blocky animation experiment

[tocky]

say you're animating in an especially blocky environment (like a widepixel game or a voxel game, or really tiny or something) and you need to animate using a really constrained set of movements - using all 90 degree angles. I wanted to know if I could get reasonably natural-looking character movements this way.

(this is brought on by the recent influx of voxel games, like infiniminer and minecraft - i don't think the characters in those worlds integrate well, because their movements aren't suitably blocky.)

here's what I've got:

I'm only bending the dude at the shoulders, hips, elbows, and knees.

[TrevoriuS]

why'd you need blocky movements in a voxel engine? because really, you don't...
and by the time voxel engines become usable for games, they most certainly will no longer look blocky either, as the voxels can run small enough

[Mathias]

Haha, pretty nice. I like it so far. Good observation about theme continuity; that's interesting.

Make his torso rotate by moving the shoulders forward and backward a few pixels when each arm extends respectively. Add bobbing to further indicate a striding run. I don't think the arms should straighten when they're extended backwards. This won't violate your desired voxel movement effect too much.

If he can only bend by 90°, how is he going to walk?

[tocky]

why'd you need blocky movements in a voxel engine? because really, you don't...
and by the time voxel engines become usable for games, they most certainly will no longer look blocky either, as the voxels can run small enough

There's no real need for pixel art anymore, either - no need for books, no need for painting, no need for 2d animation. Sometimes stuff is worth exploring just because there may be some value there, there's no way to determine the utility of anything without testing it. Sometimes you can just do stuff because it sounds fun, and it doesn't even require utility. I should not have to argue my way up to the point where this is a good idea. The whole premise is that this is a good idea. If you're not willing to allow that, you don't have to tell me about it.

with the stuff mathias suggested:

[Indigo]

keep in mind the basics - extremes and tweens.  Regardless of this self imposed limitation you put on yourself, the basics of animation still stands.  the extremes/key frames are always the most important frames in an animation.  The tweens dont need to make perfect sense, so long as they support what the key frames are doing.  In this case, you have your extremes at perfect right angles or straight lines.  in order to sell it - just take those limbs (90 degrees in-tact) and just shift them a bit have some give at the end of each extreme frame.  I also took out two frames of him just standing straight, because those dont exist in a run cycle.



even more give (but breaks the 90 degree rule) helps demonstrate my point more:

[tocky]

this is good advice and i will do this thing. what yo're talking about is expectation and like overdraw and stuff. i understand this now but i did not understand before i read some animation books. the PRESTON BLAIR book and the RICHARD WILLIAMS ONE are canonical. the guy from ren and stimpy forms an anticanon. then theres all this anime and stuff. samurai jack. thats the monad.

i will necromance each of my posts, one at a time. so the cpc animalmen post then this one, the thread isnt done until the game is done

[Iceaxe]

This felt like an interesting challenge so I went ahead and gave it a shot:

A few things that I think helped this animation:

• Moving the whole body up and down gradually. Nothing should stay still when animating cause nothing stays still in real life.
• Extending the foot out the back instead of out the front. More natural run in my opinion.
• Having shorter arms where the elbow does not touch the hips. This allows for the hands and arms to be more visible and prevent them from being lost behind the legs.

Though, if you are ever really stuck in this problem, you should probably re-think the entire design and platform of the game being designed as it makes next to no sense for this to be an issue. 

[Johasu]

I honestly feel like the extending the foot out the back bit seems to make him look like he is backpedaling.
Maybe it's just me but it feels like the lower portion of his leg is longer when the leg is back so it looks like it is reaching.

[Iceaxe]

Yeah I get what you mean. I guess you can imagine him running either way.
Bit of a tricky constraint to work with.

[Decroded]

i like the general idea of this but don't understand the connection with 90° angles.
whats wrong with 45° for example?

the minecraft example u use doesnt seem to apply because they're not rly voxels r they? they're just low poly models that of course look odd when perform arbitrary transformations instead of sticking to the implied grid (I dont play minecraft so just going off vague memories of seeing it).