Image streaks/Blur/motion streaks?

[Mike]

I was wondering where exactly can i learn more about this.  Its pretty difficult to find reference of how its done in real life.  There is plenty of reference for sprites and stuff, but nothing in the real.  So what are the exact mechanics for image streaks?  Is it the point of which eyes can no longer track it?  When would you draw an image streak from a duplicate sprite that you already drew, and when would you draw a new sprite pose with an image streak over it?

I'll post some fire emblem examples of what I mean.  I'm hoping this thread is a success cause I would love to learn how this is done.  And if there is anyone who is a master of this technique please reply

[cave]

I don't know what you mean by real life... I don't think this happens in real life Try downloading anime and watch it frame by frame... Also, please post animated gifs of your stuff so we can comment on whether your current attempts are looking good or not.

[ndchristie]

it's all taste.  many animations stretch nothing, many blur a little, and a huge number blur/stretch a ton because it's "easy"

still, you aren't going to find really good "rules" about it

[Terley]

I think its just trial and error, its really just a mix of all the possible in between states so I'd just do that and maybe simplify it a bits so its easier to read.. Like if it were a head switching position you'd try to simplify the eyes, mouth as much to make them readable enough to trick the eye to filling in the gaps easier. For a reference picture I'd look for motion stills but I think it'd be hard trying to find one to help you with something in particular.

edit - may help somehow.

http://www.ballet.co.uk/images/maliphant/hg_transmission_elisabetta_daloia_and_winifred_burnet_smith_blur_500.jpg
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/antoine/videoVis/pbBlur.jpg

[Mike]

Right now I have no noticeable uses of that technique, but I'll show what I have










That is all I have at the moment...

[Sherman Gill]

First animation could use more motion in general.
Second animation looks super robotic, though not necessarily in a bad way. But unless he's gonna be some form of heartless monster boss guy, I'd say make it more human and add some springiness to his wielding of the sword. The motion blure itself is pretty successful here, though!
Third animation, well, it's not really a good place for motion blur in my opinion, and on top of that the fade-outingness of it just adds confusion.
Fourth one... Scissors animation also looks super robotic, but on top of that the sudden jerking movements make it lose cohesion

[dtek]

HI, great character kind of like Dragon Ball Z! But with cool metal?silver hair
as for your wipe questions, in my opinion, it relies heavily on your frame rate, and I did an example below, and for my liking with the speed that my browser displays animated .GIFs(maybe a third of the rate in film???), only one frame needs a subtle, more subtle than the black bat example below, wipe. Otherwise, to me, mind you, any more may be overkill and read as morphing, instead of super fast movement

have you tried dithering the trail of the wipe?
...later!

[micr0softener]

I suppose the best way to think about motion blurs is to think about the motion itself. Motion blurs are simply a way of making the animation flow smoothly between radically different frames- in Anime, it's referred to as 'ghosting', or turning into a ghost. Temporarily, of course. Ghosting what you call someone leaping from a roof in one frame, being their entire motion path in the second and having landed in the third. It tends to be comic booky- in fact, it is a comic book technique.

Think about comic books. You almost never see the 'moment of contact', except for in really vicious sword battles. What you see is the moment after- the raised fist and the reaction. What motion blurs- at least, in the 'one frame big motion' style- allow is for the artist to emulate this; it blanks the actual motion into a simpler form and allows the viewer's focus to be on the preparation and the reaction. For example, see dtek's falling pole, especially the second one. The second pole is ghosted almost perfectly- it goes from standing to about to fall to every falling frame in one go to having fallen.

Basically, motion blurs are useful for making the animation stay at nearly the same basic framerate while having radically different actual motion speeds. For your peices, the motion blur is useful in the sword combat one (sword moves smoothly) and the massive hammer one (hammer motion is more obvious), and the midair magic slash thing (natural magic trails). However, the falling-down-getting-back-up seems almost sluggish with all the blurs going on (they keep previous frames in the mind of the viewer), and they don't make the animation seem 'faster' or more 'actiony', except for the head-shaking spin lines. If you can animate it at the same framerate and it doesn't look sudden, then it doesn't need blurs. If you can add a single frame and it doesn't look as sudden, then it probably doesn't need blurs, though it might.

[ndchristie]

here is an early WIP animation of mine that's using a bit of blur, forgive the beheadedness and spotty pixels im just getting into the shapes (which is all i think you were wondergin about...)



The larger the blur, the more space was covered during the frame.  Some people dislike this method because it means that the faster the stroke was, the more visible it also was, which is counter-intuitive.  However, i find that it works for my purposes in this context, which is to show motion, not reality.  If i could deal with transparency, i would probably take it down on the broader parts, but since i'm using purely opaque colors, i stick with a uniform brightness as I don't know what colors it will pass over.

This was purposefully far overdone because I like things to be ridiculous, but it's been taken down because not everyone likes things to look so foolish:

You almost never see the 'moment of contact', except for in really vicious sword battles.

yeah, comic books also break their own rules in that and other scenarios.  most hits show after the impact for "force," but blocks violate this as it's good to show the stopping.  There's also the exception though with a weapon breaks though until-then unbreakable armor, or a fist crushes in some dude's face, in which a successful attack is shown nearly frozen to emphasize the moment of impact over the motion....

[Dusty]

Hmm, there was a thread here a little while ago with some kind of robot scissor thing closing that had motion blur. The animation initially posted wasn't great, and it spawned a lot of great advice as I remember about motion blurring. I can't find the thread as I don't remember who posted it, but maybe someone else here will be able to post it. I think it might be of some help in this direction.

I'm personally not that great in animation or the technique's used so this may be taken with a grain of salt... but I think blurring is meant to represent speed. Using it to animation someone pulling themselves up from the ground doesn't make a lot of sense, unless they put a lot of power behind it(like kicking up off the ground or something... ninja-esque).