Hoping for help with a special effects animation
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19686
Printed Date: 12 September 2025 at 6:45pm
Topic: Hoping for help with a special effects animation
Posted By: AimlessZealot
Subject: Hoping for help with a special effects animation
Date Posted: 31 August 2014 at 2:29pm
|
Hiya!
So, I'm working on a competitive puzzle game that involves dropping gems which, if you've completed a set, are supposed to dissolve away. Unfortunately for me, I haven't done a huge amount of sprite art and pixel artists are (justifiably) a little too expensive for this poor student to pay for every last little detail. I was hoping I might get some advice on the dissolving effect as it stands at the moment. My primary concerns are to keep it looking fluid, fairly quick, and smooth. Here it is: 
The gems themselves are 64x64 and to allow for the upward dissolve I have been using a 64x128 size for this effect. It is currently 12 frames (13 in this gif since I included the gem before the effect begins). Off the top of my head the only thing that really stands out to me to try is to use alpha channel blending to create semi-transparent trails under each segment as it drifts up. P.S. : Don't judge me for the gem, I know it looks horrible it's really just filler til I can pursue an affordable artist that might actually know how to make a gem. 
Any help you can offer would be great, thanks in advance! |
Replies:
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 31 August 2014 at 2:38pm
|
The effect is quite nice! The thing that would change this most is if you would have an acceleration in the up movement. It can start slow and end fast. Right now it has a fixed speed, which looks a bit unnatural and prevents a nice spread of the sparks! Secondly after looking at this for 20 repetitions in a row the bottom block seems to dissolve to quickly, but that really is a detail. It is a great animation! ------------- |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 31 August 2014 at 2:50pm
Quick edit to illustrate the idea ------------- |
Posted By: AimlessZealot
Date Posted: 31 August 2014 at 2:54pm
|
Definitely! I hadn't even considered my frame rate. So much to learn... I can program an entirely new feature in an hour but you don't even want to know how long this took me.
Thanks! |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 01 September 2014 at 2:23pm
|
nono I am not talking about frame rate, just the actual speed an object moves per frame! Once the blocks are separated they could move 1 px in the first frame, 3 px in the second frame, 6 px in the 3rd frame and 12 px in the 4th frame for example!
In my edit the frame rate stays the same :) ------------- |
Posted By: AimlessZealot
Date Posted: 20 September 2014 at 11:43am
Okay, so I think I'm about done with this particular special effect. I also changed out the old, nasty gem used to demonstrate the effect with a newer, (I think) nicer design. Feel free to criticize the new gem design. I played with frame lengths as well as how many pixels upward the bottom segments drift per frame and how many they lose per frame. I added a low-opacity background to most of the drift frames intended to help unify the motion. Any thoughts are of course, appreciated:
Oh, one sidenote : I am aware that the effect doesn't quite cover the gold diagonals, but since this animation is intended to be used for a range of roughly analogous gems with minor differences like that, I figured that was a forgivable sin considering how short the window is to catch that. |