[WIP] Adventure Game Sprites (New Character 9/7)

[tehwexxl0rz]

Current:



c&c please!

[noname]

i think that the distance between her legs is too big. and probably there is something about the colour of her legs, but i'm not good enough to advise you smth.

[Helm]

wide walk is fine in my opinion



sometimes an extra tween is all you need.
note I gave her some extra hip sway.

Your animation is solid in its keyframes. If you're willing to put the effort to tween even a bit more you can get really naturalistic movement, but as you see sometimes even just a couple more stress tweens can push something from 'slideshow keyframe' to 'believable motion'.


EDIT: I guess the clearest point to make actually is that if you want to keep the timing you have now on the keyframes, you need to tween between them ALL once or twice accordingly. I made it faster and it looks better, but if you keep it slow, you need more visual information.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Thanks a lot, Helm! Those extra frames really make a difference.

Update:


I added some hair bounce. You may notice I've added some other kind of bounce as well.... Is it too much?
The character is not supposed to be over-sexualized, just animated. I would appreciate some opinions on this point, especial from female posters. Thanks.

[PypeBros]

I spot "strong stops" at the end of moves. You might want to add more "pendulum" effect to the arms and legs.

[tehwexxl0rz]

I spot "strong stops" at the end of moves. You might want to add more "pendulum" effect to the arms and legs.

I see what you mean with the arms, but I actually like the snappy quality you are describing. I animated the arms that way to give the character power and intention.
I think the legs are quite fluid as they are....

Sorry, I don't mean to simply dismiss your critique! It's a style thing, I guess. I appreciate the feedback!

[ndchristie]

I spot "strong stops" at the end of moves. You might want to add more "pendulum" effect to the arms and legs.

I see what you mean with the arms, but I actually like the snappy quality you are describing. I animated the arms that way to give the character power and intention.

Powe and attention definitely needs timing, but the reason I wouldn't stop there is that she follows a very fluid, lazy movement path, and it's very odd to see this combined with the timing you've established.  It's not even clear that her arms have bones.  When animating intention you have to really step up to the plate, with confident and solid motions - otherwise she's just flinging her noodles .

[tehwexxl0rz]

ndchristie: That's a good point. I see now the combination of sharp movement and noodly anatomy is an odd one indeed... I would like to keep some of the "noodliness" for stylistic effect, so I'll work on making the animation of the arms more fluid.

Update:


Oh god, I worked on that for about an hour and the difference is so subtle....

(On the bright side, the chest movement is probably better/more appropriate now.)

[Helm]

It is. This looks pretty great, I'd say move on personally, unless you want to make an endless study of this to just level up as an animator.

[Gil]

This reminds me of an old project I did. As with most of my critiques, I'll post an example of how I solved it back then. Watch the hair of mine.

This is how it looked at first (comparable to yours)


Here the hair is fixed.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Gil: I can see the hair in the "fixed" example is much more fluid, whereas the hair in the first example (as well as my sprite) moves like a solid, flexible piece. I'm interested in trying out that effect, but I'm pretty stumped on how to get from point A to B... It would be helpful if you could provide a "before" shot of your sprite from the same angle.

Helm: Thanks a lot! I think I'll consider it done, except possibly the hair... with which I may experiment a bit....

[Gil]

Regrettably, the old versions are on a computer that is in repair right now. The old version was comparable to what you have and what you see on the south walking animation. I might do an edit tommorow if I find the time.

[tehwexxl0rz]

So I let this sit for a few months and finally decided to revisit it. I played with the hair a bit and gave it a tiny bit of perspective so it will work better on a slanted adventure-game-type plane. I plan to post other walking directions here as soon as they are complete. Any feedback you might have would be much appreciated!

[NaCl]

I think it would look better if her legs came off the ground more as she pulled them forward. Looks a bit like she is scissor kicking in place right now. More knee movement will help as well. I like the head and hair though.

[PypeBros]

One thing that still looks a bit odd is the total absence of move of her shoulders. It feels like she's tightly controlling herself to avoid such move, (as if she had some pain there or something).

Another possible improvement would be to add some independent movement to the trousers. It's a pretty ample pair of trousers, at least near the feet, and she's power-walking, so I'd have expected the cloth to be pulled forward and backward with the move.

Neat work done so far, btw.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Damn, somehow in the process of editing I made the knees bend less... I'll get on fixing that. Thanks for the feedback, guys!

[tehwexxl0rz]

Update:


Legs fixed and fancy hair! Unless anyone sees any glaring issues, I'll move on to other animations....

[tehwexxl0rz]

And an idle stance, before I forget....



Something about it seems off, but I can't quite place it.

[Infinite Segment]

I'd say her stance is off, her right leg (our left) looks like it is almost pointing backwards while we'd expect both legs to face roughly the same way (just try and emulate the stance she is posing in and you'll notice how unnatural it is, and then look at yourself standing idle naturally and see the difference.)

[tehwexxl0rz]

Thanks for the feedback, Infinite Segment. This better?

[ErekT]

Still looks like she's leaning forward; try moving her left foot one pixel to the right and see if it helps. Also, the shading for that right leg (our left) looks less consistent now with the direction the foot is pointing.

[Kcilc]

I, personally, don't see her tilted too much in either direction. Even when I mirrored it.

I also made an edit, just to try to polish her a little more since she still seems a little rough.

The first thing I noticed was that the boobs are a little robust. It's not an inherently bad thing, just I felt that you lost sight of her hips a little bit, and missed out on some extra curve. Deflating her lady parts might push you to try to find that curve.

Her shoes seem a little poofy, and they take up a lot of the attention that should probably be reserved for her face. While I did play around with them a little bit, I'm not sure if they turned out all that good.

I decided to forgo the mouth because I couldn't find a nice, low-profile equilibrium.

Pants and legs have always irked me, since in real life, you don't have such a harsh shadow below the knee and to the shoe. I've been fiddling with different approaches a lot, and I think I found one that works for me. I'm not sure if it's just my personal preference though, so yeah.



Her walk looks a little bit mechanical.



Not much change since you've got a great walk already, I just tried to make it feel more natural.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Updates:



FRONT VIEW LOOKS BAD! >_<

Sorry I've been updating so infrequently and sporadically! These sprites are for an ongoing project which has been set back repeatedly. Thanks for the critique, Kclik. I tried to emphasize her hips more (as per your suggestion) and added more lighting to her lower legs. Hopefully both areas are improved. The front facing sprite is really giving me trouble.... I want to make the stance seem natural, but not so asymmetrical that it's blatantly incongruous with the other directions, which will be mirrored. Any critique (edits are always nice) would be greatly appreciated!

On a separate note, the darkened background shoe in the walking animation seems wrong in the context of the set... I think I'll change it to white. Sound good?

Thanks,
Wex

[tehwexxl0rz]

White shoe:



Y/N?

[Lizzrd]

Have it be darker when passing unde her.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Do you mean I should have her body cast a shadow on the shoes? I'm not sure how I could do that while keeping the style consistent and without adding an extra color. (The gray is a bit dark for that.) If you'd like to elaborate, I'll consider making adjustments, but as of now I'm fairly satisfied with the white shoes.

In other news, new NPC! I'm having some trouble getting the talking animation right.... He's meant to be speaking through gritted teeth, holding his cigar in his mouth.


PS: I could have sworn I started a thread for this guy a while ago, but I couldn't find it anywhere. 

[thedaemon]

The only thing that bothers me about the walk is the lack of a straight leg. It looks like she's skating.

[VDX]

There's nothing wrong with the old man.
Somehow he reminds me of Stan Lee O.o
However, put them both together and then look, is he a giant by a chance or is the woman just small?

[tehwexxl0rz]

@VDX: Yeah, the girl is supposed to be very short. Thanks for the compliment!

@thedeamon: Crap, I see what you mean... Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have time to go back and change that. Must soldier on ahead. Thanks for the feedback, nonetheless!

I'd just like to reiterate, the forward-facing sprite is what I could really use some critique on. The rest I'm pretty satisfied with....

[MagicPixel]

Very good, better than anything I could do.