Merman Hunter, extending the javelin throw routine

[Issyl]

That motion looks excellent to me - I will say something still slightly bothers me about the tail motion, however. I'm not quite sure what it is.

[beetlenaut]

I think the problem is the relative speeds of the tail and arm movement. His tail should probably whip back around when his arm shoots forwards.

[Trilby]

I would have liked to have gotten back round to working on this quicker than I have, but I'm not a hardcore spriter, that much is certain.

Thanks for the feedback though, I've acted on it. The tail movement is effectively 2 frames faster now, some increments gone altogether and a little deceleration added at the end... in theory. I think it looks better, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

One of my constant hang ups is frame count, I'm aware with Jet's commission notification, that the "Loony Toons" spear throw is estimated to be at 3-4 frames. Mine trundles in at 11 individual pngs, is this something to be concerned about?

[Kenpachi]

The tail movement looks wrong. It should be to counter balance the throwing movement when under water. (thus moving in the opposite direction to the throw

[thespaceinvader]

If there are too many frames, cut some of the tweening frames out and see how it looks. You might be surprised

[Trilby]

I believe a discussion about whether the mermen were considered submersed or above water, came to the conclusion that it should tow the line. Weight and balance distribution is based on video footage from an Olympic javelin throw --Human obviously. But as far as I been able to plot out, the tail does move in the opposite direction to the throw, as you suggest

Please bare with me while I iron this stage out. I'm still getting the hang of what makes for a decent Wesnoth animation.

:The motion as it was, only with three frames cut particularly in the early stages of the wind up and one from the motion as it cycles back into the standing frame. Loses the look of weight and some of the amusing rubberiness . Far more direct though, and the prospect of rendering the scales in each frame is less daunting. Curtailed to 8 frames.

[beetlenaut]

This is almost there. His upper body is perfect, but I think his tail is still moving too slowly while his arm is shooting forward. I think you could flick the tail around past its neutral position in just one frame as the arm is going forward. (Maybe two.) Spend the recovery frames moving it back to the neutral position from the other side.

[Kenpachi]

I believe a discussion about whether the mermen were considered submersed or above water, came to the conclusion that it should tow the line. Weight and balance distribution is based on video footage from an Olympic javelin throw --Human obviously. But as far as I been able to plot out, the tail does move in the opposite direction to the throw, as you suggest

With the current blocking, the tail moves in the same direction as the throwing arm, around the center of gravity.
To demonstrate what I'm getting at, sit on a swivel chair. Then using your feet as an anchor, do a wind up and throw motion and observe how your feet push against the ground for stability.

[Trilby]

I've worked on two alternative tail movements to address comments made. I may be confusing matters for myself, but I'd like to follow the route that meets most favour.

@ Beetlenaut: Thanks for your feedback, I'd attempted to introduce some motion like this before, but never got it to look quite right. I hope this makes the necessary improvements. The outcome appears quite bouncy, but I don't dislike that.

@ Kenpachi: I believe I'm beginning to see what you mean. I've been working on an alternative, but I'm unsure whether this answers or not. I could have completely missed your point. However in my original effort, the weight is applied -not to the end of the tail; but to the lower body mass that makes contact with the ground, it does push and squash in the direction your swivel chair example assumes. In this way it effectively makes this a land oriented attack animation.

Use your hand to cover that part of the screen you want to avoid, by which I don't mean the thread in general. I'm dithering while this is decided for me, that must be the case.

[thespaceinvader]

We can do two different animations for water and land, if necessary, though not needing to would be preferable.

[Trilby]

I agree, I would rather work towards having this attack animation look as if it could be either land or water based. I actually don't think the squash of the lower body I mentioned would detract in either context, but is a touch more land-lubberly to look at.

[beetlenaut]

@Trilby: Thanks for doing all this blocking work. I think the top one looks great!
@Kenpachi: I don't disagree with the physics in your explanation, but I still somehow think the top one "looks right", which it shouldn't if it's impossible. Maybe we are interpreting the masses differently, or maybe it's the fact that we aren't used to motion under water.

[Kenpachi]

@Kenpachi: I don't disagree with the physics in your explanation, but I still somehow think the top one "looks right", which it shouldn't if it's impossible. Maybe we are interpreting the masses differently, or maybe it's the fact that we aren't used to motion under water.

In the end it just has to look good.
I have to study physics, hence my pedanticness about it
And tsi is right, one animation would be preferable.

[thespaceinvader]

I was thinking about this in the pool this morning: what is needed, more than anything, is to counteract the backward motion that will come about in reaction to the forward motion of the arm and spear. On land, we do this by bracing our legs. IN water, you'd need to provide some forward motion...

[Sleepwalker]

One thing to think about when animation tails is that you should move the base of the tail first and then let the rest of the tail flow along with the movement in a wave like way. The bottom counter-rotating animation currently does not.