AuthorTopic: Professor walking  (Read 22304 times)

Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #30 on: June 08, 2009, 07:57:18 pm
Keyframes shouldn't generally be visible. They are a foundational element. Chuck Jones popularized the whole visible keyframes thing with his dramatic poses, which became very popular because you can save frames on low budget cartoons that way and consequently save time and money. But it is a stylistic choice. It's definitely not a rule. (In fact Chuck Jones' contemporaries criticized him for having such abrupt 'tweens. If you look at Bob Clampett by comparison he has beautiful smooth motion on EVERYTHING and most agree he is a superior animator. And then you have Richard Williams who goes to painstaking lengths to hide his keys). Variation in speed is important but it needn't always be a pendulum motion from one keyframe to the next. Keyframes should be thought of less like the start and end of a motion and more like vertibrae in a backbone, stringing the animation along.

hsn's edit is actually a very nice example of speed variation. That little lurch in the step adds a lot of excitement, like a punctuation mark to each step.

Here's a good example of the whole timing/pendulum motion thing put to proper use: http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/BobImAlive.mov The running motion in the second half of this clip has 4 keyframes, but only one of them is eased in and out of. The others flash by unnoticed but they still add important structure to the motion.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2009, 08:16:37 pm by Ben2theEdge »
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Offline ndchristie

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #31 on: June 08, 2009, 08:23:31 pm
Heh...Bob Clampett...one of the most talented people ever to stereotype, degrade and demonize african americans.  I partly disagree with your diagnosis though, he has fluid, but not even distribution of frames.  His keys also are pretty noticeable - he leads up to them quite well.  Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett are two sides of the same coin, each relies supremely on the structure of the keys, just in different ways.  As for Richard Williams, he hides his like a cloth hides a table.  All of his flow is still utterly dependent on the structure and that's the lesson that should be taken away.  When keyframes don't succeed in defining anything, that's a very different story.

That's a great example of distribution for effect, btw :D.
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Offline robotacon

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #32 on: June 08, 2009, 08:25:05 pm
Running is not a pendulum movement. The arms can and often move like a pendulum but the feet don't.
I don't like your idea of easing in and out off your key frames and I don't agree with the logic you give for it.

The logic that the viewer needs to be able to easily follow the animation and how you convince the viewer with anticipation I agree on but we have very different views on how this is archived.
I don't think I do "even" or "linear" animations. The Professor has linear foot movement because I can't pick his foot up any higher but the running woman (tom boy) picks up her foot slowly and lands it quickly.

I know what anticipation is in animation and I could add extra anticipation to the step of the run but I see no need for it because there is no need to convince the viewer that the the runner will take another set of steps forward every cycle.

With your animation style I am wondering if there's even GRAVITY in effect in your gameworld... isn't this a bigger gameplay problem than a few pixels worth of glide? Have you checked to see if the glide is even visible in fast movement?

Yes I have and it's highly noticeable and increasingly annoying the slower the character moves. I also run the game at twice the size it's shown here which makes it even more visible.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2009, 08:44:19 pm by robotacon »

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #33 on: June 08, 2009, 08:45:02 pm
You have an unmoving torso on a sprite, the bounding box for which moves an even pixel distance every frame.  The Core of your movement then is necessarily even.  More than even, it's static.  No thinking involved, that's a fact.

The dropping helps break things out a little but suffers as I mentioned earlier from being a cheap fix.  Your thinking about the motion was on the right track there but the process was flawed, which is why he still didn't look right.

Range/scope of motion does not effect type of motion.  The fundamentals governing an olds man's walk are the same as those governing a young man's run are the same as a tree in the breeze.  That's why fundamentals are worth studying over case-by-pixel crits.

Not all anticipation is visual que for the audience, a lot of it has to do with how movement works.  The body is an extremely sophisticated machine, but locomotion is locomotion.  Moving without proper anticipation is actually something that the viewer can see more clearly than if you had done it perfectly, especially in a cycle where the eye knows what to expect and you're skipping it.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2009, 08:48:41 pm by ndchristie »
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Offline robotacon

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #34 on: June 08, 2009, 09:08:29 pm
Yours: followed by mine which is ridiculously similar.

EDIT: I added two pixels of neck and shoulder movement after Jads comment addressing his points. Now it doesn't look like his neck grows as much.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2009, 10:05:51 pm by robotacon »

Offline Jad

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #35 on: June 08, 2009, 09:33:42 pm
Well, what can I say? I don't see where your process is FLAWED per se, but I do see room for improvement. I don't see how you should 'learn' the fundamentals since you already know them somewhat, but you're not UTILIZING them to their fullest. Any talk about your workflow without having proof of you you work has been moot up until now, it seems.

I see you have a good workflow that would allow you to incorporate more design choices while animating - so why not try to help you do it a bit better?

I'd also like to say that I enjoy some of the stiffness of the animations, since not moving things too much will preserve symbolic value (on the most rudimentary level) in sillhouettes while things are moving around on screen. This does have good points, I don't see why it's suddenly such a sin to animate like that. With that said I still think some movement here and there should be in order. Moving pixels around is good stuff.

There is something that differs between pixel art and traditional animation and that's how easy it is to move things around and repixel, clean up, fix things, etc. Having a static torso when the limbs still move doesn't have to be horrible, you can just erase it, make the shoulders and hips work and then repixel it. Seriously. You can. And no, it doesn't mess up your workflow horribly. And yeah, if the legs and arms are awfully animated you've gotta redo stuff. Luckily robotacon doesn't seem to have messed up horribly here since the animations generally work except for some movement details we expect to see that aren't there. Or am I missing something? Are these sprites awful beyond repair? I don't see it.

Anyways, enough whiteknighting, Robotacon, since your rendering tech doesn't allow for subpixelling in a good way and you want things to still move smoothly, know this: Exaggeration is good (hi, I'm obvious) and it's better than you seem to think it is since your animations don't have a load of it. Old man for example, hsn2555 did that radical thing with the up-down bob and if you see it like I do, it added smoothness to the animation even though it made it move lots more. At the same time when things move at least one pixel per frame, that creates smoothness, as opposed to the clicking stuttery motion that appears when things stand still for several frames, that catches the eye MORE than if things move more vigorously.

So the critique I have? Elaborate on hsn2555's edit's ideas. Add weight in a logical sense, make him weigh DOWN on that cane, with this body, with his back. Add more shoulder movement. Maybe add some wobble to the cane-arm? There are things you can do within these frames that will squeeze more ANIMATION out of this old man. Take a stick and use it as a cane, walk around. Feel around and look for characteristic movements, find circular motion, pendulum motion, introduce it to the character. Try to move things more that you'd usually do - since you can't use subpixel animation, just MOVE things. Move them more than they should move logically - that's my suggestion.

Grah, this is just a miserable little pile of opinions, but I hope it's more than just empty talk.

Also, robotacon, drop the defensiveness. I do see your point, but when you manage to come off as defensive, the people giving you critique will just restate their original points ad infinitum until you 'get them' instead of elaborating. And this thread is already heartbreaking (for a sissy fellow like me). So try to bear with it. And good luck!

EDIT: I saw your new version now. Err. Quick points: Legs feel very snappy when they leave ground, like they POP off the ground. any way to fix that? Also his head LOOKS like it moves on its own, so I believe you should work more on extending that movement to the whole spine. That's all for now!
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Offline ndchristie

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #36 on: June 08, 2009, 10:05:10 pm
Jad - don't worry, you're the first person to set up a valid counterpoint using logic and good articulation, and that is far from empty talk.

Nobody is arguing for crazy or illogical movement.  What you say about things which don't move much is completely valid.  However, would you say that this works on something that is not moving period, while at the same time being very much attached to a system that moves dramatically?  The point the whole time has been that the movements of one section are connected to and demand movement from the rest.  would you argue with that?

As for does this ruin things, no.  It doesn't.  Most of this is passable.  How long is it healthy to argue about what's passable though, when one could be spending that time working towards something great?

You talk about redrawing, erasing, replacing, and you're right, all of these things work.  They are valid ways to address issues that arise from poor planning.  That solutions doesn't mean that the best way to solve those problems isn't good planning.  Further, they haven't been the solutions pursued, the solutions pursued have been to push and poke at things without any real redrawing and those sorts of revisions will fail.

Beyond that, it comes down to purpose.  Are we talking about doing this for a job?  This workflow wouldn't be favorable for any supervisor or client and unless you like being treated with probational skepticism, I recommend a clearer, more direct approach.  Are we doing this for fun or as an exercise?  Then why waste time developing habits which themselves waste even more time, when you'll have to break to accomplish anything, anyway?  This sounds like a legitimate project, and those require good planning of all aspects to succeed.  In the end, a method that demands constant revision and redrawing jeopardizes a lot.  If you don't care about finishing, or succeeding, or developing good habits, and you're just interested in immediate, non-transferable spot fixes, where is the potential for growth?
« Last Edit: June 08, 2009, 10:13:28 pm by ndchristie »
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Offline Tourist

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #37 on: June 08, 2009, 10:52:33 pm
I think the timing is wrong on the limbs of the old man.  A person with a cane has three points of support, and generally would not lift two of them at the same time. 

You've got the cane and one foot hitting at the same time.  This would work for a crutch where the purpose is to reduce the weight on a an injured limb, but a cane is for general support and balance.

Here's a video of a real person with a cane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lb-ifffIjs

I don't know if you have enough frames to have a third motion in the animation (leg, leg, cane) but three motions with slightly different timing would break things up nicely.  Having  different points of support at different frames can help guide how the hips and shoulders would move too.

Hope this helps.
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Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #38 on: June 09, 2009, 02:18:11 am
Here's my shot at an edit. I included the steps I took, if you find them useful that's great, if not that's fine too.


He's walking a little faster than yours... that could be pretty easily adjusted by just moving his feet closer together. There's some other little nagging jumps and glitches but I was being lazy and didn't do much in the way of cleanup.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2009, 02:21:22 am by Ben2theEdge »
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Offline Dr D

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Re: Professor walking

Reply #39 on: June 09, 2009, 02:25:44 am
That's a nice looking edit, Ben. But it's almost like he doesn't need the cane at all, his mobility doesn't seem to be impaired. It looks like he has a lot of energy and is walking quite powerfully. It could work, but it's not what I'd expect to see from an old professor. Well, I guess that's for Robotacon to decide.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2009, 02:38:22 am by Dr D »