AuthorTopic: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]  (Read 9701 times)

Offline TVboyCanti

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First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

on: October 22, 2009, 01:44:36 pm
Hello there everyone, I am TVboyCanti, and this is my first post here at Pixelation forums. I have been practicing pixel art and traditional art for maybe a little under a year now, mostly doing sprites for a pokemon forum called Smogon. As my skill at pixel pushing has slowly increased over the months, I have become eager to try new styles of pixel art. I have browsed many pixel-art forums in search of new pixeling ideas, and upon discovering this forum, I was simply blown away at the professionalism and high level of critique that is given by the members of this forum.

Anyway, I am in the early stages of attempting to build a pokemon 2D fighter for the users at Smogon. I have no idea if I will finish this game or not, but it's mainly a motivational tool to help me churn out animations and keep me excited. Because I will be making this myself, am relatively inexperienced at spriting and have very little free time, I have decided to use very small sprites for this game, basically the smallest you can get without becoming icons. I already have several sprite outlines made, and a couple of sillouette animations, but this is my first finished animation. I started with something simple, and idle stance for a pokemon called Hitmonlee, that uses fast powerful kicks. As I said before, this is my first finished animation, and I know that it's probably awful, so I hope that you guys will use your vast knowledge and skills to rip this sprite a new one and show me what needs to be improved.


8 unique frames, 10 colors, 8 frames long.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2009, 05:50:34 am by TVboyCanti »

Offline Gil

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Re: First Attempt at Animation.

Reply #1 on: October 22, 2009, 02:32:28 pm
It's not that bad really. What I'm mainly missing is knees. Right now you just smoothly bend the legs and I feel some sort of knee action is in place. If you want to keep the legs a bit noodly without a specific knee, look at Disney shorts or Felix the cat cartoons. Their noodly legs are still the pinnacle of this sort of animation.

He looks slightly out of balance too, so try to get the standing leg a little more under his balance point. Street fighter has a few muay thai fighters which are closely related to hitmonlee's fighting technique. So if you want to look at sprite sheets, try to go for the muay thai attacks.

For now I think it might be best to keep trying without very advanced critique as I feel that your technique should work out itself over time. I can give help with animations if you're stuck somewhere, but I mainly suggest studying the Disney style, muay thai fights (especially axe kicks, which I think is close to Hitmonlee's jump kicks) and sprite sheets of street fighter games.

Ramon Dekkers' Axe kicks are famous
- a nice kick at 0:55
- slow motion axe kick at 1:27, the ones after that are nice spinning kicks
- Another nice one at 2:21
- Low kick at 2:25 (with another slowmo axe kick afterwards)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIHeyyLsBwU

Felix the cat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRtW-NBo5zg

Disney (watch the knees):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Wqd16qWfo

Steamboat Willie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RexXDDA8RoI

Adon from Street Fighter:
http://www.fightersgeneration.com/characters/adon-a.html

Offline Zoggles

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Re: First Attempt at Animation.

Reply #2 on: October 22, 2009, 05:36:48 pm
That's a nice little sprite and animation. If there's one thing I'm really useless at, it's characters and character animation, however a couple of things instantly stood out at first glance.

Firstly, the legs. I'm not sure what the segmentation is supposed to be - whether it is wearing matching colour knee-pads or if its some kind of bandage-wrap, however on the right leg (his left) the bottom line seems to get left behind in the leg up/down motion. I feel the line needs to be altered (not just raised) for the upper position.

Secondly, the arms. The simple up down motion seems quite stiff and as if you've just moved the 'arms' layer of your sprite up and down. A little variation in the bend of the arm, or raising the rearmost hand an extra pixel would help offset the stiffness.

To double check myself and see if what I was trying to say worked I started a quick edit of it. However, after attempting to tweak the knee and arm, I noticed that some of the shading didn't seem very consistent. In particular the black outlines, so I moved these to fit better with your apparent lightsource given the majority of the shading. I also tested out using the white to add some extra highlight to the legs, though perhaps it is too much. I haven't altered the palette in any way, though I feel many of the shades are too similar and it would benefit from some palette tweaking.

Anyway.. this is only a quick edit and I'm really no good with characters so perhaps take my edit with a pinch of salt, but perhaps it will highlight a few things that could use attention, and I know there are many here who could produce a much finer edit than this one.



-Z-

P.S. Welcome to Pixelation :)

« Last Edit: October 22, 2009, 05:58:51 pm by Zoggles »

Sorry if I don't seem to ever comment on your posts, but anything hosted on imageshack or most image hosting web sites is blocked from China. If I can't see it I can't therefore comment on it :(

Offline TVboyCanti

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Re: First Attempt at Animation.

Reply #3 on: October 23, 2009, 04:39:49 am
Thank you so much Gil for the references and Zoggles for pointing out my mistakes. The references were a big help with my other animations, especially the street fighter one. I didn't even realize that I was subconciously using a Muay Thai stance. I will post edits soon and maybe some new animations.

Offline brod

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #4 on: October 24, 2009, 12:19:07 am
The chamber is kinda low in both versions, it won't get that much power from that height. The leg should be in a more upside-down V form.

EDIT:
Here's a good reference.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2009, 12:23:29 am by brod »

Offline TVboyCanti

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #5 on: October 24, 2009, 06:53:19 am
UPDATE:
Idle:
Kick 1:
Kick 2:
Combo:

Changed up the palette on the legs so they aren't so similar to the body, and also added the highlights to the legs ala Zoggles suggestion, although I added another highlight color instead of just using white, which brings the color count up to 15. Really makes the sprite pop like Zoggle said. The Muay Thai references were invaluable for making the wind up frames on the kicks.

The character is supposed to have noodle legs as was observed. There's only supposed to be a very ambiguous idea of where knees would be if the character actually had a proper leg structure. Actually, I guess I should just post the source picture. I also added a little bit of stretch to them in the kick animations to emphasize their noodlyness. I might add even another stretch frame later on.

I added in that long combo animation just to show how versatile these two animations are for the fast combos. Now to move on the Power Kicks.

Brod, the kicks aren't meant to come straight from the idle animation, but I guess you can see that now. But that reference will be very useful for future animations, so thank you very much. Is there a website that has more of those?
Please C+C!

Update: Added motion blur. Better? My first time doing motion blur, so please critique that too.

« Last Edit: October 26, 2009, 01:25:43 am by TVboyCanti »

Offline Gil

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #6 on: October 24, 2009, 11:43:57 am
Looking fine. It'd try one out now where he switches feet. The front foot comes down and the back foot comes from the back to the front.

Here's a Pradal Serey roundhouse, which is a great kick for a character like hitmonlee and it's again a Muay Thai style kick. It's actually more or less a variation on what brod shows (which is more a karate style kick).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdZ6DwBpsXg

The video has slow motion parts and animations

Offline CrazyMLC

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #7 on: October 24, 2009, 08:11:27 pm
Seems like the rest of the body isn't moving when he is kicking, is that on purpose? I forget how he kicks in the show. But anyway, to be correct, the body should be leaning into the kick, etc.
Not to mention the legs seems to be stretching a bit. (Again I don't remember the show too well.)

Offline Shrike

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #8 on: October 24, 2009, 10:53:55 pm
Old trick I learned:  If you want a lot of impact for an animation, don't actually put in the contact frame.  I've never really tested it but it seems like it'd work.  Just a thought.  Beautiful animations- are you avoiding a punching animation?

More!   :'(

Offline Phones

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Re: First Attempt at Animation. 2D fighting game[WIP]

Reply #9 on: October 24, 2009, 11:30:06 pm
@Shrike I'm pretty sure Hitmonlee only kicks.  :lol:

As a general rule, when martial artists kick, their hips rotate along with their legs to give the attack more force. Be very careful when creating martial art animations, for in every move, there is a lot of detail.