WIP (Work In Progress)
 Pixel Joint Forum : Pixel Art : WIP (Work In Progress)
Message Icon Topic: 3 animations: How to improve? Post Reply Post New Topic
Author Message
Raf
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 18 January 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 109
Quote Raf Replybullet Topic: 3 animations: How to improve?
    Posted: 21 July 2015 at 8:44am
Hey, long time no see. Been really busy, but finally got some time to get back to this.

I got some animations that apparently aren't good enough. When asked how to improve, I got: "Maybe you just reached your limits" as a reply. I'm not much with such a reply, so I'm asking here.

Below, you can see the spritesheet of each animation. Any help is highly appreciated.

1.


2.


3.
 

Edited by Raf - 21 July 2015 at 8:44am
IP IP Logged
eishiya
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 04 August 2022
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1109
Quote eishiya Replybullet Posted: 21 July 2015 at 10:07am
Could you also post the animations themselves? The sheets are useful to provide specific critique, but animations are hard to give feedback on without seeing the animation itself.
It would also help if you stated what you're going for with each of these. What are they?
IP IP Logged
Raf
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 18 January 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 109
Quote Raf Replybullet Posted: 21 July 2015 at 12:04pm
Here you go:

1.


2.


3.


They're meant as small animations when you finish a level, the animation depending on how the level ended.


Edited by Raf - 21 July 2015 at 12:05pm
IP IP Logged
eishiya
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 04 August 2022
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1109
Quote eishiya Replybullet Posted: 21 July 2015 at 12:28pm
Thanks! Are these meant to be water droplets with different things happening to them? I'll post my thoughts with the assumption that they are, but it might be useless if they're not.

1. What is the droplet falling into? Where does it go? The amount of material that splashes away is much less than what the droplet started with, so it looks odd. It's odd that it disappears rapidly instead of dissipating somehow (e.g. each mini-droplet getting smaller as it moves away from the impact). I think having some indication that it affected the surface it's falling into (ripples or a stain) would help, as would letting the deflected mini-droplets have their own motion instead of disappearing suddenly. The large droplet's motion is unnatural, since it seems to slow down before impact. There are a lot of reference photos/videos out there of droplets of various liquids falling on various surfaces, I recommend looking at those frame-by-frame. There are a lot of little things that happen that are easy to miss, but are important in making the motion look good.

2. I like the dissipation effects in this one, but it's weird that the water first dissipates, and then clumps up. What are you going for? Is it meant to be water turning to steam? Why does it shrink, in that case?
Is the lightning-looking bit lightning, or something else? If it's lightning: Lightning tends to grow, forming channels in the air. This means that it'll grow sort of like a tree through the air, it won't change its shape rapidly like yours does. If you google slow motion lightning, you'll find plenty of videos and images that illustrate this.

3. I quite like this one. The only thing I'd change is the timing, I think it would look more natural if it slowed down towards the end, and held on the last frame.

Liquid droplets IRL tend to be spherical. They may have a teardrop shape after separating from a larger body of the liquid, but they become spherical quickly due to surface tension. Things that are very viscuous, like tar, will retain the teardrop shape longer, long enough for it to be visible before the droplet lands, but water, milk, etc become spheres very quickly. Because of that, animating a teardrop shape will always look a little unnatural. If the teardrop shape is important, keep it because it's more interesting than a sphere/circle. However, keep that in mind.

One last note: You're using a white background, and you're alao using white within the droplet, for the highlight. This means you can't just remove all the white to make a transparent background. If these animations are meant to have transparency, I'd make those separate colours instead of making them both white.
IP IP Logged
Raf
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 18 January 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 109
Quote Raf Replybullet Posted: 21 July 2015 at 1:21pm
They most certainly are water droplets. The first one's splashing into the ground. The 2nd one is evaporating after getting struck by lightning. The third one's freezing into a snowflake.

1. Never noticed the slowdown til you pointed it out. I also see what you mean with the mini droplets. I'll see if I can find reference material to figure out what to do with them.

2. I'm going for the droplet getting struck by lightning, a poof of smoke and that smoke dissipating. I was going for a cartoonish thing here. The lightning... I don't fully understand what you mean, but I'll check for slow motion reference material.

3. Yeah, the timing's kinda quick-quick without checking what it is in code. In-game, it ends at the last frame, though.

The reason all white is transparent, is because in-game, it gets placed on a notepad-like background (hence the blue-ish color). The transparency is to get the notepad's lines to come through behind it. Can't draw white on a white paper, so the white within the droplet's transparent as well.
IP IP Logged
eishiya
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 04 August 2022
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1109
Quote eishiya Replybullet Posted: 21 July 2015 at 1:42pm
2. I think the droplet should instantly expand into a larger puff of steam, and the steam evaporates, instead of turning into tiny droplets and then turning into an undersized steam cloud. Steam is a gas, it takes up more space than water. It doesn't read as steam when your water turns into something smaller (and with a noticeable delay, too - lightning packs a lot of energy, it vaporises things instantly).

3. I see! I think it might still help to slow the motion near the end down, perhaps by adding extra frames, before it finally freeze-frames on the last frame.

I see about the transparency. That's a neat idea. Wouldn't the light blues also let the lines through a little though? If you're going for a drawn-on-lined-paper look, using a blending mode instead of binary transparency seems like a better idea, if your engine allows it.
IP IP Logged
jalonso
Admiral
Admiral
Avatar

Joined: 29 November 2022
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 13537
Quote jalonso Replybullet Posted: 22 July 2015 at 7:25am
The animations all look rather slow for me.
Without seeing in context the colors are weak and not very watery/icy :/
IP IP Logged
noriah
Midshipman
Midshipman
Avatar

Joined: 15 November 2016
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 34
Quote noriah Replybullet Posted: 27 July 2015 at 7:39am
First off: you're doing effects animation.
That's what you want to look up for reference.
I'll give you props, because fx animation is hard.

Second: I'm just gonna throw down a bunch of places you can go to look at reference. You'll want to go frame by frame when you look at this stuff, or you won't see what you'll need to do in your drawings easily.

Useful sites:
http://flashfx.blogspot.com/
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/fx-animation
http://efxanimation.tumblr.com/

Lighting especially:
http://flashfx.blogspot.com/2014/09/fx-notes-and-designs-from-various_16.html

Slow motion video is a godsend:
https://www.youtube.com/user/theslowmoguys
water droplets: https://youtu.be/ynk4vJa-VaQ

These sites should just be a starting point, but hopefully you get the idea. Reference is the starting point of solid animation. Nobody knows how everything works without observation, and animation is communicating something happening.
IP IP Logged
Sha
Midshipman
Midshipman
Avatar

Joined: 06 August 2015
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 26
Quote Sha Replybullet Posted: 06 August 2015 at 1:30pm
@Raf
FX are really a pain when you're not used to make them. I found the book "Elemental Magic" from Joseph Gilland quite useful. The writter is quite crazy about smoke and liquids and how they behave in motion.

@Noriah
These are nice references you got there, will use them :)
IP IP Logged
Raf
Commander
Commander
Avatar

Joined: 18 January 2013
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 109
Quote Raf Replybullet Posted: 19 August 2015 at 6:33am
Thanks for the links!

@Jalonso: Not sure if you remember my previous submissions here, but that's basically the context. Just for reference, they're these:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/77806.htm
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/83586.htm
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/78886.htm

I can also link you to the whole thing in action, if that would clear things up further, but I'd rather not have that link publicly available til it's fully ready to be released, so that would be over PM.
IP IP Logged
Post Reply Post New Topic
Printable version Printable version

Forum Jump
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot create polls in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum