Pixelated anatomy studies + more animation

[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.