AuthorTopic: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed  (Read 4779 times)

Offline pgil

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Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

on: December 18, 2009, 12:09:05 am
So I have this character in a topdown view:


I'm pretty satisfied with the forward walking animation:


The side view, however, has some weird perspective issues:

The head and body look wrong to me, but I can't tell exactly what I need to change. It's hard to find a good reference from this angle. So, anyone have suggestions?

Offline WM

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #1 on: December 18, 2009, 12:31:35 am
[image]

Notice how the neck is positioned leaning a little forward, but not so much that it looked hunched. Try positioning the head of your character in side-view to resemble this.

Oh, and the animation of bot the walk cycles seems a little artificial. Try to do a little more to the legs in each frame other than selecting an moving them.

EDIT: Crap, that image was way too big. Hold on, I'll find another...

Offline Maru

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #2 on: December 18, 2009, 11:38:28 am
When someone's walking, their height should differ sliiighty depending on their feet position. I think if you made his head move up and down in the walk animation it would look a bit less stiff...

Also what was behind the colour restriction choices? The grey shade doesn't compliment the hair at all and won't work for shading it unless you use a duller, lighter red...I'm curious about the cyan colour too...@_@ Maybe try a different darker shade, like your background purple colour instead of the mid-tone grey?

Offline Jad

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #3 on: December 18, 2009, 04:26:43 pm
Just redraw him in two distinct STEPS, and I seriously mean REDRAW as in you mark out his most important proportions and then draw him all over in stick figure fashion, then make transition frames until you have a walk.

Your workflow seems sorta sucky, animating legs below a static torso is just making stuff hard for you. Redraw redraw redraw. After that you can copypaste parts that don't move or change a lot, like, well, the head.
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Offline pgil

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #4 on: December 18, 2009, 05:04:14 pm
Jad: You're right, I probably should have restarted from scratch. I'm going to make sure my proportions and perspective are right before I do anymore animating.

Anyway, I reworked the standing frames. The head is smaller, and hopefully the skewed-topdown perspective is more apparent:

As far as perspective goes, I'm looking at Chaos Engine for reference.

I also worked on the walk cycle. This is not a redraw, just more copy-pasting and cleanup (sorry Jad, I can't help my laziness  :blind:) I already see some things that aren't right (like the shoulders moving oddly), but I think it's an improvement over the last one.

« Last Edit: December 18, 2009, 05:17:46 pm by pgil »

Offline Jad

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #5 on: December 18, 2009, 05:19:55 pm
Make him bob up and down? He looks like he's sliding along the ground ' n ';;
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Offline pgil

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #6 on: December 18, 2009, 05:38:26 pm
Yeah, he does. It actually looks better when he's moving forward at the proper speed. In the game I've made sure he moves 1 pixel per frame.

Offline Jad

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Re: Topdown human sprites - C&C needed

Reply #7 on: December 19, 2009, 12:05:42 am
I'm a 100% sure it works actually. Any kind of representative motion within the sprite coupled with actual movement of the sprite in space will satisfy the brain.

But really, you want to treat the brain, not just provide it! <3 Now get some up/down bob in there
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