Topic: Eric's art thread

[Eric]

UPDATE: You're going to have to wade through a few posts of crap before you get to anything that looks good, but as of March 7, this is the best I've done:



Hi folks. I'm a new member here, and have enjoyed looking through this sub-forum more than any other part of the site. There are some amazingly talented people congregated here.

...Which is why I'm a little embarrassed to share my learning process with you. I'm slowly, slowly attempting to make a small game of my own, and by far, the most daunting part is animation. Tonight, I decided to start learning by trying to animate the key frames of a walk cycle. Results were not that great, but I have made some process.  At midnight, I had never animated a walk cycle before, and now I've made several tries at it:

I hand drew 1/2 of the walk cycle just to sort of get my bearings. Very very loose doodles here, and throughout my other attempts below as well.



Toned down the extreme frame where it looks like the character looks like he's about to break into a run, did a doodle-over second draft, and tossed on some color in Photoshop:



With this version, I was also trying to deal with the physics of the body. This character has a bit of a paunch that I wanted to see bounce a little when he took steps. This is me trying to get my head 'round the effects of gravity and inertia that happen as we take steps. Here's a version with a faster framerate:



The arm swing and gait are still a bit extreme here. After this draft, I thought it might be helpful to break things down to an abstract level, and did a sticks n' shapes version, making the swing and gait not so exaggerated:



Still lots of issues, but I think it doesn't look too bad if you cover up the stick feet (wish I'd done the joint on the ball of the foot). I also think that the figure should lean forward slightly.

I've found a number of the tutorials linked in the sticky'd post useful, and I especially wish the Biomotion lab app allowed you to advance through their motion capture walk cycles frame by frame. I'm still looking around at some other resources, and hopefully will find some time to improve later this week. I feel like being able to do something like this is a hurdle I have to clear before thinking seriously about making a game of any length.

Anyway, thanks for checking in on my learning process so far. Hope you aren't too horrified!

[Eric]

Well, I found a better walk cycle template by Eric Colossal, who, coincidentally, lives just down the hill from me. This one was tucked away in the contribution thread, whereas the older version, which was not as good, is the only one linked in the tutorial thread.

I stretched the cycle template out, because I'm working with a tall, gangly character, and started a...you guys call it a paintover?...process. I've done torsos, heads and arms for 1/2 of the cycle, and two pairs of legs. Thought I'd share a little more with you guys. I feel like I'm not doing horribly, but I'm prepared for when you all find this thread and show up to throw tomatoes at me. My posts here will hopefully serve to keep me accountable, and keep me making progress.

100%:



200%:



I kept Mr. Colossal's template in the background at a lower opacity to show where I've followed and where I've deviated from it.

[Anian]

If you're going for a serious walkcylce (as in not a comedy game), you might want to soften the walk - make the character take a shorter step and not bend the knees so much.
Also his hands are wobbly, like there's no bones in them and is being electrocuted, I'd turn that into a simpler swing of the hand.
The example/template is good, but it's kind of exaggerated so you can notice the movement of limbs, for more natural walk the movement would a lot less pronounced.

Btw. the look of the sprite seems really nice. Though the hands could be a few pixels longer (or shorten the torso a bit)

The first walkcycle also had the problem of the legs being too in front (the legs were not going backward enough so it looked liked the character was off balance)

[Eric]

Thanks very much for the feedback, anian!

If you're going for a serious walkcylce (as in not a comedy game), you might want to soften the walk - make the character take a shorter step and not bend the knees so much. Also his hands are wobbly, like there's no bones in them and is being electrocuted, I'd turn that into a simpler swing of the hand.

This is actually reassuring, because, if this works, I will attempting a humorous game. This character, when I draw him elsewhere, is somewhat physically based on Disney's Goofy. His arms are a bit spaghetti-er, and his structure and poses exaggerated. That's why I started the gait and the arm swing so extreme, but what works in a static illustration doesn't always work in animation, so I'm learning.

This is also the reason for the "snap" of the hands. I'm thinking you're right, and it doesn't work, but I might try it through the other half of the walk cycle just to see. Also, if I thought I sucked at drawing hands when I could outline them in black, I'm downright hideous when it comes to trying to suggest them through pixel coloring.

Btw. the look of the sprite seems really nice. Though the hands could be a few pixels longer (or shorten the torso a bit)

Thank you. I think I might need to lighten the sweater a bit if I actually intend to use this sprite with backgrounds. I'll need to figure out values of the backgrounds, I guess.

Funny that, you're right, the arms are short. In real life, my arms are, for some reason, each two inches shorter than they should be. I found out in a statistics class when the teacher was using the, "Most people's bodies are square, head-to-toe = arm span," example, and I threw off the teaching model with a deformity I'd never realized I'd had up until that point!

The first walkcycle also had the problem of the legs being too in front (the legs were not going backward enough so it looked liked the character was off balance)

This is what I was picking up on when I wrote above that I thought the character needed to lean forward more. I knew there was a balance issue somewhere.

Thanks so much for the feedback!

[Wafflle Bombs]

Very nice! The sprite is wonderful and has loads of character by itself! The walking animation is very loose, which is perfect since you're going for a humorous game. I do agree that the hands could be a little longer, since they look a bit small in relation to the rest of his body.

Nice attention to detail, too! The little lock of hair that bounces with each step is a nice touch, and the gut is perfect. Overall, a very nice piece which I look forward to seeing more of!

[Khris]

Mr Colossal's template is fine, but you might want to take a look at this:
http://www.bigbluecup.com/yabb/index.php?topic=14864.msg583836#msg583836

[Eric]

WaffleBombs - Thanks for the compliments and the advice. I think, like me, you are new here. So welcome!

Khris - I saw that, and stupidly thought, "Well, I want to animate something more than 50px tall," not even thinking that it's a stick figure that I can enlarge. I think I'll stick with the Colossal method for the side views of this particular try, and maybe adapt the ratios of this for the front/rear views. Thanks!

[Eric]

Another try. I'm not very good at pixel art, I'm discovering. Especially on the pants.

I fixed the issue with the hands by realizing that I was drawing a cycle that was twice what it should be for my leg motion.

Then, I matched the wrong arm motion to the leg motion, and had to move everything around. Thank god for layers.

I forgot to adjust the tie in the second row for when the torso turns toward the camera (player?), so there's a weird shoulder shimmy.

Thanks again everyone for your guidance. It's not the best, but, like I said, at the start of this week, I'd never really animated anything, much less a walk cycle, so I'm happy with my progress.

EDITED LATER IN THE EVENING TO ADD:

Learned a very, very important lesson, I think. Started a test game, made a very basic room, trying to start learning the AGS system. The lesson is this: smudging the edges is a horrible substitute for anti-aliasing by hand, and renders sprites useless!

AND A SECOND EDIT:

...Learned a second lesson. If I use 32-bit true-color, I can use alpha channels, which makes everything OK again, I think?

[Bernie]

I really like the sketched look of the pants. What seems to stand out to me is his more pixelled-looking upper half.

The walk cycle itself is very well done. Looks like a lot of effort went into that. Characters that large are quite hard to draw and animate.

[Dualnames]

if his back foot was sliding, then he would be SHUFFLING. I think it looks fantastic. Very fluent, ver unique walkcycle.

[Eric]

I really like the sketched look of the pants. What seems to stand out to me is his more pixelled-looking upper half.

I think maybe the issue here is that they're slightly mismatched in style. I really like the pixelized head, and the torso and arms seem to match it. Also, the pants/legs took me about eight times longer than anything else, and so I'm probably always going to hate them.

if his back foot was sliding, then he would be SHUFFLING. I think it looks fantastic. Very fluent, ver unique walkcycle.

Thank you guys so much for the compliments and support. I think I've proven to myself at this point that I can do it, so now I suppose I should start thinking about making a short game. Last night, I whipped up a quick background and started practicing with the programming language:



I was stumped on what to really do, because I just wanted to mess with the code, so looking at each of the portholes gave a track name, and using them played one of four songs I've been working on lately. It took a lot of Googling "site:bigbluecup.com '(name of function I don't completely understand)' (general idea of I want to do with it)," but I got things working eventually.

Before progressing, I also sort of want to try doing a version of this sprite that starts in Illustrator as well, where I feel my art style is on less shaky ground (and taking as an inspiration the sprites seen in this thread), but there are a number of things I want to fix about this one too. Lots of pondering to do about my next step.

In any case, thanks again for the encouragement and criticism!

EDITED IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT TO ADD:

So I went ahead and tried working in Illustrator, and I like the results. With the caveat that I still have to redo the head and add some of the details, here's a comparison:



What do I lose from going the new route? Does the sprite lose its charm (this might have to remain to be seen until after I redo the head)? Will the animation be less smooth? Do I lose that nostalgic feeling?

What do I gain? Does it look better, or am I crazy?

[Eric]

As you can see above, made some more progress while the forums were down!

[Eric]

Some flickering around the shoulder where I need to tighten up the linework, I need to be more consistent with his tie/dress shirt area, and the pin on his chest jumps in one frame. I think I might need one more frame of movement just before the up step too, as it's a bit jerky.

Still, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I think this is damned good considering I hadn't done this two weeks ago. Don't worry, though, I'm sure working on the front/back walking sprite will kill any feeling of accomplishment I have at this point!

[Anian]

The hands are still a bit too twitchy for my taste, I think the followthough might be too exagurated.
Plus the hand that is closer to the viewer kind of rotates for no reason - it seems on the swing back, the palm rotates towards the camera and forward...which doesn't make sense. Look at how the hand that's further away from the camera looks, thumb inwards (towards the body) and palm backwards and slightly towards the body, the closer hand should do the same, but it kind of does the opposite.

[Eric]

Plus the hand that is closer to the viewer kind of rotates for no reason

You're right on this one. I got it right in the pixel version, inasmuch as you can tell what those hands are doing. I'll dig up some more hand reference and fix that when I do the handful of other corrections I need to do.

Thanks!

[Eric]

Fixed the hand and a handful of other things. Made new things to fix.

In tightening up the arms, I've lost some of the wild spaghetti arm floppiness that I was going for, which makes the one frame with the not-humanly-possible angle stand out. I still need to lower the hump on the shoulder in that same frame, and I need to get my shadows tighter by laying the frames overtop each other, instead of in a strip, to be more consistent as the sprite moves.

I think I might let this be for now and move on to some other aspect of making the game, before I get too bogged down. When I started this thread, all I wanted to do was prove to myself that it was possible, and as I noted before, I think I've done that.

Now I might move on to testing some GUIs or something before considering fixing this sprite / making the other views. Otherwise, I will wind up with one really nice looking sprite and...that might be all.

[Bernie]

I think he looks great. I take it you'll  give him 4 directions?

By the way, there will always be a point where you have to make a quality/time compromise. It helps keeping your spirits up.

[Eric]

I think he looks great. I take it you'll  give him 4 directions?

Thank you. Four is L/R/U/D? I plan to do at least those. I'm not sure I have my head around diagonal motions yet (nor, really, up and down, to be honest), but I might should start considering it if I'm going to do any backgrounds, I guess? How horrible does it look when L/R are used for diagonal walking?

By the way, there will always be a point where you have to make a quality/time compromise. It helps keeping your spirits up.

Thanks for this too. Right now, I'm able to balance the newness of animation with drawing some backgrounds, learning a little programming, making some music, and developing puzzles. I'm the proto-typical Gemini who serially abandons projects once I've figured them out completely, so dealing with so many different media and new concepts is good for me.

I think I may abandon the cel-shading on the sprite. I did a simple reverse in the game in the room I'd made and realized that the shadows won't always be, unless I'm really tight with it, consistent with the light sources in the backgrounds. I'm looking at the Journey of Iesir preview art, and their sprites are flat colored with little detriment to the character's appearance against the backgrounds. So perhaps I don't need the shadows to make the character look life-like.

Then again, neither my sprite nor my backgrounds are up to the standard that they've set, so...more questions to consider!

[Grim]

This is a great sprite. Hats off to you, sir;) The only problem you will encounter is that when you'll find that you need to animate this gigolo a hundred times over to make him interact with environment and other characters, you will likely get really really tired... It seems like a task for Disney's 20 finest animators, not one man alone. My advice- simplify. It might seem like a bad idea if you're just starting, but trust me- by the room 35 you will be cursing all that cell-shading goodness...

[Eric]

This is a great sprite. Hats off to you, sir;) The only problem you will encounter is that when you'll find that you need to animate this gigolo a hundred times over to make him interact with environment and other characters, you will likely get really really tired... It seems like a task for Disney's 20 finest animators, not one man alone. My advice- simplify. It might seem like a bad idea if you're just starting, but trust me- by the room 35 you will be cursing all that cell-shading goodness...

I've been contemplating the same thing, and trying to figure out ways that I can cut corners. I have my Illustrator file set up in layers based on the walk template that I made before, but I think for the next time, especially now that I have the colors and line weights worked out, I'm going to try to segment the body, so make a standard torso for front/rear views, and draw the limbs around it.

It is surprising, but drawing this version took me significantly less time than trying to do the pixel version. Part of it was that I had the base already made, but part of it too is that I have a lot of experience drawing lines, and not as much finessing tiny dots. I'm definitely dropping the shading too, which will cut down on some time, and I plan on doing a very primitive style of rotoscoping / trace-overs for some if not most of the animations. I've got a nice little face modeling program so I can have consistency of skull shape across my movements and phoneme animations, and that will help as well.

This is a one-man operation, and my priority list goes something like: raise a baby, finish a dissertation, find a job, buy the groceries, etc. etc., and way down on the list is make a game. But I'm having a lot of fun so far!