AuthorTopic: Dying Animation help  (Read 13344 times)

Offline 1up

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Dying Animation help

on: August 26, 2009, 07:44:00 pm
picked up wonderbros again recently, and things had been going pretty smoothly until I decided to start creating dying animations for everyone. The other animations were working out fine, but for some reason when it comes to creating animations for a character's/enemy's death I've been finding myself uninspired, and when this happens I just get incredibly lazy and try stuff like this:


I'd like to be able to create a death animation without having to do the whole 'fade to transparency' or 'disappear' thing before the animation even finishes because that really just comes off as lazy to people who see it. I've tried looking around the forums (not very hard mind you) for some examples of how people have pulled this off in the past, but i've yet to find anything

tl;dr how would you guys recommend going at creating a death/dying animation?

Offline Dyble

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #1 on: August 26, 2009, 07:50:28 pm
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=4081.0
Really good dying animations on that link may help you.

Offline brod

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #2 on: August 26, 2009, 08:10:34 pm
Well he looks sorta like a robot, how about his parts dismantling, bouncing on the ground, then falling off the screen? That would be a cool effect.

Offline 1up

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #3 on: August 27, 2009, 11:20:26 pm
haha what the hell

anyways, completely new animation(still wip in case you didn't notice for some strange reason)


it's either gonna end with him blowing up or just disappearing
i'll probably go with an explosion though just to make it more visually appealing


edit: noticed he gets whipped to the ground a little too hard after the twist, i'll have to fix that
« Last Edit: August 27, 2009, 11:23:12 pm by 1up »

Offline Dyble

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #4 on: August 27, 2009, 11:25:43 pm
looking good on the new animation. maybe he sparks and twitches abit then fades out.

Offline crab2selout.png

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #5 on: August 27, 2009, 11:36:56 pm

Neat animation. I like it a lot better than the explosions WIP, but if you have a lot of other enemies to animate, you might be setting yourself up for a lot of work. I took a look at some megaman x videos on youtube and they seem to reuse a nicely animated explosion on most enemies. I think the mario games made enemies die with a nice poof of smoke. I think cave story did that too. I'll have to go look at some youtube videos to confirm. You could follow the example of Doom and other FPSs and leave the corpses on the floor, too.

Offline st0ven

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #6 on: August 27, 2009, 11:43:20 pm
i like it enough. i think the explosion out of the eyes is a nice touch. I think if i were to take your animation and were commissioned to do it somehow differently, id say that id continue to jerk the head backwards, more violently than you have now, to indicate that the blast coming out of his face is propelling his head against its proper alignment on his shoulders against his will. I dont really mind the fading out part, it removes a flavor of violence from the whole thing, just perhaps give the head more of a kick backwards over his back than you currently have illustrated.

For the second animation i really like the motion of it and anytime you get hit so hard you spin in midair its really impressive. This is a far more complex animation though and i feel like there needs to be some thought put into the momentum of the hit, how that energy transfers into the body to get it to spin the way youre trying to illustrate, and really stress that the upper part of the torso is spinning a bit 'ahead' of the lower extremities, sort of pulling the rest of the lower appendages into a circular motion with it. the way the spin is illustrated to me reads as if there were more of an upward force than a horizontal one, yet he moves farther right than he does fly upwards. So i think that all has to be considered when moving forward and fleshing out the details of this anim. I do think its a grand start though (the rough quality it has now reminds me of like a really strongly animated stick figure death theater animation or something).

Offline Dusty

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #7 on: August 27, 2009, 11:47:05 pm
I think it might be more fitting to have pieces fly about. That always seems like a very good direction for a robot death.

Offline 1up

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #8 on: August 28, 2009, 12:00:30 am
updated the path it takes a bit

Neat animation. I like it a lot better than the explosions WIP, but if you have a lot of other enemies to animate, you might be setting yourself up for a lot of work. I took a look at some megaman x videos on youtube and they seem to reuse a nicely animated explosion on most enemies. I think the mario games made enemies die with a nice poof of smoke. I think cave story did that too. I'll have to go look at some youtube videos to confirm. You could follow the example of Doom and other FPSs and leave the corpses on the floor, too.
well there's certainly going to be more enemies, but they're for the most part going to just be heavily edited and recolored versions of either this or another few designs we're messing around with right now(sounds a bit lazy with just that, but the upgraded versions are just that, upgraded versions.) so the workload won't really be increased by much when you think about it. I'll definitely check those games out for ideas though.

Quote
i like it enough. i think the explosion out of the eyes is a nice touch. I think if i were to take your animation and were commissioned to do it somehow differently, id say that id continue to jerk the head backwards, more violently than you have now, to indicate that the blast coming out of his face is propelling his head against its proper alignment on his shoulders against his will. I dont really mind the fading out part, it removes a flavor of violence from the whole thing, just perhaps give the head more of a kick backwards over his back than you currently have illustrated.

For the second animation i really like the motion of it and anytime you get hit so hard you spin in midair its really impressive. This is a far more complex animation though and i feel like there needs to be some thought put into the momentum of the hit, how that energy transfers into the body to get it to spin the way youre trying to illustrate, and really stress that the upper part of the torso is spinning a bit 'ahead' of the lower extremities, sort of pulling the rest of the lower appendages into a circular motion with it. the way the spin is illustrated to me reads as if there were more of an upward force than a horizontal one, yet he moves farther right than he does fly upwards. So i think that all has to be considered when moving forward and fleshing out the details of this anim. I do think its a grand start though (the rough quality it has now reminds me of like a really strongly animated stick figure death theater animation or something).
That was definitely a concern at first, but when you really think about it, is the player going to be thinking about how unrealistic the flight arc looks in relation to the force and direction it was hit with a bullet? Or is he/she simply going to pass it off as nothing and continue mowing down mobs of enemies?

Regardless, I probably won't end up using this one either. I'll finish cleaning it up though, been having fun working on it

Offline Souly

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Re: Dying Animation help

Reply #9 on: August 28, 2009, 05:48:23 pm
Or you could combine both ideas.


Looking good so far, really like the character design and I hope to see more from this deliciousness.