Simple animation

[Ignacio]

Robotacon, I don't get you... Are you critizising the motion or how I "mounted" the frames? Because, yeah, my Indy is static, like moving in a treadmill, but because I "mounted" the animation to look that way... If I "mount" the animation to do it dynamic, it is dynamic.



Look at the foot when he does the passing... Static in the floor, same amount of pixels for the foot, ever... I am sorry, maybe I missunderstood what you say... 

[ptoing]

EDIT:
Ignacio got the same problem with his run making it look like Indy is running on a treadmill

Eh, you do reaslise that it is not possible to do otherwise in a gif image where you just loop the animation but don't move it left or right?

[PypeBros]

Wow, these feedback is almost over whelming. I usually get a few replies that don't help or make sense. This is a nice change. Thank you.
This is just a test. I think I need to simplify it. I like the eyes.

I think there are two things beyond "bopping" that you haven't addressed yet.
- spine angle : in order to run, you have to move your weight forward, and so you will not have your spine vertical. The faster you run, the closer to the horizontal you'll get (though you won't reach the horizontal in a realistic world). I see your character still very verticalish.
- legs extension: your energy for the next step is given by extending your leg quickly (a bit like for a jump) after the passing by. Whether it makes you bop or boost forward is another issue, but the leg extends. This happens in frame 10 with ptoing's run, but your animation still lack this: the leg pass by and gets off the floor without having being extended at any moment.

[Ignacio]

Exactly, Pype...

To clarify... I am a runner (Well, basically I am a biker, but I swimm and run as well...) so I know what I am talking about when I say that there are different ways of running. 

What Pype said is not 100% accurate in real world, to be honest... I remember a British 400 meters runner who was famous for keeping his spine totally vertical (I can' t remember his name, but he was amazing... Totally vertical spine, even in the corners...). So, to summarize... EVERY person RUNS different.

BUT

We are not biomechanics... We are "artists" and we are supposed to do art. One of the biggest steps I gave in my path to be an "artist" was when I started to think less about reality and more about what I wanted the observer to feel. ¿Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower are 2 kilometers away? Ok... Who cares? If the observer is playing a game located in Paris and he wants to see one background in Notre Dame and the following one in the Eiffel Tower, give him that.

Same here... The slower you run, the more boooooouncy and the more vertical the spine you do. (For example, I like to do loooong steps when I run, but when I do stamina trainings with someone who is slower, I must do the step A) Shorter B) slower... I decided to do it slower, so, what I basically do is running doing loooong and high jumps) The fastest, the less bouncy and the most horizontal the spine must be. If not... see the master:


 

[robotacon]

What I'm saying is that if you don't have the feet moving at a constant speed you will have to move the frames at a dynamic speed and why you would like to do that I can't fathom.
What do you win by handing the problem over to the programmer who will have to use something similar to kerning on every frame?
You mask the problem by drawing the head static along the x-axis and only moving it in the y-axis when in fact the head will be jerking back and forth as soon as you synchronize the feet to the ground.

With that said..... I agree with you that it's not the real world but how it looks that should dictate an animation loop. If you think no one cares about the difference go with your way of doing things.
I have the out most respect for that approach. I'm just trying to give pointers that will help people in their animation.
Beginners tend to draw fuzzy extreme frames and skip contact frames and have inbetweens that are out of synch with the frame rate. When I see something like that I try to help.
I feel I'm getting across like a rather unpleasant individual stepping on everyones toes so I don't know if I should give any more feedback, perhaps it's counter productive?

On a related note Richard Williams have released a DVD version of his book the Animators Survival Guide which looks awesome if it wasn't for the fact that it is crazy expensive.
I'm considering buying it but from the previews it doesn't look like there's a lot of new information that is not already covered by the book version.

[Ignacio]

Oh, Robotacon, I was not trying to start an argument, I was just asking because I didn't  really understand what you meant. 

[ptoing]

What I'm saying is that if you don't have the feet moving at a constant speed you will have to move the frames at a dynamic speed and why you would like to do that I can't fathom.

Because it looks more dynamic.

What do you win by handing the problem over to the programmer who will have to use something similar to kerning on every frame?

It's not like you have to hand that much work over to the coder. He codes a little thing to space frames by custom amounts of pixels, the artists gives him those values, he copy pastes them into his shit and it works.

You mask the problem by drawing the head static along the x-axis and only moving it in the y-axis when in fact the head will be jerking back and forth as soon as you synchronize the feet to the ground.

Not the case. At least not in the one I made. Tho I do agree that it has some fudgyness to it. The passing positions and the frames right after should push forward a tad more. Still works fine tho.

I feel I'm getting across like a rather unpleasant individual stepping on everyones toes so I don't know if I should give any more feedback, perhaps it's counter productive?

Interesting discussion as far as I am concerned

[Ben2theEdge]

The only time you'd want a character moving at a *not* constant speed would be for an adventure game or flashback-style game where the camera doesn't move much if at all. For gameplay reasons your average platformer is going to be better off with constant speed and precise character placement. Having your character stuttering across the screen will make the player feel like he has less control, and personally I think it looks pretty wonky when you throw scrolling into the equation. Imagine how unplayable Mario or Megaman would be if it had a walk like the guy from Flashback or Prince of Persia. Unless there's a good reason for it like a sneaking or drunk animation where every step is exaggerated/intentionally inconsistant, constant speed is going to yield more aesthetically pleasing results and it throws all these complications out the window.

[ptoing]

OK, I am a fucking retard. Actually all my mistake here. When people walk (unless they walk really funny, or you want something super cartoony, or a sneak or whatnot) walk at an even speed and this means that the head is spaced equally, the feet are NOT.

I made a new gif, which should please robotacon and Ben. This is made properly, the first one I made was done REALLY quick and without much thinking, thus I fucked up.



Only thing you need to keep in mind is that before you animate you HAVE TO know how many pixels per frame your sprite will move. Then you are set.

"All" you need to do then is make the contacts first, space them out as far as they would in one full move. So say you have a 12 frame run and you go 5 pixels a frame you place the first frame twice on the sheet 60 pixels (12x5) apart and put the other contact in the middle and so on.

I found if I put the heads first with equal spacing and not on a "treadmill" but actually moving at what the sprite would move in game, and then do the body and legs, I got the best result. So yeh, robotacon and Ben are right. At the end once you did this spacing stuff you could even go over it and move shit around (as long as the feet on the ground stay at the same places) like drag the head or jut it forwards at the highpoint and stuff like that.