WIP guy with hammer

[PypeBros]

a bit of AA in the hammer could be nice, especially to break banding.

Otherwise, i suggest a simple attack and a default foe first. That would setup the environment of the story and could give more hint on further gameplay (and thus required animations). E.g. is he more likely to duck or climb ladders ...

As for the jump, you used to make him jump with the hammer near his head, while i'd rather guess the hammer to be near his feet, due to its weight.

[Tuna Unleashed]

The hammer is only near his head on the way back down, because momentum or something would pull it up there.

But AA eh? Okay.

Edit: updated the first post

[Tuna Unleashed]

Thanks to the thrice accursed .png format, I was forced to do this twice.

[Yo-Yo-Master]

Shouldn't that hair spike turn with the rest of his head?

[Tuna Unleashed]

[Helm]

See you're still doing it. Someone gives you critique and you post your new animation as an answer. We don't really need to see everything you make every day. Leave something for the game itself. The critique you've been given still stands. Your characters are noodly and the structure and anatomy of the face needs a lot of study, but instead of looking to fix these things and better yourself as an artist in this way you commited to the character and made 30 animations for him.

This isn't a board where people post their sprites with the primary function being getting praise and amazement from your peers. We're here to help you, not just watch as you make more and more art. I mean, it's great you're productive of course, but it's frustrating to take a communicational platform like this and just render all the readers as merely viewers.

[Tuna Unleashed]

I'm not trying to. I just miss some things. Also, the term 'noodly' has always eluded me. I never know if people mean that it is curvy or needs more detail or what. It's like if someone said that the guy's head was biscuity. The only reason I started making animations was that I was under the impression that people thought it was acceptable.

One last thing, believe me when I say I definitely prefer intelligent critique over blind praise. The praise definitely gives me a nice feeling but the critique allows me to make it better, which I think is more important.

[Helm]

To be honest, I wouldn't think it's safe to move forward with animating, before reconsidering your characters stance, and style. If I were a gamer, I'd probably walk away from this one, by the looks of it..



   Other left out points include how the hammer is being held, and how it and the character don't seem to coexist at all. This is especially evident in the animations you've already begun, and in my opinion, needs fixing. The last attack animation you've posted is basically showing my point, in that the character is making minimal movement, where as the hammer is moving every 2-3 frames for every 1 frame of the character himself. Remember, when using a weapon like this, a character's movement is just as vital as the weapon's movement. In which case, you've got some unnatural things going on.
   Now I'm not ragging on you or anything, I'm just not a fan of this style of art by young gamers who don't seem to understand real life physics and jump head first into projects like this without taking it into consideration. Hope this helps a little, and good luck!

This post was gold. You need to study anatomy. Acceptable it may or may not be according to your standards. If you're happy with how it looks yourself, then that's fine. If you want to get better, you need to work on your anatomy.

[TrevoriuS]

You were told from the start to learn anatomy and adapt your sprite to that, instead you went on and started animating, The anatomy isn't necessarily that bothersome to me, his torso's a bit too long and the legs too short, but at this small scale it gets... acceptable for me. For the large portrait you do need much more anatomy study.

Either way, if you do it or not, your animations lack any sense of weight. The hammer is big and heavy, and he walks as if dragging it, but then the hammer is placed as if he's got it all lifted and just holds it behind him, completely not in order to what the legs are doing. Then comes the attack. Have you ever even ehard of the term 'anticipation'? Use it!

[PypeBros]

I took some of your frames and i'll try to show where anatomy is going off here. Imho, the first picture (during the walk animation) renders nicely, good proportions of legs and torso for that fairly complex pose and arms are partly hidden from this viewpoint, so that's okay to me.

Now, if you at other pictures, you'll notice that you keep the "belt-line" (orange/yellow transition) at the same height and even lower even when legs are more extended than on that first picture. In other terms, his legs shorten as he moves.
Second point is with the torso himself that was interesting and muscular during the walk and surprisingly get stiff and pipe-shaped on frames 3 and 4. Plus, he raised his head and stands straight, but is barely a few pixels higher than during the "crouching walk with hammer" (yellow/green line).

Finally, and i think that's what makes him "noodly" from time to time, you're not rendering the joints. that's especially obvious on frames 3+4 where it looks like legs are vertically attached to his torso and bend like waterpipes to attach vertically to his feet. Instead, insist on the fact that hips rotate when someone's moving like this: we should really see his back and his revolver pockets on that last frame. Also insist on the fact that our muscles get thicker when we bend limbs. You've been cheating with the shoulders too and the end of animation where both arms have disappeared and the hammer still move just doesn't make it (even swinging a golf club would make you move more than this).

I'd suggest you to work on a "standing straight" pose that would reflect the *lengths* of frame 1 (not the height) as a first step, and then draw something like 3 (still) keyframes for your hammering animation to work those anatomy-related issues.