Standing and idle animations?

[Major]

Ha ha. He's gone senile!
I'll fix the axe head, but should I get rid of the muttering?

Fixed axe-shading.

Dwarf explorer idle anim2.gif (11.17 KiB) Viewed 3281 times

[beetlenaut]

I'm fine with the muttering, but you should fix the lower axe's bouncing. That arm seems to get at least a pixel shorter in the middle too.

[Major]

I shall fix that offendin' axe and the arm holdin' it.

[thespaceinvader]

I'd far prefer it if you lost one of the axes, and used his hand to shield his eyes (you will need to redraw the hand so it's open, however, this will be a very good challenge) - otherwise concept looks fine, but it needs to be smoother, generally. For instance, when his free arm turns, it loses about half its length, as the hand stays at exactly the same level, but the axe haft moves down to the horizontal, imply that he's straightened his arm out. And that's not the explorer, it's the scout

The way I'd work it: standing still, the axe in his left hand vanishes (or is teleported onto his belt). He puts his hand up to shield his eyes (don't forget to shade his face when you do this) without moving his head. Then he looks round (only once, but we can re-use the frames if we want to extend the anim) then puts it back down.

[zookeeper]

The way I'd work it: standing still, the axe in his left hand vanishes (or is teleported onto his belt).

You could also easily improve on that by having a few frames where he lowers it and makes it vanish behind his back and then re-use those frames in the end to pick it up again (sort of like how the Master at Arms uses his crossbow). Those should be really easy to do and would keep the whole sequence smooth without any sudden disappearances.

[thespaceinvader]

Bingo, that works.

[Jetrel]

I'd far prefer it if you lost one of the axes, and used his hand to shield his eyes (you will need to redraw the hand so it's open, however, this will be a very good challenge) - otherwise concept looks fine, but it needs to be smoother, generally. For instance, when his free arm turns, it loses about half its length, as the hand stays at exactly the same level, but the axe haft moves down to the horizontal, imply that he's straightened his arm out. And that's not the explorer, it's the scout

Not to butt in, but ... Really? This seems like an unfair thing to impose. I think it's kinda cool to use the axe, plus it leaves open the possibility for other units to use their hand to cover their eyes, rather than that useful idiom getting really overdone quickly. It just seems like an awkward waste of work, when the axe (IMO) works fine for the job, and fits the unit.

I've done stuff like this in real-life (shielded my eyes with a heavy tool) - it's not silly or out of character at all.


If he does another member of the line, then yes, he should switch it up a bit and that'd be a good way to do so, but for this unit, this should be fine.

[thespaceinvader]

Fair enough - however, in that case, the ave blade needs to be foreshortened a little more.

I've provided some ideas for the other levels which should work, too.

I'll commit the WC later on, after final testing.

[Major]

So after all that discushion...what exactly am I supposed to improve on? Besides the unused arm and the face shading.
And which axe must be foreshortened and how?

[thespaceinvader]

The blade of the one he's shading his face with - it currently looks to me like it's pointing up, rather than out.

[Trilby]

Okay, progress in a slightly different direction for the Woodsman idle animation, based on Beetlenaut's suggestion. Posted should be an amalgamated GIF if only to put across that my first appearance was more than just a flash in the pan.

While I've yet to address the case of the missing arms and finish modding the shadow, this probably doesn't appear much more advanced than the first GIF. I added a crouch to the figure's turn and at last I'm getting some dynamism in return for my efforts. There's been quite a learning curve and many hours of experimentation spent since Friday on getting the motion close to how I first envisioned it. I've gone for a balance of fewer frames and so I've not quite managed to get the Woodsman's head to lead the motion and so it cycles quite quickly into the standing frame, so he doesn't stay crouched for too long a time. Already there are 11 or so frames, maybe 10 individual images involved. Is there a rule of thumb when it comes to the quantity of frames per action?

[Peter the Great]

Try doing that motion in real life. You'll notice that your feet don't stay glued to the ground, they move ever so slightly.

And AFAIK go ahead and make it have 20 frames the only frame limit is on defense animations which should only be 1-3 frames long.

[Major]

I have shaded the face and fixed the unused arm problem (I think) and I will post one with the shortened axe.

Dwarf scout idle anim.gif (11.14 KiB) Viewed 2961 times

[beetlenaut]

@Trilby: That looks pretty good, but not quite natural. If you try crouching, you will find that it's very difficult not to lean forward at the waist.

@Major: You still have the lower arm too short. When he goes back to the base frame, that arm seems to grow four inches.

[someone]

@Trilby: That looks pretty good, but not quite natural. If you try crouching, you will find that it's very difficult not to lean forward at the waist.

I disagree. I can make that motion easily. He's hardly even leaning forward.