Boy and his Blob dumping ground.

[DarkFalzX]

Hi there.
This post was inspired by this article http://gonintendo.com/?p=52358.
Back in 2004, after seeing at the E3 Majesco's abominable (and since aborted) attempt at making a DS Boy and his Blob game I have started this project that has since gone nowhere (and was in fact dead for three years now), but spawned quite a few animated sprites.
The project was a collaboration between me and Bigbrother, who did all of the Blob animations, while I concentrated on the boy himself.
It is my hope to one day soon continue the work on this.
- Idle (note my first attempt at sub-pixel)
- The running cycle. For it I have transitions both to and from idle.
- Since we decided to make licorice beans turn the blob into a rope, and NOT a ladder...
- Feeding a bean to the blob from idle position.
- Summoning the blob.

Sprites below were made by BigBrother:
- 1st idle cycle - the blob is impatient
- 2nd idle. This plays every now and then.
- 3rd idle. The blob is bored.
- 4th idle. Regular idle.
- 5th idle. Blinking.
- Regular run cycle.
- A run cycle when summoned.
- Eating a bean.
- Falling off ledges.
- If a bean misses


None of the backgrounds were drawn for this project... so no mockups...

[Malor]

I'm loving these! But something looks a little odd in the run cycle, to me, is looks kind of bow legged, and like he's tip-toeing, only... sped up. I'm not sure if that's wrong, but it just looks a little odd.

[Fatalis67]

All of the sprites and animations are great. The running does seem a bit odd, but its still better than a lot of the animations I've seen. The feeding and summoning ones particularly caught my eye. I hope you continue your project and I lookf orward to seeing it if you do. 

[DarkFalzX]

The running animation IS odd. For the longest time I couldn't quite put my finger on what was exactly wrong with it, but now I think I know.. not enough weight - he appears to glide above the ground.

[Dusty]

I don't think the feet ever really feel like they make contact with the ground. It also looks like the feet never 'pass' each other. Because of the way it's animated, it's hard to read which foot is which, and then makes it hard to see if they're even passing each other at all... making a sort of weird situation where it looks like your feet just kind of meet each other then go back(think walking sideways).

Anywho, great sprites. The feeding animation looks a bit too slow for my tastes, however.

[tomblifter]

The running animation IS odd. For the longest time I couldn't quite put my finger on what was exactly wrong with it, but now I think I know.. not enough weight - he appears to glide above the ground.

Can it be because of the shadow? It looks like it is projected directly above the feet, yet the body does not cast the shadow in the same direction.

[joe123]

Looks to me like he's running through some ladder holes, like you do at football practise.

Seems his legs are going outwards, instead of.. infront.

Awesome Sprites, loved the Character's Sneezing

-Joe

[Lunar]

Um, he's whistling

But yeah, great sprites you got there.  Animations are really smooth. 

I agree with others about the running animation, also, the feeding of the bean that the boy does is a little to dramatic.  His head/body turns a bit to much.

-Lunar

[Keizgon]

Nice job with the animations. It fits the cartoony feel.

Now let's get down to some C&C.

The boy's idle animation makes me feel a bit nauseous. I don't know much about sub-pixeling, but you don't necessarily have to have an animation, let alone a ton of frames, for everything. Remember, the more tedious work you do with one character, the more tedious work you have to do with other characters, and this can make a game more time consuming than it should to create. If you take the long way, chances are you'll have to make less sprites to compensate for the time consumption.

Now let's look at the boy summoning the blob. To me, I thought he was sneezing when I first saw that. And to be frank, he still does to me. Some ways to fix this could be: 1) Instead of using a few straight lines to represent the whistle, use a musical note; 2) Not making him go full throttle into the whistling. In other words, don't make things bounce crazily so much when he whistles; it overcomplicates his action. 3) Give him an extra still frame towards the end to let him whistle that note a little longer (without him moving) so the user can actually notice it.

As for the 'feeding a bean to the blob in idle position', again, he's putting too much force into doing something minor. In this case, it's too little of an action to even be such a complex action. Simplify it more.

[Dusty]

The boy's idle animation makes me feel a bit nauseous. I don't know much about sub-pixeling, but you don't necessarily have to have an animation, let alone a ton of frames, for everything. Remember, the more tedious work you do with one character, the more tedious work you have to do with other characters, and this can make a game more time consuming than it should to create. If you take the long way, chances are you'll have to make less sprites to compensate for the time consumption.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. I think the idle animation is great, and I don't think he used too many frames... I think it's 8 frames, but really only 4(1-2-3-4-3-2-1). Either way, depending on how skilled he is(and I can only assume from his others that he is very skilled in animation), that may not be a lot of work. Regardless, workload shouldn't be a negative, and you shouldn't deter people from putting time into their work. Games like Metroid always have great animation and even the idle position has animation(much like his, has subpixel animation). I don't think workload or time consumption is ever really up for critique because it's completely up to the person how much time they want to put into their work.

[ptoing]

KratosX has a point tho. They are nicely done on a pixellevel but the boy ones are quite overanimated. Tons of frames is not always the best thing to do, and indeed the whisteling looks a lot like sneezing. Making stuff cartoony is one thing, but it's easy to go over the top.

In the run it looks like more attention was spent on the secondary motion than actually giving the run weight.

[Helm]

Most of the kid animations have too much anticipation and recoil and not enough stress. It's like looking at reels of all the secondary frames with the stress ones taken out. They can easily be tweaked though, but aren't these 3 years old you said? Are you going to make the game after all or are you showcasing old art? I'm not partial to the selout but that's a played out conversation I think.

[Indigo]

if I remember correctly helm, the selout works in this case since the backgrounds are dark enough to supplement it (from what I remember of the demo he showed me some time ago) - thus, its just AA

[Helm]

Didn't they not make any background art for this? Was the whole game ment to be on a pretty dark background? KITTY WANTS TO KNOW (my own avatar amuses me)

[Ben2theEdge]

The boy's idle animation makes me feel a bit nauseous. I don't know much about sub-pixeling, but you don't necessarily have to have an animation, let alone a ton of frames, for everything.

Actually I would say as a rule of thumb it's best to avoid static frames in character sprites, unless you're deliberately going for a minimalist or retro 8-bit feel. There are multiple reasons for this, the most obvious one is that real people don't stand perfectly still, and to have characters snap from motion to mime-like frozen positions is discomforting aesthetically. The other, more important reason is that the eye is attracted to motion so having a character that is constantly animated, no matter how subtle, helps to separate it from the background layer.

[Indigo]

Didn't they not make any background art for this? Was the whole game ment to be on a pretty dark background? KITTY WANTS TO KNOW (my own avatar amuses me)

if you notice on the sprites, the darker values are very rarely used as sel-out - only the mid-tones are.  All of the darker values form solid lines (good example of this is the blob).  Meaning the backgrounds don't need to be very dark for this sel-out to work properly.

In either case, this is best answered by darkfalzx

[big brother]

As far as I can remember, the game backgrounds were going to be pretty dark. I am guilty of the selout on the blob, but I didn't go overboard with it (usually just one shade step). I generally try not to use it, so you'll have to forgive me the transgression.

(Helm's avatar amuses me greatly.)

[Dusty]

KratosX has a point tho. They are nicely done on a pixellevel but the boy ones are quite overanimated. Tons of frames is not always the best thing to do, and indeed the whisteling looks a lot like sneezing. Making stuff cartoony is one thing, but it's easy to go over the top.

In the run it looks like more attention was spent on the secondary motion than actually giving the run weight.

I agree most of them are overanimated(stated before that the feeding one was way too dramatic), but I can't say the idle animation is overanimated at all. It is one of the more subtle idle animations I have seen on Pixelation, aside from static sprites, in a while honestly.

Aside from the feeding animation though, I think the 'overanimation' is quite nice. I'm not a great animator though, so perhaps they could lose some frames in favor of key frames... but I still think they have a wonderful cartoony exaggeration to them.

[Keizgon]

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

The sub-pixeling in the idle here plays with my eyes, maybe it's just me.

I think the idle animation is great, and I don't think he used too many frames... I think it's 8 frames, but really only 4(1-2-3-4-3-2-1). Either way, depending on how skilled he is(and I can only assume from his others that he is very skilled in animation), that may not be a lot of work.

I wasn't referring to his idle animation, so I should clarify. What I have noticed about his animations is that they are all extremely animated, which is fun to show off such a skill, but sometimes it's not always necessary.

Whatever exactly sub-pixeling is, I haven't seen it before (at least I haven't noticed it). If I did, it probably was used sparingly deliberately so I would not notice it. Of course though, I have played little to no games around when the GameCube and GameBoy Advance first appeared, if it is a new style. I also never played Metroid, so maybe I'll give it a try sometime and tell you if I agree about the subtle sub-pixel animation. Everybody has their own taste in style (part of mine is try not to screw with your eyes), as they do in everything.

Regardless, workload shouldn't be a negative, and you shouldn't deter people from putting time into their work. Games like Metroid always have great animation and even the idle position has animation(much like his, has subpixel animation). I don't think workload or time consumption is ever really up for critique because it's completely up to the person how much time they want to put into their work.

You misunderstand, I am not critiquing his workload, or any other artists' who want to take their time for perfection sake. However, speaking from experience making games in my spare time, sometimes you have to speed up your workload, especially if you are both the programmer and the artist. That is, if you want to release it or bump it to a full version in a reasonable, yet still long, date.

If he and his friend can create good art pretty quickly, then good. It's totally up to the artist to manager their free time. Nobody has to take my advice if he/she doesn't wish to. It's just my preference when creating games for the sake of allowing me to program more.

[Helm]

The work efficiency point is off topic as from what I understand this is a dead project.

[Frychiko]

You misunderstand, I am not critiquing his workload, or any other artists' who want to take their time for perfection sake. However, speaking from experience making games in my spare time, sometimes you have to speed up your workload, especially if you are both the programmer and the artist. That is, if you want to release it or bump it to a full version in a reasonable, yet still long, date.

If he and his friend can create good art pretty quickly, then good. It's totally up to the artist to manager their free time. Nobody has to take my advice if he/she doesn't wish to. It's just my preference when creating games for the sake of allowing me to program more.

I don't know about the original poster, but Big Brother at least, from what I gather, has alot of professional experience making art, so I don't think he needs that lesson.

[PypeBros]

The boy's idle animation makes me feel a bit nauseous. I don't know much about sub-pixeling, but you don't necessarily have to have an animation, let alone a ton of frames, for everything.

Actually I would say as a rule of thumb it's best to avoid static frames in character sprites, unless you're deliberately going for a minimalist or retro 8-bit feel.

Well, the initial technical reason for animating the character even when idle was to ensure that one could always tell that the console was still alive because there was something moving on screen.
Anyway, imho, your idle animation for the boy comes nicely and won't disturb the player of a puzzle game. i'm more concerned by the "blob blinks" animation, where the blob is perfectly still when blinking while he's obviously constantly bopping around the rest of the time.

The "rope climbing" is wonderful. Somehow it reminds me of Lomaxx portfolio (never played the game).
The "boy running" has something odd, as already mentioned, as if feet were not moving in the direction of the run
The "blob running like a pet" is lovable, but has something odd in the way the bottom of the blob taps the ground (it should give the blob a boost forward, but it would actually stop it)

[Turbo]

Just wanted to pop up and say, from the look of things, if i'd played this game in my youth, it would probably be something i'd remember fondly throughout my life, from the quality of the work alone.

The blob strikes me as a bit monochromatic and needing more contrast, specially in a side-by-side comparison with the boy. But given Big Brother's background, i'm sure there's a good reason for that.

Why are you not pushing to get this done again?

[Conzeit]

Darkfalzx! always a blast to the past to hear about you! (Camus...friend of Drew here  )


Your work always has this disney esque charm to it with all the secondary animations the squashing n  the smoothness. always liked that.

I like the rythm to the run animation, something about the way he moves slowly in the air but slows down on contact with the ground makes it feel more like every day life, for some reason (or maybe it's the hood bouncing who knows).

the throwing is kind of weird, the way his weight shifting leads the whole thiing around is sort of weird....it's really over the top but at the same time de-emphasizes the action it's supposed to represent. I mean it's really good that you put weight shifting into the anim, but punctualize the action a bit more by making the arm movement lead things a bit more an be BACKED by the weight shifting. If you put a frame at the beggining where he's visualizing where he's throwing his bean, it'd add a lot to the whole thing I think.


I have to agree with everyone about the sneeze/whistle. it seems like you had a lot of trouble with that whistling pose, I dont know why you make him bow so much, you're compressing the whole sprite so much you can barely tell anything apart....the rest of the anim is very clear but that pose is just a big indefinite mess (were you tired when you made it?). Keep the negative shapes in mind to separate the head n hands.


EDIT: to reply to ben.

Actually I would say as a rule of thumb it's best to avoid static frames in character sprites, unless you're deliberately going for a minimalist or retro 8-bit feel.

A few years ago I would have been backing you with mad enthusiasm but I've been feeling more minimalistic nowdays...a particular watching Ghost in the Shell (1) made me rethink the constant need for movement and flare in everything.  I mean if they could make masterpieces like THAT and have the character stand completely still for whole shots, there's no reason whatsoever we should have people in games bounce around like morons ALL THE TIME. instead,if one wants to add an extra flare to the ilding of a character...I'd say make several stances, and make anims to link them together, then make some actual bored animations but design them to loop once instead of endlessly (like Earthwormjim's whole elvis throwing busyness).

I think THAT would be a much better way to make them feel alive.

[ndchristie]

watching Ghost in the Shell (1) made me rethink the constant need for movement and flare in everything.  I mean if they could make masterpieces like THAT and have the character stand completely still for whole shots, there's no reason whatsoever we should have people in games bounce around like morons ALL THE TIME.

this seems like sound logic, but you're forgetting i think that film and games have completely different formats and goals.  Ghost in the shell uses a lot of close shots for one, which is impossible here, and completely changes the way things are seen and processed.  Also, there's no player, there's only an audience.  Generally in games if play stops, the player stops, where movies can get away with longer pauses because the audience isn't saying "hey, make it go!"  I also think in general that ghost in the shell is mostly praised for things other than static characters.