New animations

[Tapsa]

I just think that a ghost uses a material clothing. It already uses material blades...

[friar tuck]

I just think that a ghost uses a material clothing. It already uses material blades...

To emphasise this, maybe something "immaterial" should be floating up while the material stuff (coat, blade) is falling down.

[Tapsa]

To emphasise this, maybe something "immaterial" should be floating up while the material stuff (coat, blade) is falling down.

Good idea. I'll start working on it.

[Jetrel]

The fatal flaw in these two animations uploaded recently (adept, shadow) is that the heart of what makes the animation good - the physical motion of the involved objects, is wrong or too subtle.

Forget the flashy lens flares and glow effects. Focus on making the sprite's basic motion both correct, and animated across enough frames to actually be visible.

The big issue with the adept's animation is that it's so subtle that it's practically unnoticeable. He pretty much moves a finger or two, and nothing more. Animations like this need to have much more elaborate, noticeable motions.

A related thing to be aware of is that kinematics dictates that even a subtle motion of the arms is going to result in the rest of the body shifting slightly to compensate. The rest of the body won't move much, but it's not going to be still like a statue - it's gonna shift by at least a pixel's worth for most motions, and this needs to be taken into account to make an animation look good.

[ael193]

Perhaps the shadow should fade out and the inanimate cloak and blade would then fall to the ground.

[Qes]

General Art Question:

Jetryl I find your mini-essay's on art fascinating - even though I've no visual artistic ability. That being said, I was reading on your desires involving sprite facings, and the animations thereof. I'm curious - is there going to be some future date in which the sprites wont always face south during idle-times?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but from what I understand only movement and attacks will trigger alternate animations from the standard 'standing' or 'idle' animation or sprite.

You mentioned that the quality of the visuals increases with idle animations, and I couldnt agree more - I'm wondering if having units face different directions, as standing sprites, would also look good. Or, if it'd look hokey.

What I'm picturing is having an army arrayed across a map, facing many different directions, many sprites with their 'backs' to me. Idle animations would occur for forward facing and 'away' facing sprites. This, obviously, would double or quadrouple the number of needed animations - so I understand it's no where even close to the horizon. I'm just wondering if that might be the direction it's heading generally toward.

Also, I wonder if at some distant-future date, it'd not be possible to have the sprites, when idle, to face the closest enemy unit. Hell, it'd be great if it were even animated. An 'alternative' idle animation for every unit, to turn and face the closest enemy unit.

It's only a curiosity - but it would seem to me to add onto that feeling that idle animations already bring and are bringing.
-Qes

[Jetrel]

Committed the assassin melee animation girgistan made here - I did some heavy changes to the path of the blade.

I was as equally fooled as he was on my first pass over the sprites; my first cleanup looked fine in photoshop, and seemed like it would make sense spatially, but looked odd (perhaps even a bit cactuar) in-game. What helped fix it was exaggerating the motion into a much wider slash, with heavy "wind-up". Ironically I was able to eliminate one of the frames entirely, and it still looked better.

Generally speaking, animations like this often don't look right unless the involved parties give an almost looney-tunes/popeye-like windup to their strikes. It's a classic principle of animation.

Archive of the frames (and quietus' defense animation) attached:

[bonehead11]

They were lost so I will reupload the Orc crossbowman attack animation and thief attack animation.

[thespaceinvader]

I suggest you take a good look at some up-to-date attack animations to see how motion blurs are done in Wesnoth. The bowman is a good example:



Generally, they appear in only one or two frames during the actual strike, and are semi-transparent, with exactly two colours, picked from the weapon colours. They don't appear during the wind-up for a strike. That aside, a little more exaggeration never hurt anyone (movements look better bigger in pixel-scale animations, usually), but these animations look pretty good to me.

[bonehead11]

I didnt knew how to do transparent motion blurs back there before I had gimp,made them in easy to use and really hard to find program,basic functions etc.
Will look into it later.Those animations arent finished,so any suggestions would be really welcome.

[EELuminatus]

Voilà, the Revenant's expanded attack... (with background, so the semi-transparent effects are visible)

Ready for some tweaking...
(well, just noticed the left leg's movement probably needs to be worked on - I'll await your comments first, though.)

EDIT: sorry, right leg that is...
btw.: the Draug is currently left handed - should that be changed or will we keep him like this?

[zookeeper]

Holy crap, that's really cool.

[woodmouse]

Oooh! The coolest animation ever! How many frames does it have? 50?

And I tried to make attack animation for Drake Enforcer: (I know the leg, wing and body moves weirdly) (this is the mace attack, like you probably quessed...)

[Longbow]

Voilà, the Revenant's expanded attack

It is awesome.

Woodmouse: Nice animation, but I'm hoping Neorice will redo the drake baseframes but...

[woodmouse]

Woodmouse: Nice animation, but I'm hoping Neorice will redo the drake baseframes but...

EEEE I forgot that! I spent long time making that and...