Avian Faction portraits and sprites

[orangebox]

Thanks for the thought crend! Most likely I'll not meddle with WMLs if possible. I've already got too much workload plotted out for myself XD Thankfully The_Other has agreed to help with the scripts and all. And thanks for liking them, I feel somewhat happy that my hardwork paid off!

You have my thanks as well Other, if possible I might need your expertise in most (if not all, lol) the scripts and generally putting all the pieces in together. My mind doesn't work that well with scripting at times.

---
Anyways, made the flying animation less static on the legs - a little bobbing and all. Revamped a few frames to hopefully make it look as seamless as possible. And as usual, the frames as well for anyone interested in tinkering with it.

[Shinobody]

I'm just wondering, but Kingfisher's attack anim looks kinda stiff around his head. I mean, it doesn't change in any way.
Wouldn't adding some inertia to the hood, hair and wings give feeling of more "speed"?

[orangebox]

It does, I did contemplate on doing it, but it's too fine of an animating detail for my current level to animate it XD So out of laziness I've decided to skip it altogether (not to mention when the hood pulls back, it'll show some of the hair and head which I find drawing the hardest somehow). However, what I can do is to tinker a little bit with the hair instead. Maybe that way I can skip out the hood altogether! orz

Anyway, thanks for pointing it out

However, to make matters worst, I've slightly polished in general the entire attack animation by incorporating some of the flying animation frames lol. Perhaps after this I'll try to add movement to the hair (and maybe when I feel like I'm up for it, I'll tackle the hood XD)

Animate-KFattack2.gif (9.26 KiB) Viewed 3078 times

Edit:

Scratch that, I've tried doing the hood but it barely shows in the animation ._. I think the frame for it is too short to show anything. Made the hair flow nicer, and added minor hood movements and also for the sharp eyed, minor wing movements to emphasize the speed.

Animate-KFattack2.5.gif (10.2 KiB) Viewed 3069 times

With that, I call the attack animation for kingfisher complete Here's the frames as usual.

Edit 2:
Added the hair flow at the drop part for the fly idle animation. Might work on the hair flow during flight when I feel a little more motivated lol.

Animate-KFflight2.5.gif (28.84 KiB) Viewed 3060 times

By the way, do you guys think the idle flying animation would suit being the flying movement animation as well? Call me lazy lol XD

Edit 3:
Defend animation. Quite about done with Kingfisher animations Only fly movement and death animation left.

Animate-KFdefend.gif (2.32 KiB) Viewed 3062 times

[Crow_T]

You have some skills, I'm looking forward to seeing more portraits as well as sprites

[orangebox]

Thanks for the support crow! I suppose I'll finish the sprites first before moving onto the portraits. Since those are in my higher priority list to be able to test-play them before I commit a portrait

Here's the flight movement.

[Zerovirus]

Damn, count me impressed by that flight animation! That's pretty much mainline quality there- there's a weird bit of jolt on the spear when the unit lands, but otherwise it's amazing.

I'm not so convinced that a horizontal attack will work with wesnoth's southeast and northeast attack-hex patterns, but it's definitely a good animation in and of itself.

Got any other concepts for units? This project is looking cooler and cooler!

[orangebox]

Oh hey thanks zero for the support as well. You should know by now that this project would not have kick started without your first kingfisher draft which I built and learnt upon XD (they call that deconstruction huh)

Anyways, I guess the inconsistency comes from my sudden take on a smoother animation with previously jerky frames. I guess it's what people call 'leveling up'? I'm slowly getting the hang of pixel art and animation altogether, which is why there are inconsistencies along the animations which was done before I've acquired new insights.

I'll try to uniform them once again when I can. Obviously from looking at the flying animation, I can sort of tell that my other animations needs more work ._.

Made the transitions in the attacking animation smoother. I hope it'll work with the hex placements... Might need to tinker with the fly movement animation again, the legs are a little jerky...

[Zerovirus]

I recommend more up-down motion for the metal buckler when the unit is in-flight, as opposed to your currently mostly horizontal motion; I might remove all of the horizontal motion and just go with the vertical motion. The weight should be much more of a factor with the unit bobbing up and down and all.

[orangebox]

Ah, that's a good idea. The horizontal motion was to make space for the wing flap, but I think I could incorporate a vertical motion as well. What do you think of the flying animation's legs? Is the bobbing a little too jerky?

Or, perhaps I could simply move the shield in front of her instead of sideways when she's flying? That way I would only need to do the vertical motions

Here it is Hopefully it's near perfect now

[direfish]

Is it just me or do the wings seem to be a bit lower than expected? Like if they were attached to her lower back?
Otherwise looks very good.

[lipk]

They're indeed lower than on usual depictions of winged people, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Artists (and everyone else) tend to attach the wings to the shoulder because they think (correctly) that it's something like an arm. But if you assume that they fly with a horizontal posture, it's better to have the wings lower since humans' barycenter is somewhere around the navel. Furthermore, it's somehow refreshing to see some winged fellows who actually don't look like angels

[william150]

they remind me the Aragwaith

[em3]

they remind me the Aragwaith

Because the sprite palette is based on Aragwaithi sprites.

[orangebox]

em3 > yeah you're correct on that. I based it off zero's base sprite which was based off aragwaith's palette (so he says). So technically, it's a long line down, but with the same color palettes XD

Anyway, fixed the bad leg jerking issues, and implemented the vertical bobbing shields

[artisticdude]

That looks pretty nice!

One thing that bothers me is that the shadow changes its horizontal location a bit too much. The position of the shadow should remain relatively constant (since the unit is bobbing vertically and not moving horizontally), though the size of the shadow should fluctuate in sync with the bob animation (so when he's closest to the ground is when the shadow would be largest, and when he's farthest away from the ground the shadow would be smallest).