[C+C] Kitties (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=19556
Printed Date: 03 April 2026 at 8:56pm
Topic: [C+C] Kitties (animation)
Posted By: noriah
Subject: [C+C] Kitties (animation)
Date Posted: 14 August 2014 at 1:35am
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I'm working on kitties for a 2d game, looking for critique, especially on animation.
Here's my first one (4x size): 
Working with flats for now until the animation is closer to final. Right now it's 7 colors. The flat bg is just to make it easier to look at in my image editing program, final will have transparency for use in the game. I'll probably add some squash and stretch on the next revision. New to pixeljoint, I've pixeled before, but this is my first animation. Thanks for reading :) |
Replies:
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 15 August 2014 at 3:55am
Here's the next revision:
100% size this time because I learned that you can zoom in and out on images by clicking on them in this forum. 
Added a squash pose for each step and got the tail arc working better. Suggestions/drawover on the tail would be appreciated, I'm going for a tail that gets a bit thicker towards the second half, but it isn't really working out like that. Edit: I had the feet switching in one pose, fixed. |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 15 August 2014 at 4:27am
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Nice cat design! Welcome to the pixeljoint! There are a couple things I'd do differently: Most importantly the top paws are following the front back movement of the same side leg. However actually in walking we do the opposite, as the right leg goes forward the right arm goes back! This makes the spike twist in opposite directions all the time. You can exaggerate this by having the head join the direction of the arms instead of the legs. It will be less a silly bounce but more a walk! There is one frame (#5) where the head is too high, seems like something went wrong in the copy paste process. The head can be seen as a metronomes arm... As it is in the middle it is at its highest speeds, but at its ends it is not moving at all for a split second. Same should happen with the right and left motion of the head, make it rest on either side a bit for a more natural flow! This cat is a fatty, you can use the squeeze much much more!! Last but not least I think you can smoothe it out by going to twice the amount of frames, but that is up to you. I made an edit addressing the other issues  As for the tail, I am not an expert on this. Wavelike motions are probably what you want to go for, here is an example someone else once made for me:  ------------- |
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 16 August 2014 at 3:42am
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Thanks for the thorough critique and drawover!
The secondary motion on the ears is nice. I don't animate often, so careless mistakes abound. Thanks for pointing out the arms and the fifth frame. I'll push the squash and stretch more too. I was being precious about the first drawing and not wanting to change it too much, despite that helping the animation. For now I'm keeping it in flats and as few frames as possible to make it easy to correct. For example, the arms are going to take a lot less time to correct when there's only six frames! :D Once I've got the motion in a better place I can noodle. Looks like it's back to Richard Williams for me! I'll re-review wave action and leave the tail out for now while I do the rest of the corrections. Thanks again for your thoughtful critique! Edit: Progress! Came to the realization that my character is basically a flour sack, so instead of doing a bouncing ball rough I did a flour sack rough. While looking for reference from the Illusion of Life (because i'm too lazy to go find my copy) I came across this article, which is well written: http://tallgrassradiostudios.blogspot.com/2005/05/that-poor-misunderstood-sack-of-flour.html - The misunderstood flour sack Irregardless, here is my flour sack test: 
Now to translate this discovery to my kitty! |
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 19 August 2014 at 4:28am
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The down pose on the flour sack pops because there aren't that many frames, so I pulled it back a bit with the kitty.
I've also added in a pass pose: 
It's in blue because I alternate colors to differentiate layers. Next update will be back to normal. |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 19 August 2014 at 10:02am
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Nice! This is way better than the first one! ------------- |
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 20 August 2014 at 3:13am
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Thanks, glad to hear it! You definitely helped. :)
Here's the next version: 
Added in some follow through on the ears, not sure if it's too much. Once I work out the tail, I'm thinking about working on the first background. Edit: Cracked open Richard Williams and thought about wave action: 
I'll work on the tail tomorrow. |
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 21 August 2014 at 4:59am
Here's today revision:
Added the tail. Took four or five retries before I could figure out an arc that would fit in the space without forcing the tail to touch the body. I'm going to try doing some background stuff next before I come back and do the shading on the kitty. |
Posted By: noriah
Date Posted: 23 August 2014 at 4:58am
Starting to think about the background. Decided on size 256x96 per level, and roughed out what size props might be.
Though the majority of the levels will be more dungeon/cave/mine like, I'll have a few buildings, so props are a consideration. |
Posted By: Friend
Date Posted: 23 August 2014 at 1:26pm
| personally i found the initial walk cycle much more original and charming. kinda looks like he's walking with something up his butt. The new one looks good, but is kind of cliché imo |