Heads [WIP]

[JonathanOfDrain]

I've been working on a game with my friend in Australia for a while called 4Heads. It was a silly idea that has received a good deal of support from other people. We only had a demo and we are now finishing the game. It should be out in a month.
A few people have been giving us crap about the cuteness of our games and how they lack any level of seriousness so we're planning on making a slightly serious game That means we'll try to avoid all those vibrant bright colors, use some more detail and have a slightly realistic "world". We've discussed making a more action oriented game that would still be in the same "world". Since it will involves more action we'll need some attack animations. I thought since these creatures don't have arms they'll have to smash with their heads or head butt other creatures. I made a quick animation and it turned out badly.
It should have named it flaccid.gif because it... looks flaccid.
Here's a good picture of what they look like:


I was never really good at animator and always avoided it (didn't help) so now I'm asking for some help from you.

Here are some of my sketches, smash animation was drawn out at the bottom right.

[Squirrelborg]

I'd say have it pull back a bit more with a slight pause, then lean out a little faster, stretching farther with another pause when it strikes. A head butt usually has fairly sharp movements.

[Zolthorg]

personally, I'd
Shorten the time it takes for the head to move through the attack
add some weight on the end
and try motion blurring/faster motion to smooth out the animation.



I'd also say that you should experiment with some jiggling motion

edit:

maybe you could start with a smaller scale to even out the motion


i threw in some of that jiggling i was talking about, as well as a 'flash' to indicate impact.given that they're tall people, it doesn't seem they'd be able to bend very far which throws off a lot of the impact.

[JonathanOfDrain]

Thanks Zolthrog. I think your "blurring" is better than the blurring I had in my head. I planned to have lines trail like on most animated sword swings. I planned with the great edit you made and go this:

I wanted to add a stomp to emphasize  intensity and I think it works. The resetting looks bad though. Should I have his foot pull back faster or instantly? I think his back leg looks slightly boring but I don't know what I could do to change that.
I think I'll play with the blur a lot more when I start coloring it a bit.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[Obsidian]

For the resetting of the foot, I think the guy's foot should step back instead of slide.

[JonathanOfDrain]

I tried a step. Maybe it's too quick, but It's a step regardless. Makes me want to make the stomp more stomp than step. I'll edit this post in a few minutes with an edit. Also you can tell I don't know what to do with this large empty places on his body, I tried making some highlights and shadows on the moving "leg" but still don't know what to do for the rest.


EDIT:

I played around with it a little and I think the purple-blue looks good as the shadow color. I made solid blocks for highlight and shadows instead of messy dithering.
I'm kind of confused at what I should do now.
EDIT AGAIN:

I was getting tired of working on him so I moved to his enviroment. I need to brighten those things up and make them look like toys, I want to add really "cute" rocks. The whole game should have a cute look and it's off by a little and my brain is shutting down.