizontal plane will be twice as wide as it is high, and when measured against a vertical line (which represents the z axis btw), the angles for the x and y axes are of equal measure, in this case, a slope of 1/2 (see: 2:1 projection).  For an object rotating around fixed point  remaining equidistant form it, such as any body part rotating around the center of balance, the path of its rotation can be charted by a a regular circle.  Because we are in 2:1 projection and the 'orbit' lies within a horizontal plane, the path is represented by an elispe which is twice as wide as it is high.  the elipse is centered on the central point at a height equal to the percieved height of the body part.  Blue in this particular case represents shoulders, green the hands, purple the head, and yellow both the waist and feet.  important veritices, such as the shoulder and hip joints, hands and feet, are marked on the original sprite as well as the rotations.