Animation Upgrade Project

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turin
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by turin »

Well, a gryphon-like creature could exist, theoretically, just his wings would have to be many many times larger than they are now...

Anyway, looks great, again. Though the armor does kinda make me laugh. And it's hard to imagine it's leather when it's clearly metallic in color. :P And more seriously, it seems slightly jerkier than the level 1 animation - probably because you're doing the same thing for a larger creature in the same number of frames. A few more in-between frames wouldn't hurt, though they're not really necessary either.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by thespaceinvader »

On a COMPLETELY different note, I'm working on a nice little animation for the Thief's backstab attack. It begins by making use, like the berserker when he attacks an Adept, of that trick by which an animation will play once at the beginning of an attack set, and then not play again. IN this case, the thief throws his knife up in the air to put it into an underhand hold, and shh's to camera. Then he's going to tiptoe in and stabbity!

Does this seem like it could be worth working further on?

EDIT: updated.
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thief_backstab.gif
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Girgistian
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Girgistian »

thespaceinvader wrote:Does this seem like it could be worth working further on?
I think it's pretty cool. A bit more frames for the sneaking-phase wouldn't hurt - it looks a bit jerky if it's played at that speed, and higher speed would just make it look embarrassing. Also, as a nitpick, the wind-up could be a bit wider and the knife could look a bit more 3d. Nice work so far.
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Jetrel
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Jetrel »

thespaceinvader wrote:On a COMPLETELY different note, I'm working on a nice little animation for the Thief's backstab attack. It begins by making use, like the berserker when he attacks an Adept, of that trick by which an animation will play once at the beginning of an attack set, and then not play again. IN this case, the thief throws his knife up in the air to put it into an underhand hold, and shh's to camera. Then he's going to tiptoe in and stabbity!

Does this seem like it could be worth working further on?

EDIT: updated.
Yeah, that's very cool, and a very good use of that feature. :D

I'd second the idea from girgistan about making the "Toss the knife up to get an underhand hold" business look more prominent. I think it would come across a lot better if he tossed it about twice as high. You could recycle individual images for the blade and make it rotate multiple times, or we could make it spin so fast that it's just a blur (I should link you a gif on how to do that).

Also, although it's totally fine as it is, I'd suggest exaggerating the "wind-up" to the stabbing to a RIDICULOUS, looney-tunes level of physical exaggeration. Like I said - it's looks fine the way it is, but for things like this, they tend to look even better, and register much more easily, if they're exaggerated.


Eventually, we'll also want a more prosaic "plain slash" for the non-backstab situations.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by thespaceinvader »

It's difficult enough to get the knife raised above his head without stretching his arms longer than they ought to be considering the sprite proportions, so i think i've taken that part about as far as I can. I think that changing the throw should be doable, though. The smaller arc is actually slightly more difficult to catch, based on my tries at the motion, but it was easier to animate...

EDIT: and all knowledge is useful, it couldn't hurt to see that .gif, please =)

EDIT again: updated. If this is acceptable, I'll zip the frames and add them to the post.

I'm going to have a go at a basic slash sometime today, too.
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thief_backstab.gif
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Sapient
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Sapient »

the theif's shadow seems to be ranging in size a lot during that animation
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by thespaceinvader »

There are a couple of frames which still have fuzzy shadows. They need fixing =)

I'll do it tonight, as i sort the female frames, assuming this is ready to go in.
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Girgistian »

That, and compared to the shadow during the sneaking phase, the one you can see when he throws the knife is huge.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by thespaceinvader »

Basic slash complete, though i've not had time to sort the female frames. The zip contains all the frames for the flip and backstab for male and female with fixed shadows, and the frames and layered files for the basic slash, male only, if anyone wants to clone it to the female.
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thief_attack.gif
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thief.zip
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Jetrel
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Jetrel »

a] Generally very good work. Thanks. :)

b] This is an excellent time for me to teach by extension, to show you what I mean when I tell you to exaggerate these animations beyond the limits of what feels like conservatively-correct motion. It's a mental block I had to get (or perhaps, "am getting") over, too, but if you exaggerate an animation like this "thief plain slash" animation to ridiculous, "windup that should cause him to fall over" lengths, it will actually make it look better. It's only when we take these to looney-tunes lengths that they begin to feel like they actually have sufficient force behind them.

:oops: It'll be a few days before I get it done (although we'll have something commit-ready at the end, so it's worth the time).


BTW, it's very helpful for you to have done this - these tweaks of mine take much less time than creating something from scratch. :)
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by thespaceinvader »

Something a little like this?

I found out that dad has a tablet PC here =D

No pressure sensitivity, so no use for portraits, but I can sprite, after a fashion. .
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thief_knife_spin.gif
thief_knife_spin.gif (634 Bytes) Viewed 8083 times
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Jetrel
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Jetrel »

Maybe more like this - this is my absolute first time messing around with things like these, so I'm kinda shooting from the hip. I'm also deliberately not wasting time cleaning up the mess left by photoshop's rotate tool until I have something correct overall. It's like with blocking - don't wast time cleaning up the individual frames until the "overall" appearance of motion in the animation is good.

What I do know, in terms of "theory", is that there's a danger in very symmetrical animations like this, of "strobing". Like, if you use too few frames, it'll look less like it's rotating, and more like it's instantly changing or something. For example, if you had a circle divided into four equal pie wedges, and each one was a different color, if you spun the thing using only 4 frames, it wouldn't look like spinning - since each frame would slide the new wedge into a position perfectly over the next one, it would look like the wedges were standing still, and changing colors.

The same thing can happen and make something appear to be rotating in reverse. In fact you can see something similar happen with any fans/propeller blades, as they spin up. It's not quite the same principle, I think, since our eyes don't work in hard, neatly-separated frames, but instead work by gradually changing signals.

Edit: note that in safari/chrome, it seems to cap the minimum frame duration of gifs. Look at this in firefox to get the intended impression.

I'm gonna keep dorking around with this... this is in no way a final product.
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thief_knife_spin2.gif
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Girgistian
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Girgistian »

Long time no spriting, been working on an attack animation for the slayer - apparently I have an obsession with the unit line (this is madness?!?!). I've yet to finish the damn thing, shadows are missing and I'll need to draw the base slashing-frame, a retreat to the original pose etc. Here's how it's gone so far.
swooshy.png
swooshy.png (9.29 KiB) Viewed 7266 times
The second frame is up for a redraw, was really tired when working on it.

EDIT: Progress, only withdrawing and shadows to go.
swooshy2.png
swooshy2.png (11.5 KiB) Viewed 7179 times
EDIT II: Oh, the ambition! Obviously needs a couple more frames for the rolling phase, shadows aren't there and I'm not probably the best person to finalize this, but here you are.
tumble-time.png
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Girgistian
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by Girgistian »

Zips here due to attachment limit. I've also got the striking frames without the weapon-trace thing (can't remember the word now)
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slayer.zip
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turin
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Re: Animation Upgrade Project

Post by turin »

Needs several more frames, but still, awesome. Look forward to seeing it in-game eventually. :D
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