Hi, Relix, I appreciate your taking a crack at the points I made - I wasn't sure how useful they were going to be.

I notice in your new version that each foot gets two frames being flat on the floor (instead of 'heel, flat, toe, kick', you have 'heel, flat, flat, toe, kick'), which looks fine actually (it does seem a little weird that the advice from my post wants to have the last frame not really be on the ground, doesn't it? I may have to reconsult my references...) so no issues there.

     1.
However, each leg has a slightly different animation, which is going to work against the smoothness of the final product. Where I notice this is for the first leg of the animation (the far leg), in frame 4. This is the frame after the 'toe' frame, so I'll consider it the 'kick' frame. Notice how the heel is about level with the waist? That's fine, but if you compare it to the next leg (the near leg) you'll notice that frame 8 (which is the frame that follows its 'toe' frame) doesn't have the foot raised at all.

So making the foot of frame 8 be in the same position as the foot of frame 4 is the first thing I think needs to be fixed, if you think it's a good idea. (basically, each leg, if overlaid with the opposite leg, should have its frames line up perfectly with that opposite leg.)

     2.
Frames 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the frames you should use to position the opposite legs of the remaining four, because the next thing I notice is that these last four frames look a bit distorted. Particularly in frame 7, where the near leg is quite stretched. As well as frame 8 (which I mentioned above) where she looks to be doing a split.

Legs are so close together that perspective is almost invisible, so I've saved myself a lot of trouble before by making the outlines of opposite legs pretty much identical, and relying on the inner lines and shading to distinguish them. So depending on what program you are using, either copy the legs from the first frames and alter them to be opposite legs, or overlay the first frames and trace the outlines onto the last frames to see where they need to be.

By the way, I particularly like frame 4 - my pick for the best of the lot, and a great job of posing and shading! So, yeah, I didn't want to be just nitpicking (particularly a second time - although my first post may not count because I was pretty tired when I made it...) and even though it looks to be a lot, it really boils down to these two points:

1. the two sets of legs need matching frames (accounting for a four frame offset, of course).
2. make the two sets match by using the first four frames as the master reference.

I won't be able to tell very well about any other points (such as the animation of the coat, or the placement of the arms) until after this, so I hope it's not too much to work on - sorry!

A few problems I notice right off the bat:

the arm motions are very jagged. It seems that there is more movement between some frames than others, specifically the arm closer to us seems to jump from behind her to in front of her. You need a frame where its in the middle. Second, the back arm goes straight when it goes out in front, making it look like a punch. Keep that elbow bent.

The legs also look almost completely identical, if there is indeed any difference. I can't tell which leg is moving at all. The older ones actually had more obvious differences, so was this an accident? But even in the older ones theres -too- much difference between the legs. Try to get them to be separate but not too obviously so. IE just a few pixels difference between their movements. You'll have to go 8 frames and not 7 though - that would give an extra frame to one of the legs/arms and not the other, which is jumpy

Here's a run animation I did a few months back. It's not perfect by any means, but the pose is pretty similar so maybe it'll help



A few things to notice - the body turns as it moves right to left, and the shoulders move forward and back with it. This part isn't too hard to animate(torso only has 3 frames - twist left, center, twist right), just takes a bit to get it looking right

She also has a skirtish thing that may or may not move the same as yours (hers would be a heavier material more than likely, so yours might bounce more). The ponytail's got a lot of movement too, but again, hers is braided so its a lot heavier in its movements.


You obviously don't have to tackle all of this, and I honestly wouldn't recommend trying to do them all at once. Get one portion going before moving on to the next (I usually do legs -> torso/arms -> head -> hair)

10 days so I guess it's okay to double post again.



I changed the arms and legs...

I don't think that the legs looks right at all, I tried to alter the far legs, but couldn't make them look like - or make them look like they really are the far legs.

You don't need to detail so early on.

Here's a quick step-by-step of how I animate:


1st frame - putting down a skeleton and seeing if the animation is believable

2nd-4th frames - blocking in bodyparts and checking if the animation still makes sense mass-wise

5th-7th frames - Adding in the actual clothes, shading and details

Edit: forgot to put in the endresult.

Also, in the first few steps, the most important thing to do is making sure the movement is fluid. Which is why I first start with just the hands, it makes it easier to focus on the path the hands follow.

Edited by snader - 10 August 2010 at 9:01am

Jumping animation:



Only one "take-off" and landing frame, for gameplay purposes.
The middle frame is there twice, won't be visible that long in game.


And I somehow managed to mess up the transparency again.

Hi Relix. The running looks fine, but her arms seem to rotate backwards.

I like her pose for the title screen, and the screen's composition looks great (except for the two itty-bitty trees on the left -- maybe they can be replaced by bushes or man-made objects like bits of a ruin?).

I like her falling animation, except that her head looks a bit too narrow in all the frames with the ponytail straight up.

Cool animations with the guns.

Thanks for all the great new content!

for the bird I'd say have two frames where the head is down in a row. right now it seems out of place. otherwise looks alright :)

The first title screen had me worried - the main character was almost invisible with the colors, but now she's easier to see. i know you said you're going to redo the trees but that one next to her neeeeeeeeeeds to be a lot taller (maybe make the trunk bend to the left out of the frame and then the leaves come back into the frame, that way it doesnt take up too much of the screen)



The jump bugs me because it simply -is- the Megaman X4 Zero's jump. :\



and I gotta say, the gun looks alright, but that is not something I was expecting to be in the game lol



Edited by Zeratanus - 04 September 2010 at 8:45am

Looking back its more of MMX1's jump (arms out like that when falling) but Zero's hair. the jump's pretty much the same in all the games, but in the later ones its more detailed - http://www.kingdom-hearts2.com/zerov/sprites/zerox4.gif - That's the Zero spritesheet. his arms dont flare out at the end of the jump like the older games, but the poses are still similar and the hair is actually very similar in design lol (not accusing you of anything. just explaining why it strikes me as being so much like the MMX animations)


But yeah, I think the arms flying up like that at the end is a little too weird (thought that in MMX too lol). I'd try to keep the arms around shoulder level, pointed outward from the body (closer and further from the screen, not left and right)

I'd do a quick mockup for you but I've gotta head out the door in a minute. I'll throw one together tonight.

Quick edit, with one arm down lower. Though while I was doing it I thought it'd be cool if she held on to her hat as she fell with the other arm :P.

Double post waah.



I started doing the attacking sprites, no animations yet...unless you want to see stick(wo)mans? The stick is not perfectly straight on purpose.

Edit:
I already noticed a silly mistake.


Edit:
I finally got around fixing the mugshot:


Also managed to lower the color count a little.




Edited by Relix - 09 September 2010 at 6:53am

I like that she uses a stick for a weapon. The Japanese bo is perhaps my favourite martial arts weapon.

@ sword swings - Its really stiff at the moment, and oddly the one time the legs do move (with the 3rd swing) they pop forward. And the spin attack doesnt seem to go as far as either the first two swings do, so the sword seems to get shorter.

But its a good start, and definitely better than my first sword swinging animation x3

Just keep in mind that the whole body goes into swinging a weapon, not just the arms. I'm certainly not the best, but this animation of mine shows a pretty strong body movement with the swing. yours would be different since its two handed, but that makes the body movement even more important to convey the strength and weight of the weapon.



The biggest thing i learned going through the animation for the second time (as it was my second attempt at it) was that being scared to redraw everything really, REALLY gets in the way of good animation. Just block out the body and draw it all in manually, as so:



Its harder and more time consuming, but without it the animations will have a hard time breaking the stiffness they have now

@idle - get rid of the forward bump frame. It looks nice except that weird forward bump. Its hard to get a good bouncing idle without having some sort of weird chest bump, but you can do it :)


*wrote this in a bit of a rush. hope it all makes sense :)

its a small thing, but its there. The motion blur looks like its on the right track though :)

(and i dont use Graphics Gale so i cant help there ><)

Asd, stupid Uni ect...

Everyone still keeps saying, that the palette is too muted, so, I made these:


Which one would be the best?

Also started editing the jump animation:


Some silly issues there, but getting there..?

Edit:




Edit:

(I took the boots flapping away from the falling, it looked dump afterall)

Edit:



Edited by Relix - 05 January 2011 at 10:16am

Yeah, I'm pretty bad at choosing color >>

I see what you mean by the weird bump, I'll try to tone it down.

I'll see if I can make the idle ani smooth before removing anything.

And,



This one turned way worse than I intended (the last two attacks), the charging part is just there for now.

Not sure about those colors, but, I don't really have eye for colors so I'll try playing around with those before judging them. The hair being shaded "wrongly" was intended for a reason I can't remember anymore. I know I had a reason for making the boots like that too...can't remember it either for now >>

I think I'll redo the chest like you did, but maybe won't bother with the rest. You had good points there, but I'm too lazy to go changing them. Replacing colors should be fast with the right tools.

The spinning - I guess I tried sort of spinnig top motion, like that first pic on that page, the blade going up and down, but failed hard. I think I'll just make a standard three hit combo and then do the spin attack like in Megaman games, charging indicator around the player and then the spinning animation. Or dunno.

Any idle animations where she doesn't look like she wants to kill a bunny?

And I would add more strands to her hair instead of making it look like a sausage.

All in all i really like the variety of action animations. Keep it up

Edited by vlad61 - 16 January 2011 at 4:22pm

I redid the third attack almost from scratch, I think it turned out fine now.
If it looks fine enough, all that is left is to animate the hair too.




This is the spinning, maybe I should slow it down just a bit..?

Edit:



Edited by Relix - 17 January 2011 at 10:03am

I'll be changing the final attack of the stick attacks, it looks too dump. But, now...

STOP!

Hammer time!!

I see what you mean with the eye looknig strange, I'll try to fix it.

I might redo the spinning entirely, but I'll keep that spin high, then spin low in mind.

Is it a bad thing if she hits low with the stick..?

And the hammer, you mean something like this:



?

I can do that, makes the weapon even slower to use and I want that.

Anyway, I'll be busy for two weeks so I'll update after that.

Ah, gotcha. I'll do that too then.

And I guess I gotta make a few human male enemies then.

And speaking of enemies, I did a quick doodle on my breather of the first boss:
 

The head/ arms are pretty much how I want them to be, the rest was just finishing up the doodling. Why I posted it here is, I've no idea how to make the legs, so that they make sense in side scrolling world. 

The legs are slightly backwards.

Wow, i was going to say a few days ago that the swing was way too fast, etc, but the current one looks really good. A bit jumpy between pulling it back and lifting it up, which you may want to look into, but otherwise very nice. REALLY like the end of it with when the hammer gets back to the shoulder.

Ponytail does get a bit smaller at the start of the animation though, just making sure you're aware

Too smooth. Have her fall to her knees then onto her face, as two separate motions rather than all at once. It may look fine as-is once fleshed out but i think there should at least be a moment's pause after she lands on her knees before slumping over.

Also her foot curves backwards when in the last finished frame you have. Makes it look like she's breaking her ankle and falling lol

Edited by Zeratanus - 21 February 2011 at 11:48am

Too smooth?
Well I'll try something.

And the ankle was supposed to look like it'd painfull, but maybe it went too extreme. 



I've coded a engine for this and now making animations so I can propely implent things that require mostly finished animations.

Yeah I know..but I've tight schedule /excuse.
But! I've started redrawing things frame-by-frame more instead of using same parts all the time - like in the sword animations (then I used them on the other weapons...<<).

Update coming tomorrow.