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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperArtWorkshopHelp me with run cycles
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seven
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« on: June 12, 2014, 01:15:14 AM »

I'm a programmer I don't know how to art


Sorry for small pic; you'll probably have to open it in an image editor or something. That first row is supposed to be an idle animation (he's breathing; the animation ping-pongs). That second row is my best attempt at a run cycle. I guess it's unfinished because it doesn't loop yet... Here's the reference I used:


Here he is in context: https://12b93664a5f7f4f425fa515fc89773b09e14b62f.googledrive.com/host/0BwP9DgG02uRoMmZ5UXUwcVFFeFU/index.html

Ignore the colors for now; what do I do about... everything else? Thanks, I'll post whatever else I work on in this thread.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2015, 10:02:48 PM by seven » Logged
s-spooky g-g-ghosts
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« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2014, 03:43:22 AM »

Here, I assembled it for you:





1. You're using a bad reference. If you ran like that you'd look like a total lunatic. Also what you didn't catch is that the reference only shows half of the running cycle and you were supposed to figure out the rest of it yourself.
2. Your animation is unfinished (result of misinterpreting the reference), which results in the white leg not touching the ground.
3. Get a good program for animation where you can actually see it moving. (I'm assuming you didn't)

I think your character is way too small to apply such realistic movement. I mean it's ok, but it really consists of just a few pixels and your idle animation looks more like he was shrugging than "breathing" or whatever idle animations are trying to show. You should remember that animating a game character is not just trying to mimic sprinting athletes, but rather just making it look good. In this case making such tiny little shoulder move back and forth may result in kinda goofy animation. Another thing (which may not necessarily be of any use in this case) is that our entire bodies move slightly up and down when we run.

Let's start with this: work on this more, make his dark gray part of the body more white so it doesn't appear so detached (darker white should do, or even beige), and of course FINISH IT. Before applying any movement changes you could just copy all the frames you did already and change the colors so it seems like they're the other limbs.

And if you meant the colors of the environment I think they're actually cool.

Edit: also, what are these dark squares supposed to be? Undecided They only appear on one frame, remember to keep frames consistent.

« Last Edit: June 24, 2014, 03:49:30 AM by s-spooky g-g-ghosts » Logged

seven
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« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2015, 10:02:31 PM »

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Yeah. Sorry about that. Anyway I'm trying to do run cycles again after many games built out of colored squares. Your feedback was actually really helpful ghosts, sorry I was a dick and didn't reply. :s
Unfortunately I could see that sprite animating and it still turned out like that. I did fix it eventually but wasn't satisfied with the game itself.


Obviously a different character design here, but with the same resolution and some of the same problems. He looks like he's paralyzed above the waist: at first I had his upper body shift down a pixel when his feet landed on the ground but the movement was too exaggerated since the pixels are so big. Tried it with just the eyes too and that wasn't much better. It wouldn't be as noticeable if he had arms and a straight spine, but I chose this path. He doesn't look like he's putting one foot in front of the other and that might be an issue too, I'm not sure. I haven't decided whether to color him in and give him a dirt/sand texture or leave him with a black carapace body; since he's going to show up against both light and dark backgrounds it'll probably have to be the former. This feels like a lot of words to write for a sprite so simple but even this took an embarrassingly long time for me to create. So, feedback on any of the things I mentioned would be helpful.
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Tobers
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« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2015, 07:15:40 PM »

So the old X Men 2 Clone Wars had some of the best sprite animation I've ever seen! Just exquisite!

So I took the liberty of applying one of the runs to your little dude...


..even if you don't use this exactly, you can still take away some good info. Like I'd say you're using too many frames in general, this is only 6 frames. 8 or 10 would work well too, but any more and it could look like hes running underwater if the playback isn't fast enough.

*edit* I'm not sure how to post this scaled up yet! Let me know if this helps regardless!
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seven
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« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2015, 07:45:47 PM »



Holy shit, thanks for taking the time to do this. I'm going to study this and try to give carapace-dude the same treatment tomorrow. Your sprite has got some great keyframes, his movement is fluid but each step looks really "punchy." I'm surprised how much visual interest the reflection in his visor gives, with just 3 pixels, and how it implies that his helmet is jostling without the angle of his head actually changing. I'm not sure what the tan-color pixels on his arms and legs represent though: highlights?

Oh, I'm not sure what image editor you're using but the scaling setting you're looking for is probably called Nearest Neighbor. It's not an issue for me though, I use a browser extension called Pixezoom which makes viewing pixel art a lot easier.
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Tobers
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« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2015, 09:58:10 PM »

I just meant I'm not sure if I can scale the image up in my post. Like retroactively.

The colors in that sprite are just to differentiate between each limb, otherwise some frames would just be odd messes of white pixels.
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