Professor walking

[robotacon]

I'm working on a set of characters and this is supposed to be a teenager at the arcade academy.

I think the run cycle is pretty clear but it's like he/she's moving too slow in-game.
Do I have too many frames or is it that I need to bump up the frame rate (I've got 25 fps right now)

Something is wrong with the animation but I can't see it myself.



(shown here at reduced speed for easy reviewing)

[infinity+1]

what's sticking out to me is the head...and how it's not moving at all.

[robotacon]

Sounds reasonable. Here's an edit:

[Helm]

You're doing too many in-betweens that are weakening your keyframes. The end motion is too linear, not enough pendulum motion.

Here's an edit with drastically fewer frames but more smoothness (hopefully)



Also color edit and various ambient animation bits

[robotacon]

First of all I have to thank you Helm for pointing out that the character needs shoulders. You're also totally right about the pendulum motion. I took a run on a treadmill today and it was almost impossible to extend one arm straight forward and not have the other arm wave back and forth like crazy to make up for the movement of the rest of the body. I think I had some kind of ninja-running in mind at the beginning but for that to work you would have to have a completely different step length and... it was just a mess.

I don't understand what you mean when you say the number of in-betweens weaken the key frames.

I like the color edits and I'm going to add highlights later on when I've got a solid palette.



In this edit I added the arm pendulum and a shoulder. the belt is following the body better and the leg is not kicking back as much which I think was the thing that was out of synch that I couldn't see. The extreme position of the two legs should happen in the same frame (or frames since it happends twice in per cycle) but the leg kept kicking backwards which made the whole run look sloppy. On a side note the child characters run at 3 pixels per frame and the older characters run at 4 pixels per frame.

I tried this edit in-game and it looks much better.

I also bumped up the speed since I don't think I should drop any frames. I've got this rule (that may of may not be a good thing) that characters have 10 (children) or 12 (teens and grown-ups) frames in their run depending on how tall they are. If I make a really tall boss that guy will have to have even more frames to his run which will result in a slower cycle but not necessarily a slower run.

[Helm]

The arm motion is superb.

I still think the legs are gliding. Your frames are too evenly distributed to give any sense of 'suspended in air' mid-run motion.

[robotacon]

Thanks Helm. But the frames need to be evenly distributed for the feet not to slide when this character is put in the game. I've tested it and anything but constant foot speed on the ground looks aweful. Perhaps you mean that the foot in the air needs to travel at a less even speed that I might agree with. I think it has the right amount of snap as it is though.

I've started working on the professor character now. This one is much harder because he's only moving one pixel per frame which actually makes it much harder to animate at this scale.



I think I might need to start using sub-pixel movement to a much higher extent.

Also does anyone have a better idea of what to do with the arms? The character is moving slowly but can use a bunch of gizmos like a defense energy field and other tech that I haven't figured out the game mechanics for yet. Perhaps I can put some kind of remote control in his hand or something like that?

[PypeBros]

first, impressive work done on the previous guy.

My impression is that your professor is too rigid.
For an old guy like this, he stands too perfectly right, and moves too perfectly his feets. If i was in the school, i'm sure i'd be plotting to see whether he's hiding a robotic walking prothese ...

I suggest you work on giving him more character by bending him, make his walk irregular. When getting old, it's hard to stay on a single foot during the walk, so the "passing" phase of the walk tends to be faster, but at the same times, knees hurt and won't let you move your leg smoothly.

[ndchristie]

I think the arm is coming way too far forward.  He'd throw off his aim as well as his balance.  Don't try things out on a treadmill, try them out on real ground.  You can't train for a boxing match just by hitting a bag all day, and if I can run around a bed-stuy block with one arm out without getting jumped, you can too .

If he is going to flail like a madman, he can't keep his aim up like that.  when one shoulder comes forward the other hangs back.  that's not just a fact - it's the whole point of moving your upper body while running.  It builds momentum and it keeps the body moving in a straighter line.

For the gliding issue, i see 2 things : there's no weight, and everything is completely even.  I agree that you can't change the placement of the foot on the ground during contact, but you haven't attempted to change the placement of the body over the foot.  Even Olympic sprinters who spend 99% of their time in the air still don't float.

The same goes for the doctor - he's a floating torso with the leg motion just for show.  I get the feeling that you're animating these all as separate pieces and then wondering why they don't work as a unit.  He's not only rigid, he's stunningly stable - more than is humanly possible.  what's worse is that when you start this way, now when you try to animate the body to compensate, it will only look bad, because the animation wasn't part of the action considered from the beginning.

It's all a matter of process.  Bad process leads to bad results no matter how much work is done and no matter how many problems are addressed.  Always start, work, and finish with the whole advancing in front of the parts.

[robotacon]

first, impressive work done on the previous guy.

My impression is that your professor is too rigid.
For an old guy like this, he stands too perfectly right, and moves too perfectly his feets. If i was in the school, i'm sure i'd be plotting to see whether he's hiding a robotic walking prothese ...

I suggest you work on giving him more character by bending him, make his walk irregular. When getting old, it's hard to stay on a single foot during the walk, so the "passing" phase of the walk tends to be faster, but at the same times, knees hurt and won't let you move your leg smoothly.

Yeah the professor is too rigid I can see that. The problem is that it's much harder to animated something moving slow than something at high speed at this size. He only picks his foot up one pixel over the ground but it still looks like he's standing too much on one foot. I'm going to try making it look like he's walking in slippers but I'm afraid it will look like he's skating but it might work. I'm going to drop the arms straight down too since it currently looks like he's dancing the twist.

I like you're idea of adding more character. Perhaps adding a cane might do the trick. Another might be to make him younger so the age fits the walk better.

I think the arm is coming way too far forward.  He'd throw off his aim as well as his balance.  Don't try things out on a treadmill, try them out on real ground.  You can't train for a boxing match just by hitting a bag all day, and if I can run around a bed-stuy block with one arm out without getting jumped, you can too .

If he is going to flail like a madman, he can't keep his aim up like that.  when one shoulder comes forward the other hangs back.  that's not just a fact - it's the whole point of moving your upper body while running.  It builds momentum and it keeps the body moving in a straighter line.

For the gliding issue, i see 2 things : there's no weight, and everything is completely even.  I agree that you can't change the placement of the foot on the ground during contact, but you haven't attempted to change the placement of the body over the foot.  Even Olympic sprinters who spend 99% of their time in the air still don't float.

The same goes for the doctor - he's a floating torso with the leg motion just for show.  I get the feeling that you're animating these all as separate pieces and then wondering why they don't work as a unit.  He's not only rigid, he's stunningly stable - more than is humanly possible.  what's worse is that when you start this way, now when you try to animate the body to compensate, it will only look bad, because the animation wasn't part of the action considered from the beginning.

It's all a matter of process.  Bad process leads to bad results no matter how much work is done and no matter how many problems are addressed.  Always start, work, and finish with the whole advancing in front of the parts.

No need to add insult to injury. Somehow you managed to review my methods instead of the "pixelart". The biggest flaw in my process is posting unfinished material here for people to review but to me that's a good way to get feed-back and it's usually fun both to post and review and make edits. When you say I'm not doing it right I take offense.

The one thing I felt I could take with me is the guy running and aiming at the same time. I might consider adding a pure running animation and only aim when shooting and drop the aim a couple of frames after each shot. I've tried that in the past and it looks good if you add a sufficient amount of time between the shot and the dropping of the aim so that the character don't wave their arm up and down like crazy during a fire fight.

I'll return when I've got edits.