Boy and his Blob dumping ground.

[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.