[WIP] Dungeon Romp (Animations!)

[Avocado]

This is the wip for the characters that are going to be in a platformer game that I am working on.  The protagonist is facing right, enemies are facing left.


Old walk, Im going to change the arm and shield/sword movement a bit:


The version of the protagonist farthest left was the sloppy mockup version.  When I decided to try to limit characters to three colors, I had trouble making his hat fit in, so I ditched it.  I feel like I had some success with readability but he still seems very flat to me and any color recommendations would be appreciated.  You don't have to stick to my restrictions with c&c but I would prefer if I could stick to three colors max per character.
I feel like i had some success with the knight, but the axeman seems a little off and again, kind of flat.  The skeleton is more wip than the rest and is just a sketch, but any help with him would be appreciated as well.


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[Avocado]

I've been a bit busy lately but I found time to throw together a walking animation. Four frames, but I figure that since theres very little distinction between the two legs it serves its purpose.  I might add some more exaggerated movement to the shield, I was just focusing on the legs with this.



Updated the animation slightly. C&C would be greatly appreciated.

[Avocado]

Updated the characters file in the first post!

Any thoughts?  Are they too messy now?

[xenobond]

My eyes are drawn to the shield now.
As it's swaying back and forth, the bowl in the center gets wobbly.

In my mind the shield would mostly be bobbing up and down.

[ndchristie]

i'm afraid that he looks liked a really fat kid with a belly-button ring.

try making the shield gray maybe?  or somehow making is less in a belly-position.

btw - he's a lefty?

[Avocado]

Oh man, I see exactly what you mean with the fat kid thing. eee.  I'll try to see what I can work out with the shield as far as making it look like a shield and making the animation more fluid.

About him being a lefty, it seemed to me that because the character would be facing right most of the time it would be better if the sword weren't in his face, so I made him a lefty.  When he faces left he's just going to be reversed in-game, because that seems like the simplest solution.  I also feel like it would possibly? be distracting if the weapon arms stayed consistent when the character turned.

[bengo]

'Style suggestion' of what I think would make it look better and an edit of the original. Try to make the light source come up from the top and make it so it mirrors well, unless you plan on doing both sides.

[Gil]

I think the original looks better than both of those Bengoshia. The style he got going is very yummy. It all his this NES-flair over it that should be retained imo

[Ben2theEdge]

Definitely digging the NES charm although I agree that his shield reads more like a big round tummy.
Regarding the animation, you should put more swing into his arms on the walk cycle, no one walks just by rotating their torso even if they're carrying a sword and a shield.

No offense Bengoshia but I'm not sure what the benefit of a "style suggestion" is, if you don't know the context of what it's being used for or what the artist is trying to achieve. We should understand what he's trying to do and then help him do it.

[bengo]

Nevermind my post, I didn't help, I'm not going to try and say I did, so, hurm, yeah. No I'm not mad or anything, just let the thread go on as usual.

[Avocado]

newest:


I tried raising the shield up a pixel and moved the light source a bit higher, which I thought was a great piece of advice.  It seems to look less like a belly but also makes the character a bit flatter, but I can deal with that. I added a vampire and a bat, but I had no clue as to how to shade the wings well. I'll figure it out.  I haven't worked on the shield animation much but I have a deadline in which to make the barebones sprites and animations for a brief demo, so ill see if I can fix it up if I have time near the end.

[Ben2theEdge]

I think what you really need is to use a different 3rd color; instead of using it for shading use it to add a new hue. This will make things more readable but most people also find 3-color schemes more interesting than monochromatic ones.

[Avocado]

I played around with your color suggestion and realized that my problem wasn't the three colors thing so much as the lack of saturation. Do you guys prefer the saturated or unsaturated version right below it? Is the shield still a belly?
Animations are underway and will be up soon, in the neighborhood of later today or tomorrow.

EDIT: ack, nevermind, project leader says they're oversaturated and liked them the way they were.

[Pawige]

Quick edit/suggestion for a few things. I think this pose helps with the belly-shield problem as well. Also made him grip his sword in a bit more solid manner and rotated the eyes just a titch forward.



Anyways, if this were a game I could play. I would play it. So good work!

[Sokota]

Does the shield have to be round? Could it be teardropish or even angular? That would help cancel the effect of reading as a 'big ole round tummy', I think. Looking good, and liking the 3-color choice!

Sokota

[Avocado]

ooooooh animations (now in original post and two posts down), and thanks for the comments everybody

and a quick character update of what's probably going into the demo, which means these are the characters im giong to be focusing on.



I tried changing up the protagonist's pose based on pawiges edit, but my big concern with this is that I don't know how much sense it makes for the protagonist to be so un-alert when hes in a dungeon teeming with baddies.  I think i'm going to wind up making the pose more like pawige's edit or keeping the original one and playing around with the shield some more. Sokota, I'd like to keep the shield circular, but thanks for the suggestion.

[32]

I think just making an idle animation could resolve the shield issue, just a generic up down breathing type thing. I think the un-alertness stems from the lack of facial expression, I would think that if you were expecting to be attacked you would hold the shield higher, to protect your head/heart.

[Avocado]

@32: You're right, ill get right on that.

Animations!

(old crawl, new crawl, falling from the ceiling, all 4 frames)
(Still have to fix the body he's bobbing like a madman, but do the legs look alright?)
(Still have some work to do with this but is the general motion of the shield an improvement? I know about the little gaps where it seems to do a figure eight, im going to fix that)
(Sword swing from the last post, I just wanted to have everything in one fat post for convenience. Is the movement of the right leg too much of a bother?)

[#36005A]

Perhaps the idle animation could show the shield in the "guard down" position, and then in the running/attacking animations he could raise it. That way you make it clear that it is, in fact, a shield, without letting the little guy's guard down at all times.

Or is that what 32 was saying? If it was, then I agree!

[Pawige]

Now this is very far from perfect, but I just wanted to do a quick edit of the sword animation to show you what you can do with it. Right now your attack animation is rather weak and (from a gameplay perspective) has minimal range.



Key points to remember. You need to keyframe the extreme positions the character will be in. That is, draw him all over again in a different pose, rather than just moving a few bits around. Put a lot of emphasis on the beginning and the end of the motions, the parts inbetween are really just filler, it's those keyframes that make or break the animation. There was a thread just very recently with some very good advice about animation here http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=8577.0. And there are a bajillion other good resources about in online. Do a bit of in-depth research and it will pay off big time!

[Avocado]

Hopefully this solves some of the issues you had with the attack animation.  I looked at your edit and Ben's animation from a million years ago:

I think there's a speed problem with the upload, I do some stuff with varying frame speeds and apparently photobucket doesn't like that. Might just be internet explorer, I really dont know. To be perfectly honest I was going for an attack something like in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-nyKk-xbK4, but I feel like this is a decent compromise between the two because the game that this is going into is less "smash attack button" than chiki chiki boys. Should I exaggerate the keyframes more? That's the one thing kind of bothering me.

also, I updated the walking animation. Unless there's something horribly wrong with it this is probably going to be the final version.


also, zombie!

[Don risotto]

I'm not 100% sure because I don't (usually) go around swinging swords and the like, but I think the action of the shield during sword swing is a bit off. both of his arms are following the same trajectory, which ends with the character being off balance. I'm pretty sure his shield arm should move in a slightly inverse direction to his sword arm to help him maintain his centre of gravity. looks great though!

[Pizza Tom]

The walking animation looks great! Except something about the shield arm bothers me.. The shield itself is fine, but the arm holding it seems to bend a little strangely. I think it's that the arm is moving, but the shoulder stays in the same place. Maybe try moving it a pixel or two forward during the swing?

[Corsair]

just so you know, IE6 does not time gifs properly. newest versions of FF and Opera do, however. I can't vouch for IE7 or 8, Safari, Chrome etc.

I like the style, but there are a few thinss that could be improved here.

I'm pretty bad about explaining these things verbally, i'll have an edit up here in just a bit.

Edit up.



It's like 4:30 in the morn here so i apologize if none of this makes any sense.


Frame 4 - trimmed down the 'blur' from the swing a bitit looks a little more sharp. sharper = more ouch factor.

Frame 5 - cut out some of the bottom end of the swing blur. Because frame 6's blur previously occupied the same space, I thought it would look a little smoother if i did what i did. (frame 5's blur and frame 6's blur overlapped quite a bit and made much of frame 6 redundant. ) als moved a fair bit of his head and torso down and to the right, to make it look like he's putting more of his body into the swing. Swinging a swordrbaseball bat/giant frozen fish requires you entire body to move in tandem. it's hnot perfect but i think it gets the message across a bit better.

Frame 6 - Extended the blur a tad, gives that frame more visual priority. moved the head southeast again.

frame 7 - this is the one i added in. It's not particularly important, but moved the sword to the right and angled it up a bit, also moved the shield up 1 pixel to make it seem like there's a wee bit of heft to his gear.

frame 8 - added this one in. it's the exactly the same as frame 6 from your version cept i took out the blur entirely, and i moved the shield down 1 pixel.

frame 9 - didn't touch it.

I also messed with the timing all over the place, can't remember where now

Removing frame 8 would just about preserve the "quickness" of your original. Personal drawback. I tend to focus on fluidity too much and it ends up sucking all the force out.

[Avocado]

I tried to apply most of your guys' crits of the swing to the knight's stab, hopefully that turned out okay.  The walk looks kind of weird so I might mess around with the knees a bit.  I feel satisfied with the bug death.

Don Risotto: Yeah, I see your point.  I'm not uploading the new animation because I'm being pressed for time and I'm satisfied with how it looks, but I moved the shield up a bit more during the peak of the swing.
Regulus: I feel like that might be because the depth isnt really visible because I didn't shade the arm, I see what you mean though.
Corsair: Thank you very much for the edit!  Definitely taught me quite a bit about smoothness, hopefully you can see some of your crits applied in the knight's attack.  If I have a bit more time before friday I'll see if I can update the character swing even more, I did a little bit of editing but I looked at your post again and realized that I missed half of what you said.  I'll definitely upload an improved version sometime though.

[Don risotto]

I tried to apply most of your guys' crits of the swing to the knight's stab, hopefully that turned out okay.  The walk looks kind of weird so I might mess around with the knees a bit.  I feel satisfied with the bug death.

Don Risotto: Yeah, I see your point.  I'm not uploading the new animation because I'm being pressed for time and I'm satisfied with how it looks, but I moved the shield up a bit more during the peak of the swing.
Regulus: I feel like that might be because the depth isnt really visible because I didn't shade the arm, I see what you mean though.
Corsair: Thank you very much for the edit!  Definitely taught me quite a bit about smoothness, hopefully you can see some of your crits applied in the knight's attack.  If I have a bit more time before friday I'll see if I can update the character swing even more, I did a little bit of editing but I looked at your post again and realized that I missed half of what you said.  I'll definitely upload an improved version sometime though.

the one pixel shift actually makes it look loads more convincing imo

[dtek]

Hi, if I could suggest anything, maybe a small bit of animation for the single hair of the first animation of the guy walking with the sword?

here's something like what I mean...


later!

[Avocado]

most of the dragon was a rush job done a few hours before the project deadline, so forgive the lack of animation in parts other than the head. 
The protagonist death is basically the same as the knight death, again due to time constraints.  I might revise it to give it more of an anguished feeling, with him stabbing his sword into the ground and sort of leaning on it before collapsing, like, not now, I cant die now!

The dragon overall pissed me off because I couldn't just work with flat color and there was no way to stick to the three color limit without it looking kind of icky, but im pretty sure ill be able to figure out a way to improve it.  The fire breath is bland but I like the head shakey thing I did with the death, I just have to change the way the body moves.

I'm pretty satisfied with how the protagonist blocking animation came out, and have a jumping animation underway but it's only keyframed in so I'm not going to upload it.  I've started working starting with keyframes instead of all of the frames and even though it takes a bit longer I really like the way things are turning out now. 

After I finish up the jumping animation ill get to improving all of the older stuff, guaranteed.