shooter - game character

[piotrek255]

My plan is to make a character with a gun(or more guns), that will:

-stand
-run
-jump
-double jump
-duck
-shot weapon 1
-shot weapon 2
-die
------------------------

I will make this character by creating silhouettes in 3D, and rendering them for every animation and then painting them with details. Is this a good approach, or does your experience led you to different approach? its my first attempt at something like that, and i want to avoid major mistakes.


cleaned up silhouette of shot weapon 1



PS: i may be off for a few days so this thread will drop down to the bottom , but as soon as i'm back i will post updates.

[LoTekK]

I'm personally a fan of silhouetting, but I'm also not an accomplished animator, so take what you will from that. ^^

What you have right now is not bad; it's fairly fluid. However, I think some snappiness would be nice. Cut a frame from the draw, and instead use a blur/streak to really emphasize the quick draw. More importantly, though, I think his leg movements could be exaggerated, to match the movement of the upper body more. Right now the upper body movements are fairly big, especially for a pistol draw, and the animation might benefit from a more pronounced backstep. Step that trailing foot back further, really exaggerate it like the upper body; that alone should give the entire pose more sass.

[AdamAtomic]

I think it's going to be difficult to shade this character effectively when he is that skinny, and the gun looks very weak - like this is a skinny, lightweight guy, with a lot of frames, but there is almost no recoil from the pistol at all - the smoke takes too long to dissipate (either that or it should travel upward more), and that step back action looks very strange to me.  Also, consider that it takes over half a second between starting the shoot animation and the actual shoot action taking place; if this is designed for use in a game that could be very frustrating, depending on the game type.  He leans back before shooting, which confuses me some - I would expect him to maybe twist his shoulders if he needed his right shoulder to be farther back, not lean his WHOLE body back like that.  Finally, the only people that fire sidearms like that are B movie action stars, gangsters, and comic book characters   two hands!

Finally, three more broad crits: your sprites are too big for your skillset to handle right now, they have too many frames of animation, and drawing the frames by hand will be a MUCH more educational process for you; you'll gain so much more than you will by trying to use some existing workflow that you are comfortable with.  The act of animating by hand in 2d will force you to increase your understanding of the human body and motion in a way that sliding some bones around in your 3d app just won't do for you.  Also, working with a smaller sprite will help speed that process up a lot, letting you try many different approaches without spending hours on these very tall frames.