Sorry i forgot to add an example of what i have in mind for the ui + battle screen in action here (a really basic example sorry):



The animation would stop as the text for the damaged unit is displayed and resume after a player presses button a/etc.

Hopefully that answers why the sprites remain consistant, but i do understand why it would be beneficial to have two forms of them.


Edited by AshCrimson - 24 August 2015 at 9:35am

I could try that, the only concern is that some of the attacks extend well beyond 32x32, as well as issues regarding which unit overlaps the other one when attacking.

Most of your framecounts seem fine to me given the size and motion range of each animation. The Battlemage is the only one that I think would really benefit from extra frames, because it looks like you're going for a very large motion. Adding more frames to all of them wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it's necessary.

The real problem is that your timing isn't quite there yet. Unfortunately, that's also the hardest part to do well without having film reference.


Miscellaneous feedback on specific animations:

Your archers hold their position nicely after letting go of the arrow, but then their arm snaps back. I think if you have the arm also move down as the archer is putting down the bow, that'll help make it look smooth - no extra frames needed.

The priest holds too long on the... smear? sparkles? The fourth frame. If it's meant to be a smear, it shouldn't be holding on it at all. If it's meant to be sparkles, then I think instead of holding on that frame, you should insert another frame where the sparkles change, or add remnant sparkles to the frame after and shorten the duration of the fourth frame.

Your vertical attacks (Legionnaire, Warrior, Berserker) all have the same timing issue where they lift their weapon at the same speed (faster even, if I count the frames) as they attack downward with it. This makes the attacks look like they lack power. Put some weight to the weapons by making them take longer to lift, and by making them come down faster. You don't need to add more frames, you could just change what each frame depicts. For example, your current frame counts on the Berserker are 2 for lifting and 2 for the downward motion, and the first and last frames are transitioning into standing. Instead, try 3 frames lifting (the last frame of the lift should be the frame you hold on), and 2 frames attacking (replacing also the last frame), the first of which is the downward motion pretty much complete (a smear would help make it look smoother), and the second is the recovery/transition.

Mainly small updates:

Priest:



Battlemage:



Archer:



Non-animated stuff:

I'm still working on a decent font:

Tried what you said, and im assuming something like this (in terms of the blur effect):



(An extra frame was added, for a total of 7)


Edited by AshCrimson - 31 August 2015 at 1:53pm

If the three images on the left are intended as a three-frame walking animation: Not a great idea. Even on small sprites it looks just good enough to be a viable economical solution; with larger sprites it looks terrible. During a walk does a person never makes a standing-still stance, so it always looks off when you try to fit a 3-frame walking animation to a sprite that is large enough to have discernible limbs. It could work and look only a little wrong with large sprites that have their legs hidden, but if the legs are visible it just looks wrong and lazy.

The first three images appear to be in different perspective than the fourth, is this intentional?

Some non-human stuff for once:

Revamped worm idle animation (orange):



Green is the old one for comparison.

Non-fanged version, in case it looked too snake-like:

I wanted something sort of like this:



and



(But not in terms of size)

I could put half of the body underground/cover with earth.

I was sort of aiming for the stereotypical fantasy dnd giant worm/sand worm thing.

Thanks for the info, will change it. Btw, for some reason no one's avatar's are appearing on this forum, is it a bug or a glitch?

Unless the dirt is used as part of the animation/theme somehow, I don't think you need it. The new tail reads better as more worm-like, though you may be able to bring back some of the visual interest of the old tail. How about making the body curve horizontally instead of vertically (coming out of/going into the canvas, versus going up and down).

Thinking about it more (and after looking up lots of different worms for fun), I think the other "issue" is the mouth. That mouth looks like it has the hinged sort of jaw you find on snakes (and humans and muppets), worms do not have jaws (or tongues, as far as I know). Worms also don't tend to have distinct heads because they don't have skulls (they often have distinct features around the head, but not distinct heads as such). In short, the reason your worm looks like a snake is because it has a lot of snake features, and no worm features.

Also, the avatar thing isn't just you, a lot of people are having this problem (might just be that way for everybody). Don't know why.

Unfortunately the game fell through, so i feel like i've wasted time on extraneous stuff, but at least it made me try other stuff.

Here's some weapon stuff (32x32):



Tried varying differing forms of weapons.

Also sorry if i seem to be all over the place with WIP's, i still work on stuff after i've posted it, but most of the changes are either small or require a complete overhaul.

Re-did all of the units and added some the new torso; some are basically the same, whilst others have changed a bit:



O = Old Version, N = New Version

Hopefully they're still easily visible, removed the tartan like stripes for now.

Been focusing on drawing, so had to scale back on pixel-art for a bit, but i've managed to do some things:

Redid the legs again, also tried sub-pixeling for breathing during the idle animation:



Also, here's the process i was refering to in the previous post:

Thanks for the critique and advice Eishiya.

Regarding the chests; should i reduce the breathing? Maybe even reverse the breathing, so he breathes when he's fully standing, rather than crouching?

I was trying to make it look like he was leaning on a different foot as he pivots forwards, but i see how it can be read as such, will probably try sub-pixelling it.

I'll fix the lowest crouching frame of the idle animation, i see what you mean, the skirt shouldn't stretch down, given the foreshortening.

I just love keeping up with your thread.

You be you and keep it up and stop apologizing all the time :p

An attempt at a defeated/death animation:



Thought i should get some critique before i continue with it, i feel it's awkward atm, tried getting the torso to rotate but im not feeling it's right

Thanks for the advice Eishiya, this will probably sound really stupid, but im having difficulty envisioning it and unfortunately i don't have a camera atm to take pictures of me trying the pose in front of a mirror, could you do a really quick example of what you meant? I usually wouldn't ask sorry if sound demanding.

Sorry for the late reply, thanks so much for the example Eishiya!

Here's a small update on the falling/death animation:



Here's some more updated combat animations:







So yeah, not alot of big updates, more just trying to smooth out stuff and make it better, even if it's only slightly so.

Also i looked at some of the bigger character pixel pieces on the gallery and tried my hand at a larger, more detailed warrior in order to get out of my comfort zone of doing very small characters, before realising that im pretty sure i got the proportions and anatomy wrong:



Pose originally based off of this picture:



I've been doing sketches and attending life-drawing sessions in an attempt to improve my anatomy, it's slow going at the moment but only time will tell whether it actually helps me.

I'd really love to be able to get the smoothness and clarity soon in AlcoPopStar's work such as this:

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/99516.htm

...But im still a long, long way away from that.

Thanks so much for the comment Mr Hai, i really appreciate it!

Made a few small changes, mainly the shape and size of some of the limbs.



Still worried about the legs and knees.

Don't worry about trying to make the knees visible. They're usually not that noticeable anyway! Instead, give your characters more interesting lighting overall. They're drowning in the light right now, there's hardly anything in shadow, so everything looks flat. If flatness is your goal, then details would just work against keeping the flat shapes readable.

Pixel art is usually not the best medium to practice surface details like knees. Instead, focus on showing what you know about the role knees play in the body through good shapes, solid forms, and animations that feel right.

Sorry 'bout that last post.

Trying to diverge from just doing one swing attack (the overhead one), here's a really quick attempt:



Not a lot of moving atm, just wanted to concentrate on the actual arms + torso for the moment.

Edit

Quick update, now with blur + extra frames, hopefully less awkward now:

Sorry if i alienated anyone as of late.

I've still been looking at HEMA and how other games handle and depict attacks, breaking them down frame by frame.

Two-handed attack:



I felt it looked awkward when switching the weapon to the right side and recovering, so made this quick change:



I feel it only looks right with two-handed swords, anything other then that might look odd.

An attempt at a map because world building (literally):



Legend needs to be done, might need to make it bigger.

The orientation of the factions on the map isn't bad, but I think you could make the borderlines more organic. The same for the island clusters, each of the dots is kinda same-y like a picket fence. If you add variation and think about how the water flows and erodes the land, I think it'll look much more interesting. Also the big masses on the left, the green, red, and orange (especially green and red), have similar sizes, I think if you adjusted so that the sizes are somewhat different, or at least distributed over a more varied shape that would make it more interesting.

Here's some useful sites for map stuff:

cartographer's guild

Reddit /mapmaking

Attempts at different angles other than the front for units:



Hopefully i've kept them consistant.