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[letsap]

Looking much smoother!

There is still a lot of jerking in primarily the head area upon footfall. The shoulders and arms have it a lot, too. It goes kind of back and forth and looks incongruous. The best way to think of run cycles I think is to imagine a machine's gear turning. It should be that kind of continuous motion unless it's intentionally shaking, like a robot falling apart or something.

[Problem Machine]

Yeah, I'm sort of going back and forth between trying to make it smoother and trying to make it more accurate, since they one I work on one it often damages the other

Anyway. A friend of mine pointed out a HUGE mistake, and I just spent several hours rectifying it as best as I could. I think some people were trying to point this out but I didn't understand what they meant, but the shoulders weren't syncing up properly with the left/right steps. This problem became apparent once I colored in each limb to make its position distinct.

So here's where it's at right now. A bunch of the stuff that I had kind of smooth has gotten jerky again and will need to be resmoothed, and a lot of components of this need to be tweened, but the shoulders are at least approximately where they need to be. I'll just have to chalk the several hours of unusable work up to experience and soldier on.


Also, I just noticed there was a sub-forum specifically for posts like this... whoops? I'm usually pretty good about things like that. Oh well, if a mod comes across this they can feel free to move it as is appropriate.

[rosholger]

you know that the legs switch color right?

[Plasticware]

Uh, rosholger, I don't see how that's relevant. This is just a guide to keep limbs distinct from each other, not necessarily a final coloring guide.

I did spot another problem, though. The left animation (running right) shows each arm-leg pair moving opposite each other, as they should. However, the right animation (running left) has the left arm going forward with the left leg, and vice versa. Should be easy enough to fix by switching the layers on the legs, but just thought I'd point that out before you continue.

[rosholger]

Uh, rosholger, I don't see how that's relevant. This is just a guide to keep limbs distinct from each other, not necessarily a final coloring guide.

I did spot another problem, though. The left animation (running right) shows each arm-leg pair moving opposite each other, as they should. However, the right animation (running left) has the left arm going forward with the left leg, and vice versa. Should be easy enough to fix by switching the layers on the legs, but just thought I'd point that out before you continue.

i know its not really relevant, just annoyed me a little

[Problem Machine]

Ah, good point. I still think this silhouette approach was overall a good idea, but my does it invite oversights like that!

[Problem Machine]

Well, just got another hour of work in after a truly lousy day. I think I'm getting close now! I'm seeing some jerkiness on the sickle's tip at one point and think the left arm could use a bit more detail... and of course I still need to get the clothing and hair-type details in. Thoughts?

[Problem Machine]

And... now it might be finished? I'll probably sleep on it, give anyone who spots any problems that need fixing a chance to speak up, and if it still looks good to me tomorrow I'll print out some worksheets based off of it and start drawing the frames. Thanks for your help, everyone!

[Pedrosanchau]

Much improvement. However, i don't understand why her hips are moving like they had parkinson disease. It seems to me that her hips are going back and forth for no reason.

Without a point on her body fixated, the animation seems awkward to me. I always find a spot in the body that has the same coordinate through the animation. Looks much smoother to me.

[Problem Machine]

Okay but shouldn't they go up and down regardless? Do you just mean x-coordinate-wise?
Edit: And here's what it looks like after that and a number of other tweaks:

[Pedrosanchau]

Indeed, the last one seems much more realistic to me.

[Problem Machine]

The almost certainly final version. Now I just have to actually, uh, draw the frames... and color them.

[b2thec]

She seems like she is putting no effort into moving. Make her feet have more impact on the ground. Which in turn should make her dip down a little on impact then spring up into her next stride.

[Pedrosanchau]

He wants a graceful run, so i think it is good for the "no effort" thing.

[Muzz]

Nice work!

Your large arcs are fairly nice, but you really need to watch your small arcs. The head is vibrating around a ton. With animation you have to be really careful that everything is in the right spot. You need to be very disciplined with it as it is super hard.

Probably not worth it now but i would recommend getting the motion nice with just 4 frames, and when you get that then proceed onto the full amount.

for example this is how i would start a run cycle.(obviously super rough, and shitty drawings but you get the idea.)

[Problem Machine]

Yeah, I'm staying at my brother's place and forgot until a few days ago that I'd actually lent him a copy of The Animator's Survival Guide years ago and forgotten about it (as well as most of the content in it). Having reread most of the way through it now, I would certainly have approached this differently if I had it all to do again... which I actually do, basically, since I'll need an entirely different run cycle for the second chapter of the game. Well, not entirely different since I can probably reuse some of the motions, but yeah.

[Muzz]

You'll probably find that the second run cycle will be far faster to make!

what are you animating in?

[Problem Machine]

Hahaaaaa, photoshop cs2, which probably isn't helping. Any suggestions for something good to use, preferably freeware? I had imagined this part of the process as being a faster thumbnail-sketchier kind of thing and wasn't prepared for the amount of time it seems to be taking, so anything that could make it a little more painless would be very useful indeed.

[Muzz]

I personally use toon boom,

But freeware, yeah its pretty damn sparse for freeware :/.

It's a challenge that i haven't seen any devs take on yet. 

[koiwai]

Hahaaaaa, photoshop cs2, which probably isn't helping. Any suggestions for something good to use, preferably freeware? I had imagined this part of the process as being a faster thumbnail-sketchier kind of thing and wasn't prepared for the amount of time it seems to be taking, so anything that could make it a little more painless would be very useful indeed.

You can try http://www.synfig.org/, this is open source and looks nice. It is for 2D vector animation, though.