[WIP] Chibi Reaper Slash Attack

[guskooyman]

I'm working on sprites for this game. It's going to be sorta Castlevania-ish, but with guns. This guy I'm working on right right now is going to be a boss (I think), and I want him to have plenty of attacks.
This is the first one I've started to work on. He winds up his scythe like a bat and takes a swing underneath himself. his scythe turns into some slashy thing and creates a big spike that will last a few seconds. I'm having a bit of trouble with the animation though. I'm not satisfied with frames four and five. They just don't look right. I wanted him to be leaning forward more in frame four, but I couldn't figure out exactly how to do it and it ended up sort of awkward. Frame five is just a mirror image of frame 2, but with different arm placement. I tried sketching these out before spriting them, but it didn't help much. So, anyone have some suggestions on how to do the frames, or maybe just the whole animation in general?

Here are the frames.


And here is an animation showing what I sort of want to do. Sorry if it's sort of fast.

[adcrusher524]

The red stuff is appears even before he throws the scythe.  Add more frames so he winds up first and then throws it.

[TVboyCanti]

It looks odd right now because you didn't actually utilize frames 4+5 where they're supposed to be, which is during the energy spike. Think of it like a golf swing. After the golfer hits the ball, his arms don't just hang there like they do in yours. The momentum of the swing keeps the arms up in the air even after the ball goes flying.

The other thing is that I think you should add one more frame where the energy spike dissipates. Right now it strobes really badly where that huge energy spike gets burned into the retina and then just disappears, leaving a weird after-image. I would also suggest another frame with an even further wind back.

I tried to show what I mean with an edit. The disintegration is really ugly since I'm not good at such effects, but it adequately shows what I'm trying to get across. See how the momentum carries through the attack much more naturally?

[guskooyman]

@adcrusher524

If you view the separate frames of the gif, you'll see that the scythe disappears before the slashy thing. It's just because the animation is fast. Sorry 'bout that.

@TVboyCanti

As far as the spike thing goes, I was actually going to have it stay there for a few seconds as a sort of obstacle. Then is was going to disintegrate. Meanwhile the reaper's scythe would appear back in his hands and he would continue attacking you. But I'll go ahead and try what you suggested, and see what it looks like. I'll post the result ASAP.

[TVboyCanti]

Even if it does stick around as a stationay object, it should still have some kind of disappearing animation, like turning into particles/smoke and dissipating. I mean, as long as it doesn't just pop out of existance, because the human eye doesn't like it when stuff does that and it ruins the suspension of disbelief.

ANother thing you could try is have it twist into itself and disappear.

[CrazyMLC]

One of the important things to remember with animation is follow through, meaning, don't just animate an action, animate the character. Make sure to keep the character(s) moving at all times.

'Never a dull moment.'


I think you honestly need more wind up frames before it throws it, right now it looks more like it's waving it around rather than throwing it.



How I would do it is to have the sythe shoot up into the sky, and come twirling down into the reaper's hands.

[Elk]

I've done a slash animation recently where I had trouble with power and so on too
The two movements of the scythe contradict with each other, you shoduld not break the laws of physics and let it end the movement in some way or slightly fade out in terms of power so theres a parable sort of form