New animations

[Frogger5]

That's probably because the eyes aren't added yet, when they are, he'll probably have his eyes on the enemy the whole time.
It is not way too much exaggeration at all. His face only moves the length of one pixel.

[xtifr]

That's probably because the eyes aren't added yet, when they are, he'll probably have his eyes on the enemy the whole time.
It is not way too much exaggeration at all. His face only moves the length of one pixel.

His face is only six pixels wide to start with! But I take your point. Still, I think that rotating the head up instead of sideways might look better, but after a quick test, I think it's simply the case that whatever is done will have to be slightly de-exaggerated when details are added.

[Major]

Two computer breakdowns and more than a month later here it is.
Sorry about the delay.
Critique anyone?

[Zerovirus]

Ah, great to see you back Major. I was wondering whether you hadn't vanished and thus become lost to the project. And you haven't given up either! Nice work.

The frames after he puts the spear into stab position and before he actually stabs seem really jumpy, like his arms were twitching uncontrollably.

[Major]

Ah I see what you mean.
After looking at the blocking I did I looks Like his feet were supposed to move differently.
I'll fix that quickly.

EDIT: Here we go, this looks better.

[Yoyobuae]

Is it me or he seems to be stabbing twice? The motion blur when he first points the spear forward makes it seem so.

Also, you should probably use the motion blur exclusively for the actual stabbing motion. For example, in this post:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 99#p436199
Also in the post after that you can see the Drake Arbitrer's stabbing anim.

Maybe try to avoid the spear head moving forward as he rotates it to point forward. Make him move back a bit for the wind up, then move a lot forward for the stab.

[thespaceinvader]

Yeah. He rotates the spear into place, then pushes it forward a little, then pulls it back, then stabs. The result is something that looks a little jiggly and unclear. The spear should rotate smoothly from the vertical position, to the pulled-back position, then strike immediately forward. If you can fix that, this should be good to go.

Any progress on fixing up those various idle animations?

[Major]

Which animations must I fix up and how?
I'll fix the spearman tomorrow.

[thespaceinvader]

Check further back in this and the idle animations thread. From memory, the Scout one still had some issues, as did the Pathfinder one. The WC recruit could work with some kinematic alterations. I think the WC idle was more or less there.

Post what you have done, in a thread of your own in Art Contribs, and we'll see where we are and exactly what needs doing. It's been a while for both of us, after all.

[Major]

Back to blocking. It would be helpful if this kind of thing were picked up BEFORE I go ahead and sprite it.

[thespaceinvader]

It doesn't show up well in the blocking

I'll do some edits later to try to work out a fix.

[Major]

Here is the new(ish) attack animation.

[thespaceinvader]

Looks better - but take a look at the Drake Clasher animations to see how to do the new schema for pierce attack motion blurs. I'd probably be inclined to keep it a little simpler one that sccore too - just put the blur into the strike, not the wind-up or recovery.

[Yoyobuae]

I think that it looks best when motion blur forms during the motion only and dissipates almost instantly (ie: 1 intermediate frame with very little motion blur left) upon impact.

When I coded (ie. edited cfg file for new animation frames) the new saurian skirm anims into my wesnoth copy, such a motion blur worked very well when coordinated with the spear hit sound.

Even better if stab motion stops suddenly in that frame (a side effect of the sudden impact with the target), then the unit recovers after a small pause.

Just giving some ideas, if you want to use them.

[Major]

Something along the lines of this?