Pixelated anatomy studies + more animation

[Scribblette]

Edit: Just wanted to say a big thank you for all the help. Have effectively started over for realizing I'd missed too many fundamentals here and studying chunks of Loomis. Battling away ingrained muscle baby syndrome and learning to draw somewhat more adult looking faces. Will return.

Some recent updates, new to old:


Animated meat bags there for contrast with new stick poses.

Cutting down on colours, incorporating facial features, necks and slimmer shoulders. Advice welcome on animation framework, trying to work from basics.

Will be seeing how gear looks at this scale before restructuring older side views & animations.

Regarding animation, intention was a 4 frames walk cycle, with frame 1 & 3 probably identical idle positions (such as in RPG Maker games) and smoother mid-frames & idle poses for later progress, but advice hard to get unless it has more to start with. Perspective of the world is that traditional, wonderfully skewed 3/4 view where sprites manage to look you flat in the eye while miraculously shuffling along at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

[Beoran]

Edit:

I edited the frame that I liked the most, being the experimental edit on the left. Can you see what I did? Made chin smaller to make face more feminine, made feet more flat to look less like boots, legs and torso longer for better proportions, boobs up, etc. It's easier for me to show that to tell, so I hope the edit speaks louder than words. Oh, you're free to use my edit for whatever, I'm not anal about copyright. ^_^

My advice to you is to worry less and to try to just have fun drawing. Then, just keep drawing. You'll learn more as long as you keep practicing and challenging yourself. Secondly, get some reference photos from the internet. Plenty of nudes out there, so pick the ones you like. You may want to use your image processing software to scale the body of your reference down so it's 3x the size of the head, as to get the same super deformed proportions you're looking for.  And, please, don't be prudish. Draw the nipples! Otherwise it's difficult to see if the breasts are formed correctly or not.

[tehwexxl0rz]

The proportions seemed a bit off.... Hope this helps!

Edit:

[Scribblette]

Ta for the edits!

Wexx - I've been staring at my own so long I can't properly see what's wrong with them. Your work definitely looks more feminine. Hopefully I can glean something from it.

Beo - I didn't think of making the chin more feminine. I might be able to do it without changing the outline much - thanks! Someone else explained that about nipples to me too - they help convey direction of the breast, etc. Cheers

Might get to update tomorrow. Need human references soaked in oil so the shinies explain the highlights easier 

Edit: Some superb references at Fineart.sk, but I remain confused over the belly button and shoulders. I see the button portrayed as higher in sprites here, and the dark line that marks the shoulder/neck line on reference photos is wiped out as a highlight. I don't understand why. Likewise with the shoulder line. It looks to me like 1, 2, 1 pixels in the slope angle from neck to shoulder in the references, so that's what I've tried to mimic.

Trying it all though. I realize there are things that might be wrong and I can guess what they are, but for some reason I just can't 'see' it in my head. Dang it.

[Scribblette]

Edits so far, work continues.

Have tried updating the feet and breasts based on input. Breasts higher, belly button up one, hips wider and thighs increased in length, feet less bootish, several slight variants above. Although it may be more feminine, a stronger curve to the shoulders seems to be be throwing off the perspective a bit (or the eyes?) - and I'm yet to figure the shading out. If anything, her legs seem too thin now.

Haven't found a reference at Fineart.sk with highlights on the shoulders as provided edits, so not sure how to do that different.

I'm not too worried about the shape of her face. I find Beo's chin was too pointed, yet trying to accomplish it with internal shading gave her a 5 o clock shadow.

[Beoran]

Just a suggestion for the shoulders.

Oh, and not to sound harsh, but I think you should try to decide yourself what look you are going for. It's difficult for me to see which version is closest to what you want it to be. I think it would be easier if you told us which is your favorite edit.

[ndchristie]

Boobs are silly.  Shrink by a great deal and notice - even on this little number, breasts are not stapled to the collar, they start lower.

The neck has some 'roid action going on.  remember that the neck is not wider than it is thick and must attach properly within the collarbone, not over/on it.  Also the shoulders are very broad which gives them a stange relationship to an already strange set of bodily proportions (deets in next lines...)

She goes from bitty belly into nice strong thighs without hips in between!

shins seem a little like "well, we gotta connect things somehow...where's my rectangle tool?"  I suggest taking st0ven's advice from the other thread at least half-way and figuring out how to properly form and space the legs.

other than that though things are looking good and the technique is quite smooth and swish .

[Scribblette]

My initial response to that was a YATA!! in my best Hiro Nakamura (american accented Japanese included) but then the link distracted me...

NDchristie - Are you saying I should lower the breasts one pixel, as per some of the original sprites shown - that is, if they were Tifa-size? I'll try again to down-size them.

And what are hips?



I actually had an indent in mid-tone there to indicate them earlier but my curvy GF had me remove it. Heh. I'm guessing the hips won't require killing the curves, but I'll find out on editing.

Shins and calves I've remained clueless on despite studies - I'd read through Beo's thread but my previous attempts at splitting the legs left them looking quite bizarre. I'll take another look at St0ven's edit in the morning.

Beo - cheers. I've noticed that making the shoulders that gradual makes the arms look strangely long. Might try it with shorter arms.

[ndchristie]

I actually had an indent in mid-tone there to indicate them earlier but my curvy GF had me remove it. Heh. I'm guessing the hips won't require killing the curves, but I'll find out on editing.

I think you need less indent and more bony protrusion in line with the navel.  because our organs are housed within our ribs and pelvic structures with the abs and obliques stretched in between followed finally by fat and skin, you'll find that even in curvy girl or even fat people that the ridge of the hip is quite easy to find.

[Mathias]

These are going to turn out well. Everyone's got huge traps/neck.

[Scribblette]

I wanted to post SOMETHING, though I'm still putting advice into action atm...

Mathias - *hopes the first half of that isn't sarcasm, and if it IS attached to the second sentence, that by noting they have enormous trapezius muscles you're just stating how terribly enthused you are to finally see the thick-necked among us represented in pixel art form* 

Beo - I liked #3 most, I think. My choice is flawed given I like the ones with the giant necks best. Something looks wrong every time I see the shoulders lowered, and I've got a gut feeling I'll have to re-do shading on the male's shoulders so he fits with new female shoulders rather than vice versa.

ND - I think I've managed to incorporate the hips. I narrowed the torso towards the navel to accentuate the ridge of the pelvis (hopefully). That much looks like an improvement to me. Legs continue to look a lot uglier when split though - like an infected wound bursting past its stitches.

I'm left puzzled over how the breasts could look stapled to the collar (still blind to my own work). Should their base hang lower, as per the biggest ones in the first post, or the starting point? I've tried the latter. My attempts at smaller or saggier look bizarre next to the chesty male. Not that it would justify bad drawing, but the women have an, er, invisible bra on - they'd not be drawn naked anyway.

Tried new eyes. Wexx's edit is helpful (and closest to the mark re the darn shoulders), though I was looking to avoid using the strongest highlight much (if at all). The sprite is the base for movement & battle animations, so I'd like to not go right overboard on colouring. Regarding sel out, I found it unnecessary for the male form and was hoping the female could get by without it as well to prevent poor readability on terrain tiles. Will probably do selout to some degree on clothing though.



Summary: Arghfrickinlegsarghblindcan'tputitintoactionargh.  Still struggling with shoulders and legs don't part well - look nicer together so far.

[ndchristie]

shin bones bow out, not in, that's where things are going wrong.  the knee is also generally centered above the foot and there is a large muscle group to the inside and outside of the knee where they wrap around the ends of the bones. the kneecap has it's own system that woks top to bottom and in anchored between these points, resulting in an unusual light form.  the form you end up seeing created by a leg then is sorta like:
 ) . (
| )( |
 \||/
 \||/
 ^ ^

this is a construction, and perhaps you would be better served by observation, but the main things i keep in mind are the muscles forms and the bones; skin is an accessory to structure:

[Scribblette]

That settles it. I'm pulling out my GF's anatomy book tonight and I'm sketching the entire body. Every bone. Well, except for the little ones in the ears, and I expect it to take a while... and then I'll make a pixel skeleton at this size, just to see how it goes. No more expecting ANY of this to be easier-than-full-blown-vector-art or time saving, especially when the months I wasted learning to sprite I could've spent learning to draw regular and sprited the same much quicker.

And then I'm going to have to do the same with muscle groups.

Not sure how to incorporate learning about colour in there to help with things like doing tree leaves better, but that's another story...

Thanks for the input ND. It helps break down what I couldn't see in online photographs with little light/dark contrast to make anything out. I can see the male leg needs work as well then - I was just a bit luckier there. Can also see that if I want to do legs at the current width scale, I'll likely need to increase the sprite size overall. Legs are tiny!

Work continues - better.

[ndchristie]

anatomy books are great for learning systems, but observation is key.  just tell your girlfriend she has beautiful legs and sketch a bit.  do the same with yourself by a mirror at home.  sketch on the bus, on the train, in cafes (looking from a table to the line at the bar is a great way to observe from odd angles such as the rear or rear-side, and the perspective shift you get from sitting down while observing a standing stranger minimizes distortion.

i think, and it's pure opinion, that good anatomical construction is framed by process informed by science observed in life, with each level of that more important than the one before.

[robotacon]

Perhaps this is a step in the right direction



I would also consider using different heights for the male and the female character.

Edit: ndchristie beat me to it

[Scribblette]

Tried sel-out on the legs to convey the form demonstrated in pictures, but indications are that level of detailed 'reality' requires reworking the entire structure to match and an entirely different sort of sprite, meaning I'd have to redo the male from scratch as well to fit. I went with a reference from a Loomis book where the legs were mostly together and tried to incorporate the shape from there instead.

According to my GF I shouldn't use her as a reference, and the nipples are meant to be one up and in - that looked wrong, so I went with just one up. The sprites I like are on either side of the X, longer torso vs longer calves. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

Robotacon, great silhouettes, but I can't seem to get the shoulders to work when actually shading, let alone find space for breasts. I'll have to go back to the sprites and rework them - the giant calves don't do the lass any favours. Your poses look decidely male and female.

I need a wav of Mathesar stating ONWARDS or whatever it is he says in that blind, perpetually optimistic Thermian way.

[Mathias]

Mathias - *hopes the first half of that isn't sarcasm, and if it IS attached to the second sentence, that by noting they have enormous trapezius muscles you're just stating how terribly enthused you are to finally see the thick-necked among us represented in pixel art form* 

Hah, yes all pure sarcasm . . . j/k, I was serious, and I just wanted to add that the trapezius' I was seeing were represented as rather biggish, but I think you got it handled.

[Scribblette]

Okay. Anatomy studies underway. Muscles next, which will require sketching on paper rather than on a pixel level lest I miss all the points that need to be driven home. Advice on basics is welcome, including how I could have anti-aliased that better, tips on pixelling white bones that thin, etc. And still welcoming advice on the previous animation, defunct though it be.

I may pull the legs in to have the natural pose look more as robotacon demonstrated above.

[Scribblette]

Will be seeing how gear looks at this scale before restructuring older side views & animations.



Newer work on the left side of the line, only difference between the two females is arm length. Long way from prototypes though. I'm content with her shoulders and legs now. Finally found a way to part the males legs and have it look alright, though it also made the arms as was look too long. I am less certain of their feet and breasts. Prefer soft/ball or teardrop myself.

If you can improve on anything, by all means feel free to kick their pixelated posteriors in order.

I'm curious to find out how similar one could do pixel art to the look of modern cell shading. Anti-aliasing plus just a couple of shades or some such. It'd help workflow to mimimize colours and dithering.

[robotacon]

I think you're making progress. Your skeletal joins make a lot more sense than my abstract skeleton.

Now, may I suggest that you redraw the heads too?
I think these guys deserves a nose and/or mouth symbol.
Do the same thing you did with the body, make the measurements and run with it.

Tiny breast looks best at the moment, just shrink her shoulders a bit and you're golden.

[Scribblette]

Thanks

If only there were a happy medium between the large and tiny breasts! One pixel in circumference makes for such an enormous difference. The hips seem oversized in comparison to them now - and the male looks positively ogreish.



Partial reconstructions I'll do, but I won't be completely redrawing the heads without specific input, if only because of how many days I spend blundering about in the dark without direction. I've tried umpteen billion variations on the eyes & face as is...  Any restructure I've done of the chin at this scale has wound up conflicting with the jaws or ears. :/

I want to go with a look that is a tad cute or 'chibi' - oversized eyes and head. Doesn't leave much space for a mouth.

The good news is I've finished dozens of expressions that work on the existing heads (and countless on other heads before that) and have already got laughter working and so forth. So the mouth works - except for on the idle face. Previous attempts at including a mouth and nose on there haven't gone well. I've included some faint noses on the face in the image.

[Scribblette]

Work continues. I've tried to incorporate necks and facial features better. The tall female was just experimenting with previously made larger shoulders and breasts. The WIP male is I hope the beginning of a better perspective more appropriate to a female about that size, as opposed to the ogre look. Hopefully someone can let me know if I'm heading in the right direction.

The WIP fellow's palette is the same as Mortimer Cool's Walk Animation, as I was studying it at the time in a bid to cut down on colours used as intended with clothes. Skin tone would actually be much lighter.

[Scribblette]

Hi again. Any input appreciated. Trying to make sure the basic framework animation looks right too, have to be capable of animating frameworks to ensure success with more complicated actions. Only difference between the two is in hip action.

[robotacon]

Quick lunch-time edit.

I made the shoulders go up when the hip goes down and I added some increased arm and leg pendulum movement plus forshortening.

When you only got 4 frames to work with make them count. Don't use 2 (identical) idle frames in a walk animation.
I'm going to suggest that you break up the animation even more so that the character does not use mirrored frames.

Consider not rolling his shoulders that much but it does make for a very manly walk so I guess it's fine.

[Gil]

I'm going to reply to the animation with a question:

When you are walking, is there point where your feet are next to each other on the floor?

[Atnas]

It's something people who've used the rpg makers have ingrained in them, it took me a little bit to get rid of it. It comes out looking sub par but it's efficient. You only need to make a minimal amount of frames. A whole character only requires 2 + 2 (for up and down) + 4 (side to side) = 8 frames, plus you tackle four idles. Doing each frame different would be 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16. (up,down,left/right,idles) So it's the difference between 8 and 16 frames for a character.

I've learned that those extra eight frames, though you end up doing twice the amount of work, are worth the effort. If it's something the player is going to stare at for hours on end there's really no reason to not go the extra mile. And the engine people who use this animation plan work with isn't a real excuse either, even within the eventing system you can swap sprite sheets on a keypress, without any knowledge of the scripting system.

Also if these are anatomy studies there's no reason whatsoever to adhere to engine specifications. 

rationalizing and un-rationalizing in the same post.

Robotacon's edit is great, but I'd trim down the arm movement.

[Scribblette]

As I had to be aware of the possibility of using RPG Maker or RPG Toolkit in the end, I take it for the main character a parallel common event would be sufficient: if any movement key pressed, player graphic = xwalk.png

However I wasn't sure about NPCs and whether I'd have to include a step switching between move/idle pose throughout move commands when pausing. Needed a framework I could use for them. One possibility was as Robotacon said - non-identical idle poses.

That said, if I keep starting off on the wrong foot, doing things incorrectly, it'll take me forever to make progress... I am so OVER doing things incorrectly. Will ignore silly ideas of engine constraints from now on.

--

Thank you again for your edit, Robatacon. All the walk animations I've found online were profiles only - and I had no idea how to properly foreshorten that. I keep mis-interpreting hips - they always seem to look the opposite to how they are to me. Will get the GF to walk for me and wait for either a DOH or EUREKA moment.

I have no idea what I'd be doing if I was to not mirror the frames. I thought movement in the human body like so was, well, symmetrical.

[Atnas]

I have no idea what I'd be doing if I was to not mirror the frames. I thought movement in the human body like so was, well, symmetrical.

I wasn't thinking there, sorry. then it would only be 12 frames instead of 8 if you weren't including idles in the walk. I complicate things. just four more for the four idles. X) So in the end! it just makes it less work than I thought for a better end-product.

I always forget to write positive comments. I think these look much better than most RPG templates I've seen. Can't say there's strong musclebaby going on either, probably because of those fierce eyebrows. Have you seen the musclebaby thread?

[Scribblette]

  I had not! That is one of the greatest threads ever. I have some terrifying muscle babies I could've added to that mix if it weren't necroposting... and Helm's genius almost made me laughcry. English needs a single word for that.

Here I'd just thought that trying to incorporate muscle groups was a test to see how much I'd gotten the overall shape right - if there was space for all the appropriate bits. It never quite registered that's a bit silly given the scale of these. XD

Thank you, though. It's nice to know they're somewhere a step in the right direction.

Oh, and I understood re the frames - 2 up, 2 down, 4 sideways = 8 for the walk, 4 for idles. Unless you're doing lopsided movement. I thought perhaps of idles that animate, but more appropriate to a hovering robot than making a character noisy. Idle poses always remind me of that Aladdin platformer back when, where if you stay idle long enough it switches to a sprite of him rolling apples over his shoulders.

What actually puzzled me was how I'd put Robotacon's line in action for a generic template without making a character seem like they had a stone in their shoe.

I'm going to suggest that you break up the animation even more so that the character does not use mirrored frames.

[robotacon]

What actually puzzled me was how I'd put Robotacon's line in action for a generic template without making a character seem like they had a stone in their shoe.

I'm going to suggest that you break up the animation even more so that the character does not use mirrored frames.

What I meant by not using mirrored frames was that you add something that breaks the mirror effect like him holding a sword/gun in one hand or something like that. It's very effective.
You could of course make the clothes have a asymetric look and then you don't have to worry about the posing at this point.

Also, when I say idle frame I mean a frame where the character is completely still. Never put an idle frame in a walk cycle, you have to have a separate frame for that pose.

[Scribblette]

Oh, that. Yes, that's a certainty - the main character won't be symmetrical at all. This part is just the basic anatomy & animation bit. I'll have plenty on 'him' once I can get the basics right. WIPs in the morning.

[Scribblette]

Something is just not making sense to me. I struggled for ages until I figured out what it was - in short, to me it looks as if Robotacon's edit is being viewed from below - as if it were walking on a glass ceiling. The arms and leg movements seem to be inverted. See his below left, mine on right.



I'm not sure, though. Input appreciated.

AFAIK, forward-down view = right hip twists forward, right foot lands forward, right shoulder swings back.

I thought that from a perspective a little above the sprite, as the shoulder goes back, it goes 'up'. Likewise, the hip going forward would go 'down' a pixel.

If I have this wrong, I am very very confused, as the hip would then be going up the same time as the shoulder, resulting in my anatomy lines (on the far right) having no counter balance.

Apologies if I'm somehow not comprehending the blatantly obvious.

[robotacon]

You're totally correct.
I misread the perspective and thought it was straight on and not from above. That's why I thought the shoulders was rolling too much.

I still don't understand the perspective but your current version looks better.

[Atnas]

Actually they are straight on but Scribblette's trying to animate it from top view? At least that's what I'm seeing.



A while ago a friend I knew from my days using rpg maker asked me to design a template for an RPG. On the left is the rpg maker default character and the right is what I got before I stopped working on it. It's sketchy, but note the perspective difference between the two. I think, if you want to include the animation you're describing you'll need to bump up the perspective a few degrees.

There are two commonly used methods of foreshortening. Non-perspective and perspective. I drew three example cylinders, the first two are drawn with non-perspective foreshortening and the third with perspective foreshortening. Which method you prefer is, in the end up to you. I've found that 2d games are very... flat in the sense that they are mostly based upon a grid which does not change as it recedes into the distance, or as it approaches the foreground. But what's important are the symbols, so 3d likeness is a sort of low priority when you factor in everything. However, a lot of jRPGs are more passive and so the artist can afford to be less concerned with making things immediately readable. I don't think I've seen many jRPG styled games using perspective foreshortening, if they use foreshortening at all? But since you're trying to go for top view animation I thought I'd present you with some variations on this.



What I'm saying is, your templates up till the black guy, but then resuming at the stick figures, are all somewhere around the first cylinder. Somewhere between the first and the second cylinder is a happy spot where there's enough angle for good depth and not enough angle to obstruct information. Keep in mind, you can also apply the last cylinder not only to size, but to levels of detail. This has it's uses, like obscuring the unimportant parts of a figure. From my experience the head and chest are more important than the feet and legs of a figure. So it can help you out if you're having a lot of trouble with the lower legs/feet.  ._.;

Edit: rewrote foreshortening paragraph for accuracy

[Scribblette]

btw, Robotacon, pretty please don't let my confusion put you off throwing in your edits. They've been marvellously helpful - perhaps moreso when they're based off of something I didn't communicate properly, because then I get to stumble around figuring out everything in the vicinity before understanding it absolutely.

Atnas, that's right. I messed up a bit - I wanted the perspective per RPG Maker, yet a thread around here had Helm explaining the advantage to having your character look you in the eye. I'm somewhere between wanting the character to look down, yet be able to look you in the eye without looking like they have a funny crick in their neck - between your first and second cylinder there, as you were saying.

...I always thought that the HK and RPG Maker sprites had a shoulder go up one pixel when it swung back, yet on closer inspection now it seems they don't - they stay steady. Huh.

Hrm... drawing is complicated enough as is, and I was hoping to be able to do many different poses (skydiving etc, which brings its own angle issues)... I'll come back to this shortly with the black fellow.

[Scribblette]

The animated meatbags are from earlier attempts, here for contrast.

Skeleton 2 (up) is simply Skeleton 1 (down) + shoulderblades to see how legs would need to be different per perspective/angle. Skeleton 3 is attempt to compensate for that, but has wobbly knee issues I'm looking to resolve.

Foreshortening on horizontals is also an issue. Stick figure is just flat on. The darker silhouette didn't work out in the legs especially - not enough space to shade in the same style as the female.

Honestly, I'm finding their faces - as a raw template to mostly cover NPCs - just lacks... cuteness. Maybe they need to be a lot more super-deformed - or maybe they're just better off without a visible mouth.