Early attempts at animation

[AlexWeldon]

I'm not completely new to pixel art (though I've only been doing it six months), but my first couple of games didn't involve much more animation. My current effort, Oliver and the Basilisks, is a top-down, turn-based game similar to Daleks, and will require more animation. Here's my basilisk's walking animation (I'll probably post Oliver's later today). Feedback greatly appreciated.

Looking at it now, I guess I should probably have the head move a bit.

In the actual game, though, the animation won't be looping. Since it's turn-based, the basilisks will only move one square at a time, and I think one eight-frame animation is enough for that.

[Madre]

nice texture

need knee moves

[AlexWeldon]

Oliver's animation:



EDIT: I think his feet are too long. Here are two more versions with one, and two pixels taken off the feet. Which is best?

[Draco9898]

What...is it? some kind-of purple crab?

[Twinspiration]

What...is it? some kind-of purple crab?

Looks like it's supposed to be a bird's eye-view of a wizard or something?
Purple hat, wand and scroll in hand.

[AlexWeldon]

What...is it? some kind-of purple crab?

Looks like it's supposed to be a bird's eye-view of a wizard or something?
Purple hat, wand and scroll in hand.

Oh well... at least one out of two got it. Yeah, the game is birds-eye view and Oliver is a magician's apprentice. The choice of birds-eye view is because each sprite will need several different animations, and can be facing eight possible directions. If I was doing 3/4 overhead or something, it would require each animation to be drawn from scratch in each direction, which is too much work for the amount of revenue I'm predicting from the game. By doing full overhead, I only need to do two version of each animation - orthogonal and diagonal - and then change only the shading for each facing.

I think in context it's more obvious. Here's an early mock-up of what the screen will look like, though there will be a few more types of sprites and more variety in the floor tiles.

[Dr. Kylstien]

The feet should be about under Oliver's center of gravity, which I imagine is directly under the hat. If the hat hides most of his body, which I imagine might in turn hide most of his feet, we probably shouldn't even see them.  It looks like the hat has grown feet, with no body in between.

[AlexWeldon]

The feet should be about under Oliver's center of gravity, which I imagine is directly under the hat. If the hat hides most of his body, which I imagine might in turn hide most of his feet, we probably shouldn't even see them.  It looks like the hat has grown feet, with no body in between.

The trouble is that if I don't show his feet at least a little bit, you can't tell which way he's facing. On the other hand, it doesn't matter in gameplay terms which way he's facing, so I might try it with and without the feet once I have a prototype put together, and see what people prefer. Since the colours of the feet are not used elsewhere in the sprite, deleting them from every frame of every animation is a few seconds of work with the magic wand, so no reason not to try it out.