Trying to get out of my comfort zone again and trying bigger animations. I've realised that by fussing over and concentrating too much on trying to make a piece look detailed, it would make it hard to ever actually animate.

Played around with idle stances to see if i could animate them, as my main fear was the more pixels, the harder for me to animate them:

More active stance:



Less active stance:



Also: apologies for the lack of anything noticeably different, it's been mainly practice as of late.


Edited by AshCrimson - 22 January 2015 at 1:12pm

Thanks for the link Pixelsnader! I'll remove some of the frames with the sword behind the back, either that or make them quicker. The reason for them was i worried it would look like the swing(s) would lack power or look half hearted.

I tried animating a bigger sprite with a moving arm, but it doesn't seem to be as smooth as the smaller ones i usually animate, not sure if it's because it needs more frames or because of the size.

I think the outline looks good! It's hard to tell with the black background though. How does it look on a more game-appropriate background? One thing I fear is it'll stand out too much unless the characters also have a black outline.

I think the black outline looks good.
Using outlines as a crutch, a replacement for good values and colours is something to avoid, but using an outline to help characters pop can work. Outlines flatten and cartoonify the art, which can be a good or a bad thing.

You MAY be able to avoid having an outline, if
1. your backgrounds don't have as much contrast as the example one. Even for outlined sprites, that background looks way too busy and clashes for attention, and
2. the characters have a strong value-defined silhouette instead of being all over the place. That is, details created by having a different value shouldn't be near the edge where they can break up the sprite's silhouette.

#2 is a big part of why character designers for games have jobs. It's difficult to design a character that looks good in a diverse game world, especially if you can't or don't want to resort to graphic simplifications. That's why games with the budget (time and/or money) for it often spend some time just developing the visual style and iterating on character design.

In your case though, I think #1 is the problem to address first. Your background has a greater value range than some of your characters (if you don't count the black outline)!

Tried to re-do the archer attack, i think it looks quite sluggish/less smooth compared  to the melee attacks:



Compared to previous/older version:

I would overlap the draw/raise motions to make it all one smooth motion. There are also faster draw techniques in archery,as this video demonstrates.

Edited by RyanCCole - 06 February 2015 at 12:57pm

Updated it slightly, hopefully it looks more fluid and less stiff:




Edited by AshCrimson - 07 February 2015 at 9:36am

I like your style. Keep it up.

Just a small update, mostly animation wise:

Tried to fix the weird rotation issue with the chest after the attack finished, to me it looked like it changed too abruptly, hopefully it looks smoother now:







I will probably speed the other two up, but i just want to make sure i've gotten the basic movement done right.

Static unit bases for now (changed the feet, hopefully they look better now):



Trying to make them all look different is harder then i thought it would be, im trying to avoid making them look samey and bland.

Reference for the above:



Also, im trying to do an idle animation, here's what i've got:



With weapon and shield:



It's boring i know, im not sure how to make it look interesting/less stock.

I'm limiting the size of the animation to 32X32 to fit the tiles i have made for a map, although it is okay if the black outline goes beyond the size limit.

Is it currently serviceable? Any ideas on how i can improve it? I've been looking at other idle animations but im not sure how i can make anything close to them whilst remaining under/in the size limit.

yay king of fighters! 

Yes, it is definitely possible to look even better at even the size of an ant :

but is probably extremely difficult without being an animation wizard.  I do know that a lot of excellent yet small animations use a technique called sub-pixeling (the sprite above hass sub pixeling).  It's probably one of the least common techniques for PA.  Probably since it is very difficult?  I couldn't even understand it when I read about it.

But there are also lots of animations at your size of sprites all throughout video games as well as pieces in the PJ gallery.  Why not study them?

As a suggestion,  you might want to focus on one thing at a time.  It seems overly difficult to try to master anatomy and animation at the same time..To me anyway.




Edited by Friend - 02 March 2015 at 2:18pm

wow nice job :O especially for a first try! True, at this size I dont think it is important to worry too much about stuff like proportion and shapes.  It does seem like you need to focus more on improving your poses as well as how the body moves.  It is cool to look cartoony, but there should be a certain level of truth to it as im sure you understand.  Your last animation has some really awesome sub pixeling, but the pose is frankly so weird.  Mostly the blue arm.  You try it yourself.  Stand with wide legs bent bowlegged and on the same line of position, left arm curled at the elbow as high as you can, right arm bent firmly at the waist.  It is such an unnatural and unproductive pose both defensively and offensively.  The only time I've ever seen a pose even similar to it is in Bruce Lee, and even then it is when he is doing a sort of snap punch in which he goes from a completely relaxed state to a switch snap punch to the head in an instant, with his legs snapping as well.  It is also just hard to find a normal fighting pose that has legs along the same line.  Most poses have a leg in front of the other or one leg at an angle which sets up a system for momentum and leverage in the body to generate speed, power and also to tap into the body's full range of motion:http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8HaQDRZDDkThe video from avatar may be a confusing example to pick, since the pose iroh makes the mugger do is actually similar to yours.  However, you have to remember that all kinds of stances have various purposes- You have to think about how useful is the pose I am doing for what I am trying to achieve.  The wide legged one in the video is a good one in a situation where you desire to corner off your foe, and with a knife in hand becomes quite useful.  Imagine if you had your back to a wall and a mugger approaches you with a knife.  A wide and firm stance will take away all of the victim's options and prevent them from escaping, just like a hockey goalie protecting the net.But when you are in hand to hand combat, such a pose is not effective.  This is where I suggest you rethink your pose, especially in terms of the arms and legs.  Here are some good examples of effective poses ready for some hand to hand combat.  Note the combination of arms and legs, not necessarily the hands in each:  You can also just try out poses you think are good for your situation yourself in the mirror.  Maybe even set up a camera to take pictures for you while you pose?  This is where more understanding of anatomy helps- Understanding how to portray how the body moves will help you depict your poses more naturally

Anyway these are just my ideas. You're the artist.
I gotta say though, I've NEVER seen someone with as much determination as you with your progress.... It's inspiring



Edited by Friend - 03 March 2015 at 7:29am

Still messing about with a potential idle stance:

One with an attempt  at sub-pixelling:



One without:



Sorry if it's not much of a change from two-three posts ago, im just trying out different things at the moment.

I personally think the subpixelling is negligible when the animation isn't static, i probably won't continue with it when it comes to actions that require a good deal of movement, such as attacks etc.

Are the legs still weird? Is it serviceable? I don't want to spend too much time on this, but i still want to get it right...

Thanks for the advice!

I'm still unhappy (and disappointed) with my attempts at a one-handed idle animation (with shield for the time being), but this is what i have so far:



Made it less "busy" in terms of action, added an attempt at a breathing animation (might remove it if detracts from the piece).

This will probably be my last attempt at it, barring any sort of critique and advice, before i table it for now.


Edited by AshCrimson - 07 March 2015 at 12:06pm

I don't know about you, but I don't raise my elbow up to my shoulder when I'm idle. Looks like he's violently breathing. Maybe tone it down a bit?

To me they look different, but is not immediate enough.
Maybe go flatter colors like this?

i just mean dominated by a single base color.  the fire emblem sprites are like blobs of one color (immediate separation of factions) , and yours are very multicolored (takes effort to distinguish)

Here's my attempt at what i said above:



Tried emphasising colours more.

Updated two-handed sword attack (tried to make it less over-dramatic):



Tried making a two-handed non-sword attack, bit iffy about it, im sure i've messed up with this one:

the 2 handed sword animation feels kind of slow.  I would take out frames 8, 9, and 10 (Im calling the first frame 0).  And maybe duplicate 11.

I think the speed of the sword looks good, but the larger weapon, which I imagine is heavier seems too fast.  Maybe if you slowed it down a little at the begining of the swing.  Then once its at the top of the swing its weight should carry it down quickly, like you have

Small update:

Been playing around with idle animation again, but this time im more concerned about the weapon and shield and speed of the animation; is it too fast? Are the items moving too much/too little?

Small update, some more stuff, some left to do:



Are these any better/more interesting then the previous iteration (See below):

So here's two more casting animations. I'm not sure if i will make mage casting animations unique from these ones, but my main goal is to how different animations for casting, depending on the faction to give them a bit more variety and make them looks less stock.

Any critique on them would be fantastic. I'm aware they're quite static at the moment, unsure of how to move them without making them look like they're moving too much.

Purple: Wanted to make it look like the caster is being surrounded by energy. Was trying to go for a circle aura-like thing, but the perspective doesn't allow for it. Probably needs more movement.



Green: Tried going with a druid/shamanist thing, with plants growing as he casts, they probably decay/disappear too fast, so will have to stagger that most likely.



I also have a question; is there a program or tool to increase the size of a gif without causing it to go blurry/lose it's detail?

Thanks for the comment, i really appreciate it! The character design is still up in the air at the moment.

Here's some updates on the above animations (changed some of them after i got some critique on them):







Hopefully they're less stiff

Edit: Here's the fourth one:




Edited by AshCrimson - 21 April 2015 at 6:43am

Looking good with the caster animations Ash!

I think one thing you should try is foreshortening on the right staff arms when they're resting on the ground. It looks like you're trying to flatten everything into a 2d plane.