(Animation)Mike's Animations for game*Updated AGAIN!*

[Mike]

Ok so I have been working on this animation(if you can call it that, and not just a bunch of frames) for shooting a fireball, and I wanted to give it some cool motion blur that will tie the huge jump in spacing together, but I honestly have no clue on how to make it look as fluid as something Capcom or Nintendo would do.

The animations are bit clunky right now and lacks the fluidity that I want.  They also lack cool down frames at the end, so any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

I've decided to change this thread into an animation dumping ground.  I just finished my classes and I have a lot more free time, so I will be updating this at least everyday with a new animation, and with modified editions thanks to comments and critiques.

Seriously any masters of motion blur, please please lend me your help.  Thanks
Update I'll add this too
jumping that is used when not at a stand still This is an attack animation, it's kinda odd

[TrevoriuS]

He grabs his energy rom the air and throws it an an opponent. The head, should remain looking at the opponent. The other arm, should be actively moving according to the rest of the body, most logical function for the second hand in an attacking motion, is to defend. Also, I'd have him bend his knees and lower to the floor a bit rather than rotate away from the foe. Your animation lakcs relaism, and the anticipation could be bigger than this.

[Jim16]

Its good, I would however add 1 or 2 tweeners to define what your going for, as its a bit snappy and moves from one position to another to quickly, I also think that the movement as a whole is very unrealistic and uncomfortable(have you tried to do that movement yourself?).
Here is a typical fighter stance that I quickly whipped up to show you what you could do.

Bare with me....(i did this in like 5minutes)

Yellow arrow: this is the movement of that arm.
Brown arrow: this the movement of the back arm and the movent of the body as the yellow arrow moves forward. AKA the rotation point and direction.
Pink under foot: This where most of the weight is on .
yellow under foot: this is where the weight is shifted through the rotation.

This would be an easy movement to integrate into your sprite and is suitable for a sprite of this kind.

You can however use that movement as it is used typically for games that incorporate ninjas(where they would be throwing a shiroken ) and so on. But the extensive arm movement would have to be shortened and looked at in detail to what movement your intending to do and what your throwing.

Well I'm blabbering on
I'm sorry for the bad example, but I have very little time on my hands.

Edit:

He grabs his energy rom the air and throws it an an opponent. The head, should remain looking at the opponent. The other arm, should be actively moving according to the rest of the body, most logical function for the second hand in an attacking motion, is to defend. Also, I'd have him bend his knees and lower to the floor a bit rather than rotate away from the foe. Your animation lakcs relaism, and the anticipation could be bigger than this.

Your a bastard  Beat me to it
Hehe well there's another example for you Mr Mike.

Edit:
Also I would of done an edit of your animation....but my pc doesn't recognise it? Do you use MAC??

[Mike]

He grabs his energy from the air and throws it an an opponent. The head, should remain looking at the opponent. The other arm, should be actively moving according to the rest of the body, most logical function for the second hand in an attacking motion, is to defend. Also, I'd have him bend his knees and lower to the floor a bit rather than rotate away from the foe. Your animation lacks realism, and the anticipation could be bigger than this.

The hand in the pocket is more of a style choice then anything else.  I've done this pose in a mirror a few times as well.  It looked good when I was doing it but now I'm not so sure...sigh

I just want this animations to be a weak blast, but not completely static like a shot from Megaman's buster.  What should I do?

Its good, I would however add 1 or 2 tweeners to define what your going for, as its a bit snappy and moves from one position to another to quickly, I also think that the movement as a whole is very unrealistic and uncomfortable(have you tried to do that movement yourself?).
Here is a typical fighter stance that I quickly whipped up to show you what you could do.

Bare with me....(i did this in like 5minutes)

Yellow arrow: this is the movement of that arm.
Brown arrow: this the movement of the back arm and the movent of the body as the yellow arrow moves forward. AKA the rotation point and direction.
Pink under foot: This where most of the weight is on .
yellow under foot: this is where the weight is shifted through the rotation.

This would be an easy movement to integrate into your sprite and is suitable for a sprite of this kind.

You can however use that movement as it is used typically for games that incorporate ninjas(where they would be throwing a shiroken ) and so on. But the extensive arm movement would have to be shortened and looked at in detail to what movement your intending to do and what your throwing.

Well I'm blabbering on
I'm sorry for the bad example, but I have very little time on my hands.

Edit:

He grabs his energy rom the air and throws it an an opponent. The head, should remain looking at the opponent. The other arm, should be actively moving according to the rest of the body, most logical function for the second hand in an attacking motion, is to defend. Also, I'd have him bend his knees and lower to the floor a bit rather than rotate away from the foe. Your animation lakcs relaism, and the anticipation could be bigger than this.

Your a bastard  Beat me to it
Hehe well there's another example for you Mr Mike.

Edit:
Also I would of done an edit of your animation....but my pc doesn't recognise it? Do you use MAC??

Thank you for that example Jim16.  However having him on his toes is sorta what I am going for.  On the other hand the frames where he shoots, I do realize that those feet shouldn't both be facing the same direction so I will fix that. 

When doing this animation I stand in front of a mirror.  Unfortunately its only waist high

As for not being able to edit it, it is only a .gif, at least it was when I uploaded it.  Try renaming the extension to .gif


*update*

[Mike]

I also finished this idle animation today as well. 

[Ben2theEdge]

I think the problem with your fireball animation is that he's making a very violent motion but is unaffected by it. You don't have to be a great physicist to be a good animator, but there are two rules you MUST remember when animating:

1: Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest
2: Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction

For almost any animation this is all the physics knowledge you need. You can make an animation more or less "stylized" by exaggerating or downplaying these laws.

Here's my edit:


It's slightly exaggerated to get the point across. Mine looks like it has more frames then yours but it actually has one less! I took out one of the blurred arm motion frames and added a few frames of recovery motion after the swing. He moved his arm with a lot of velocity so he has to use many different muscles to compensate, and he can't immediately stop moving his arm, he has to fight the inertia that he put into it. Try making this motion in real life and you will see that you have to push against your own velocity to stop your arm, and it actually bounces back and forth a little as you fight to regain control of it. This is applying Rule 1.

If we were going to be sticklers about reality I would say throwing a fireball this way would actually make it quite hard to control. thrusting the palm forward would allow for much better aim. But that's getting pretty anal and kind of takes the fun out of fireball-throwing anyway. 

Anyway after the hand swing, the explosive force of the fireball actually pushes against him, and you can see his coat and hair blown back a little bit as the fireball pushes away from him. Remember, it's propelling itself by explosive force! All that energy will push against whatever it contacts - this is an application of Rule 2!

Also take a close look - after being blown in their initial direction his hair and coat actually swing past their original position before they lose momentum and come to a stop - there's Rule 1 again!

In games like Street Fighter 2 they couldn't show this because they didn't have enough memory for those few added frames. But it makes a huge difference. (Notice how in later Capcom games they started putting these frames in and the animation magically becomes so much better!  )

(Also I would add a highlight against the front of his body from the light cast by the fireball as well, but I didn't want to cover up the basic animation in my edit.)

[Jim16]

Wow! this go's into my bookmarks!
Is always a good reference I guess.

[Mike]

I think the problem with your fireball animation is that he's making a very violent motion but is unaffected by it. You don't have to be a great physicist to be a good animator, but there are two rules you MUST remember when animating:

1: Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest
2: Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction

For almost any animation this is all the physics knowledge you need. You can make an animation more or less "stylized" by exaggerating or downplaying these laws.

Here's my edit:


It's slightly exaggerated to get the point across. Mine looks like it has more frames then yours but it actually has one less! I took out one of the blurred arm motion frames and added a few frames of recovery motion after the swing. He moved his arm with a lot of velocity so he has to use many different muscles to compensate, and he can't immediately stop moving his arm, he has to fight the inertia that he put into it. Try making this motion in real life and you will see that you have to push against your own velocity to stop your arm, and it actually bounces back and forth a little as you fight to regain control of it. This is applying Rule 1.

If we were going to be sticklers about reality I would say throwing a fireball this way would actually make it quite hard to control. thrusting the palm forward would allow for much better aim. But that's getting pretty anal and kind of takes the fun out of fireball-throwing anyway. 

Anyway after the hand swing, the explosive force of the fireball actually pushes against him, and you can see his coat and hair blown back a little bit as the fireball pushes away from him. Remember, it's propelling itself by explosive force! All that energy will push against whatever it contacts - this is an application of Rule 2!

Also take a close look - after being blown in their initial direction his hair and coat actually swing past their original position before they lose momentum and come to a stop - there's Rule 1 again!

In games like Street Fighter 2 they couldn't show this because they didn't have enough memory for those few added frames. But it makes a huge difference. (Notice how in later Capcom games they started putting these frames in and the animation magically becomes so much better!  )

(Also I would add a highlight against the front of his body from the light cast by the fireball as well, but I didn't want to cover up the basic animation in my edit.)

Holy hell!!  Man that looks so fantastic!!  Thank you for the edit!!  I don't even...wow....um.  I'm totally studying up on this, frame by frame.  How did you come about this snap back animation technique?  Even looking at it now I'm not sure the process you took. 

And about doing the motion myself, I totally forgot the amount of force it created when I whipped my hand into that motion.  I do remember falling off balance a bit.  From now on I'll remember those 2 rules when I am working on animations.

[Jakten]

It seems weird to me that his feet are sliding all over the place. Mostly his right leg, I realize they are rotating but it looks odd to me also some odd vibrating in his left shoe lace which grabs my attention immediately for some reason.

I'm really liking the Idle animation it shows a lot of weight but because he is so animated practically everything on him is moving except the center of his body stays fairly static. If you unfreezing this a bit I think it would look great.

[Ben2theEdge]

Holy hell!!  Man that looks so fantastic!!  Thank you for the edit!!  I don't even...wow....um.  I'm totally studying up on this, frame by frame.  How did you come about this snap back animation technique?  Even looking at it now I'm not sure the process you took.

Capcom animators use it liberally but it's not an uncommon technique in classic cartoons either, especially Warner Bros.