New animations

[Reepurr]

I made a death animation for the goblin wolf rider. I'm not sure how good it is overall, but I do believe that it may need a frame between frames 3 and 4, because it seems to jump a bit. Otherwise, what do you guys think?

And, yes, this is my first (sprite) animation.

[Note: my name is black, which means I have never created anything good enough to get into mainline, and you don't have to take me seriously at all. It's blue or olive names you need to listen to.]

It's my belief death animations must be 4 frames with the new macro regime, so if it is, that's okay. However, I'd imagine the rider would lose his grip on the wolf at some point, rather than just rotating with it like he's stuck to the saddle with Superglue.
The wolf's kinematics are pretty good [in my opinion], but you really need to give parts of it that awesome "spiky fur, don't mess with me" vibe (like all of it). And I'm seeing pillowing/reverse pillowing in strange places.

A definition of pillowing:

Pillow Shading is when the lightest parts of something are furthest from the lines, and reverse pillowing is the exact opposite - the lightest parts are next to the lines, and the dark parts are in the middle of the object.

[Zaggy1024]

I'm not sure if this is much of an improvement in the area of pillowing (not sure which areas should have reverse pillowing and which should have pillowing), but I did try to add some wolfyness to the last frame. Does it look any better?

Edit: Finished adding a frame to go before the last one. I may need to move the goblin's body down a bit more to make it smoother.

[beetlenaut]

Reepur is right. They are falling as if they are one object. The rider should only be about halfway through his fall when the wolf hits the ground. You are going to have to redo a fair bit of it, which is why the animators all tell you to block it out first to get the motion right.

[Jetrel]

The primary problem here is a common one - the wolf is deflating. The 3-dimensional width of his body isn't the same when he makes contact with the ground. On the ground, his body should be much thicker.

Part of this is a bad assumption that his foot should remain planted; have his body take maybe a quarter-turn of rotation (or eighth), and have that foot on our right side get pulled off the ground.

[bonehead11]

Tried to animate skeleton archer attack, he has one attack frame if I am not mistaken. Here is the result.

[beetlenaut]

That is what a punch would actually look like, but in the animations, normal motions have to be greatly exaggerated.

[thespaceinvader]

It's too slow, and nowhere near exaggerated enough.

Too slow is a key point - for most, if not all, melee attacks, we don't want to show the striking tool moving at all - it goes from the furthest windup frame back, to forwardmost point of the strike, in one frame, with motion blur.

[bonehead11]

Exaggarated and fast enough?

[Reepurr]

Um...well...it's not really very exagerrated at all to be honest (peanut gallery warning!). Bear in mind he's attacking from another hex, which is a distance of ~50-60px or something. And he'll be moving across that 50-60px at fairly high speed, so you'll need to be really concentrating hard to see that.

Personally (peanut gallery!!) I'd suggest actually extending his arm by around 12 pixels when he strikes so that you can see the motion and understand that 'he is trying to punch the enemy'.
But I'll say it again: I'm a peanut gallery member and really I can't be trusted with animations at all.

[thespaceinvader]

Indeed. Much more of a lunge. http://www.roseli.org/images/manuals1.gif - that's realistic, and he's barely doing that. Exaggerate more.

Also, give it more reaction on the other side of the body. Really twist his whole body into it.

Alternatively, a haymaker type punch might work, or a shatneresque downward hammer.

[beetlenaut]

I don't think an impact flash is wanted either. (An art dev. can correct me if I'm wrong.) Jetryl is (was?) planning to add that as a separate overlay on all attacks eventually, and none of the other impact-damage units have it, so it would look odd at this point.

[bonehead11]

Tried to immitate haymaker type of punch, made him lunge more,removed impact flash and hope its exeggerated enough.

[thespaceinvader]

Getting there now.

The other thing I'd suggest is to really pull the bow arm round behind him. We should probably see the bow on the other side of his head for one or two frames during the longest extension.

[shiremct]

His lunging foot is facing slightly outward through the entire movement just as it is in his standing pose. It should be rotated to be in-line with the body with the toes facing southeast (and the enemy) while he's moving it.

Edit: clarified which foot I meant. And the direction.

[bonehead11]

Tried to repair the feet and the bow placement.