Bibi the Fueler. UPDATE*

[vellan]

welcome to the boards rob - have been a fan of your work for a while via deviantart and cgtalk.

in addition to adams good advice, i would also add that adding a direct light source from an angle will help with adding volume to your character.

[o_8]

I love your art, this is a  very cute/cool character

I like the revised version especially, but yea it would be nice if the colors were as vibrant as the concept images or the previous sprite. I love your art a lot though, btw T^T

[miascugh]

Welcome to the board, it's nice to see such a talented artist try out pixels too. With such nice concepts it definitely already has a solid basis; from here you basically only need to lay out proper key-frames and polish it up in the event.

I'm no expert in animation either, but the running animation stuck out to me. I made a quick edit to show which frames struck me as odd:


(the frames with the asterisks are the ones I replaced)

The frames where you used the motion-blur made no sense at all. The blur lines indicate the reverted movement of what should actually happen there, and the legs also seem somewhat mangled in these two frames.

A really important frame for a running animation, in my opinion, is the one where the leg is stretched out, as can be seen above as well.

The red sperm is a rough approximation to what the flow for the braid could look like, but it turned out way way too restrained.




On a side note, I find that the original idle pose has much more character than the generic bounce of the new one, despite the technical improvement. She seems much more determined in it.
Anyway, with a little more pixel art-specific technical knowledge you'll be able to create really awesome graphics for you project. Enjoy your stay, and feel free to extend it a little :)

[RobG]

Holy moly thanks a tons guys, helpful tips all round.  I'm a bit hung up atm so i cant reply to everyone but thanks again guys.

Considering your suggestions i decided to chicken out and scale down a little.

Heres a small update, working so small she went a bit chibi style haha.



I quite pleased with the style, although i dont think her face is that great, how would i approach doing faces at this scale?


Thanks again for the warm welcome!

[Faceless]

At that size, I'd darken the greyish purple in her hair, and I'd clean up the face by taking away the shadow at the bottom of it.
This will help to make the blush more visible, and to stop the face from looking muddy.

I think the run animation lacks a bit of penache. Take a look at this sprite to see what I think you should be aiming for with the hair:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15613.htm

[Sherman Gill]

I like it much better at this resolution . Got mor character to it.
However, I still don't get the skidding, and the loose hairs on the idle seem really weird. (Edit) To be more precise, there should be atleast as much leftward movement to the hair on the right running as there is upward jiggling on the idle.

Edit again!
My edit is on the right (God, how did I never notice I said the wrong direction?)

Note how it's got a more consistent wave in the hair, and it effects the back of the main mass of hair too.

[ptoing]

I think the run animation lacks a bit of penache. Take a look at this sprite to see what I think you should be aiming for with the hair:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15613.htm

Just no! I do not care what others might think, but IMO that animation is a overanimated mess that does not read well at all and has not very good keyframes.

That said the hair could use movement more following the up and down of her run, Sherman Gill's edit already is a big improvement.

Also, tsk tsk, Robbo, on the skid you just flipped the ponytail without fixing the outline colours back

Doing great progress tho, keep it up. 

[Jad]

<---

DANGIT, you changed the style and all. :< Now this edit is useless.

Or not :] There's probably something to learn from it.

So what I wanted to show you is a couple of things:

* The more frames, the merrier. Also, the bigger a sprite, the greater the need for high framecount.. :D

* I want to show you the glory of drawing new frames from scratch and not utilize too much copypasta. Use a bigger brush than 1x1 and just draw around, flipping through frames as you go. [edit: And, draw shapes and stay away from outlines. Outlines symbolize the edge between two shapes, but since the shapes are already there, the contrast between them already creates a visible edge. Plus, to edit a shape, you just add or take away. To edit an outline, you have to first draw a new one, then erase the previous. It's tedious.]

* Her free arm should move, I think. Because that's how she'd keep her balance, right?

* Doubled the frame count and threw in two extra frames, thus equaling 14 frames. The extra frames are the ones right before her foot makes contact, anticipation frames if you wish. It makes her run more bouncy and flowy, IMO. A style-thing I always utilize with runs. I can't say it's the right way to do it, but it's my way and I like the result.

* Her head bob looks weird now. I guess I should've eliminated the sideways headbob almost competely. The bob of big mechanical fuel-thing also looks completely weird now. :( I destroyed it.

* I also made her whole body bounce more when she kicks off. For the stylishness and feeling of movement.

* I used miascugh's edit as a base, then doubled the frame count, erased her limbs in half of the frames so that the original frames became keyframes, then I went ahead and in-betweened. I started with her feet, or rather, her soles. I find that part critical to succeed with a run/walk. The feet are what she rests on, and if you succeed with making a believable foot motion, adding in legs is easy.

So when I had the soles done, I started making her thighs (thus defining her knees, since her knee is where the thigh ends. Just putting in dots for knees and then bridging in her legs between these points is also a good way to do it.) and then I just tried to make the form somewhat consistent between frames. It really isn't, right now, but it's a start.

So from this point on, (with a bit of tweaking, for example, her fuel tank and so) perfecting the shapes and shading and adding in outlines and detail is almost no work at all. It's just about being persistent :]

* I removed her hair. I thought I was gonna add it, but in the end, I had grown blind with the animation and the ideas I had about her hair in the beginning of animating had gone. So I decided to stop working on it and show you the result.

Alas, there's a lot that I could've done with timing and such, her arm movement that I made is snappy and the shapes aren't very consistent, but hey, this is but an edit.

That's it folks :]