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.