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[Nystre]

Yeah, I'm really not sure where that came from. In my experience, working in teams can honestly be even more rewarding than simply doing the game all yourself. Everyone has a blast doing their part, usually.

[Chris Whitman]

I think a big issue is with art folks who are not used to doing games.

People often underestimate how much work is actually required and on what schedule to get something completed. I've seen a lot of artists give up halfway through, and being left with a bunch of half-finished assets in a style you can't duplicate is no fun for nobody.

That happened to a friend of mine twice in the same project. He's almost ready to release finally after five years of work.

[astrospoon]

Yeah-

Working in a team is super rewarding, but it does come with much higher risk of collapse as well. But honestly, if everyone on the team is tops at their one part, you'll get a much better result than if one person tries to cover everything, and has to "fudge" certain aspects.

Besides, I guess I'm advocating two things. 1) Work with a traditional animator to get better results or 2) If you are going to do the art yourself, you should reference the really good stuff instead of the generally mediocre animation in most games.

did a little study of the Aladdin run, trying to get a better feel for it. Using my stock "space bear" guy:

[Benza]

One of the sprites (looks like the only one I still have) for a game I was working on back in 2008. Was trying for this kind of thing but ended up giving up cause I couldn't find a programmer or get my head around any game maker.

[astrospoon]

The more expressive the character (ie less symbolic and abstract) the more likely usual limitation will be seen. Animation like earthworm jim or genesis aladdin always bug me out because they had the same slippery and repetitiveness that usual game animation, their walking animation is not grounded, and feel generic because of the shifting context, they look like they will react but never does. It does not happen with sprite like megaman because the style never clash with the function.

BTW mario and megaman are awesome because they strike the perfect balance between limitation, form and function. They have just the right amount of expressivity and it's not that easy to acheive (especially in a time were there was no reference). The one frame jump "animation" is no small feat, because it must look right despite having only one frame: it must look right as the sprite ascend and descend, and its must convey the right feedback about collision. I did tried to do thing like that, it's craft, and it takes skills, time and energy to achieve.   No wonder they are timeless  

Neo, after talking about this with someone, and rereading your post this morning, I do think you have a really good point. Although, I am not bugged out by animation like EWJ's or Aladdin, (I obviously really like it!) I do agree that, especially with low resolution pixel art, there is a careful blend of, as you put it: limitation, form and function. There is an art to making really good, yet simple, animations. And you can convey plenty about a character in this way. I actually remember hearing or reading that the Disney guys who worked on Genesis Aladdin were really bugged out that you could change the direction of your jump midway through. It took them a few tries to find a workable solution that didn't look silly in the game. I think it is interesting to see how they tackled this problem, but it doesn't make the Mega Man solution any less valid.

I do think that even traditional pixel art can benefit a bunch from the same squash and stretch principles though. Fez has terrific animation, and Gomez would look right at home next to a Mega Man sprite. Check out at ~0:30 when he picks up the bomb! Crazy cool looking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H54u4VmDFc&feature=related

Gomez has a nice kind of squishy-ness to him. I also really enjoy the way the fez itself pops off his head at various times. And of course, Paul Robertson's work is extremely lively and uses many traditional animation techniques, but still looks very much like game pixel art.

I didn't mean to start this thread to bash any kind of game art, rather, to inspire people to really learn from some really great animation outside of the field of games. I know I get in the habit of just selecting an arm or whatever, and hitting Ctrl-R and rotating it, without thinking about how an arm actually swings in 3D space. Here is a walk animation I did recently:



The animation might look kind of nice in stills, but the arms are *really* stiff looking. They only rotate in one dimension, and it makes the sprite look very robotic. Check out the hands too - they never move, and end up looking strange because of it. (Not to mention they are probably not posed correctly to begin with.) The body itself is absurdly stiff too. The spine looks locked in place.

Contrast that with this, which is a polished up version of my Aladdin run study:



I think this give a much smoother, more natural result. I was especially surprised when I drew the arms, at how much they cross over the body! I'm not sure I would have ever pushed the fore-shortening of the arms like this before studying the Aladdin run. (The hair is jumping pretty badly though... yikes!)

And of course, doing an entire game like this would take huge amounts of time. I'm not going to lie, this was pretty labor intensive. I think on games with small teams it is more important to have functional art and you know, actually finish the game.

[Ravey]

Hmm, the two lines for where his feet are makes it look like he's running up and down to me.

[unsilentwill]

This is one dang inspiring thread. Guess I know what I'm doing today.

[astrospoon]

Hmm, the two lines for where his feet are makes it look like he's running up and down to me.

Yeah... it looks bad. I was trying to spread them out so he didn't look as flat, but the lines would still need to be much closer together. Still learning!

[ChevyRay]

The jacket

Well done, astrospoon I definitely love the latter animation much more than the pasted/more stiff look of the first guy, your floating textures are seriously trippin me out though. This actually is inspiring me to study a bit more into traditional animation techniques. Even if I don't use them myself, I think it'll be really nice skills to have when appraising others' artwork and also when working with and directing artists, which I have to do on more than one project in the near future.

Cheers!

[Xion]

would the still jacket texture work in a game? I'd imagine that would maybe need to be done procedurally, or move backwards at the same speed the player moves forward in order for it to keep its rad stillness.

[Gimym TILBERT]

Game animation also suffer from past craft illusion, an animation like aladin would always seem like an improvement (even if it may does some regression) because it break expectation with shiny new stuff. But may look pale and crude regarding the whole art principle.

It bug me because as a child i was looking at disney movie frame by frame, and if i could, i would do the same with video games (sonic let you frame advence with cheat code) generally by recording them. Through observation i get the principle of both. I could see some game were good at mixing both world, and that some game fails. I have a lot of idea to make truly alive animated game but it mean adapting gameplay, sometimes with paradigm shift.

For exemple something like the high profile mode in assassin's creed could create a true breakthrough by making anticipation interesting from a gameplay standpoint. I'm working on a concept platformer game like that in 3D, but yet have to find a core interesting gameplay that goes with the imposed universe (something with "7 matching power" as the gimmick is "dominoes")

[ChevyRay]

would the still jacket texture work in a game? I'd imagine that would maybe need to be done procedurally, or move backwards at the same speed the player moves forward in order for it to keep its rad stillness.

Yeah, it wouldn't be too difficult with some simple masking method I imagine.

[TooMuchSpareTime]

That running spacebear looks pretty sweet. The "moving up and down" issue is only because there's no background - it'd look fine in a game if the ground was a sort of slightly-above view rather than just a flat horizontal line, I guess.
2D animation in games is generally okay, even if it looks a bit stiff or uninspired at lot of the time. 3D's where the problems seem to be. 3D animation in movies has improved in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, and nobody can get away with making a big movie with animation that looks like "Beast Wars" ("Beasties", in Canada) anymore. But that level of animation quality seems to have remained generally acceptable in videogames. Not to say that it's not improving at all, though.

Interesting walk cycles are great for games. They give the character so much personality, and remind the player of that personality the whole way through, like Cool Spot's over-the-top swaggering strut, or Laverne from Day of the Tentacle's airheaded flouncing.

[Greg Sergeant]

its about how the thing feels to play; not how technically brilliant the animation is

[Gimym TILBERT]

It's not even how technically brilliant an animation can be, but how much it fit a "scene".

Take the basic walking animation, no matter how good it could be, the fact it does not change to fit emotion of the context made it "off" and only functional >> "display a state". Worst, the more "technically" brilliant it may be, the more it would draw attention into itself and jar with the gameplay. A subtle balance is to be found.

Now even if the character react "emotionally" to situation with things like blended and procedurals animations (gaze, fatigue, facial animation, feet adjustment, etc... think shadow of colossus), the problem would remain of anticipation and purpose. With the random walking promote by current way of navigating in game, animation would always stay a reward gimmick. Also because good animation is about deeper psychology revelation of a character, the way control are about reaction does not promote that (see anticipation and purpose). Last problem is gameplay, the more blended and adaptable are animation the less easy it's to read game state, animation is one of the main channel to read player's state, "good animation" (fluid and blended with lot of details) just blur that.

For animation to be "really good" and "less gamey", we need to rethought fundation of how we interact within game, most notably navigation, purpose of action, emotional and psychologic interface (intent), "social aware" gameplay. And less "dead time" where nothing happen.

Heavy rain tried just that!