Anim. help needed: Drunk guy walking

[abstauber]

Hey there,

I'm currently having a little trouble with this animation. Does anyone know how I can add more drunkenness? I think drunk people are spinning with their torse a lot more than my guy.
But as I added more torso movement, the animation looked terrible.. Help



Oh and it's more the trouble seeking type of being drunk

[Wreck]

A lot of the drunk effect would come I guess from varying the speed of the walk-cycle between cycles.

However as that would likely be a pain to do, one thing I remember from watching Billy Connoly the other week (he did a whole section on different drunk walks) is that the front / back motion is not even.

As it looked to me, it was a case of the Drunk trying to defeat gravity, and every time 1 foot is off the floor there is a problem for him. So the motion of the back foot coming forward through the air is very rapid, to try and get it back on the floor as soon as possible. The reverse is true once the foot is on the floor so the foot stays on the ground as long as possible for the backwards track (I know its not actually going backwards but I hope you get what I mean). This makes the motion less even and more (i guess) like a chicken strut, e.g. it's not a smooth cycle, lots of little bursts of speed.

So foot/leg travel forward = quick. Foot/leg travel backward = slow.

In addition it is common to mis-judge where the floor is so the leg snaps to straight forward and possibly misses the ground by a fraction, jarring the drunk as the foot hits the ground. I think Mr Connoly refferred to that walk as the 'Straight legged' drunk who always looked like where-ever he had to go was a long long way from where he currently was

I seem to remember the head/gaze was pretty static when he was prancing around the stage like that, I guess in an effort to keep the horizon straight from the drunks perspective

Next step in drunkeness would be an all out forward/back/ side stagger which would be a bit of a nightmare to do I guess.

Hope this helps, probably not the best description in the world.

[abstauber]

Thanks, that was very insightful!

I'll try a less uniform walkcycle then.

I guess what I did happens when you don't work with keyframes

[markbilly]

If he could stop and point whilst wobbling on the spot every now and again that would look cool...

[abstauber]

hehe, I'd like to keep it below 50 frames

btw. this site is pretty neat:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~gwtaylor/publications/nips2006mhmublv/videos/

Motion captured people as animated gifs, also featuring a drunk guy.

[abstauber]

@Wreck, I tried to follow your advice about fighting the gravity. But I'm still having trouble with the feet since it's a walkcycle and I have to keep the movement in mind.


So this one's looking a lot more drunk now


I left out the arms for now, any ideas to smoothen it without loosing fight of gravity?

Thanks!

[markbilly]

I left out the arms for now, any ideas to smoothen it without loosing fight of gravity?

No, because you shouldn't smoothen it. It looks great now!

[DrewCCU]

the guy leans to the front almost perfectly - but he never leans backwards ... i think maybe he should lean back a a little too - this would add to the wobblyness.

[Evil]

I think it really depends. The most recent animation looks really fluid and awesome. But his walk is really distinct. He looks like a sleepy drunk motivated to get somewhere, which looks really nice if it works for that character. If you want a more bumbling drunk, he needs to lean back, maybe two more pixels, and his head should tip backwards and sort of whip forward when he steps. His legs should function one at a time rather than simultaneously, and then his feet should sort of slap on the ground. That should give him more of a troublesome, extremely intoxicated look. But regardless, what you have now looks solid.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

For a convincing drunk animation you'll want to break it up into a movement phase and then a pause phase (where he tries to retain balance).  Obviously you can't really do this all in a walk cycle since your character will still appear to be moving in a program like AGS even when standing still, but the art side of it would work something like:

Movement phase (erratic):

1.  In this phase the drunk moves forward, albeit with balance issues, often swaying back and forth to
compensate for a lack of motor coordination.

2.  Additional variations on the walk motion (a short stagger forward, for instance) will further sell the animation and could be randomized with the default walk swaying.  Movement speed is also important and you want to keep the animation and movement speeds down unless you have a lot of frames.



Pause phase (static):

1.  Here the drunk pauses (briefly or for awhile at your discretion) to try and focus and regain balance.  This can be as simple as the animation I've done (4 frames) to him resting an arm on a wall or something for support.




Non-standard walk cycles can have some of the most varied and interesting animations so the easiest way to design them is in pieces as I have illustrated.  Focus on one segment of the walk cycle at a time to break it down into easier to handle parts and then you can assemble them in different ways to make the result look more random.  Good luck.

[Ryan Timothy B]

If I remember correctly, Charlie Foxtrot had a great comedic drunken walk (which would only really work in a comedy style game).

If you really wanted to make your drunk's walk look less like it's repeating, you double the walk cycle so he does two different walk cycles.

[abstauber]

Hey, thanks for all the great answers!

I guess my chances are really a little limited - I guess I'll analyze your cool 6-frame example a little, ProgZ and see if I can add some more frames.

@Ryan
Is there any chance for youtube link?

Thanks again

[abstauber]

Okies, I think I'm finally done with the stickman phase

Here's the final dude:

[kaputtnik]

Ooh, that guy is really in for trouble. I can already feel it.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

That looks good!  What you'll want to do is use the frame delay setting in the View editor of AGS to control the speed of the animation at various phases of motion.  As far as his physical on screen motion goes, you might not get good results using the Walk function for this since he'll move the same distance forward per frame regardless of slowing down or staggering forward.  If this doesn't really bother you though then I wouldn't worry about it, it's just something to be aware of.

I look forward to seeing the complete version!

[abstauber]

Thanks for the hint! Messing with the delay might indeed improve things a lot.

I already did a quick check in AGS, that's why the foot with the weight on always moves 2px per frame. Otherwise the guy started gliding or it looked like he slipped. Oh well, let's see how he looks with flesh on his bones

[SookieSock]

since the movement in AGS is tied to frame changes, if you randomised the frame delays (not completely random but with some random element) he shouldn't slide since his sprite wont move until there's a frame change.

Im not sure what that would look like but it would certainly look "drunk"

[Wayne Adams]

i dunno if yer still polishing this, but i did a few really dynamic key frames.. maybe you'd wanna integrate one of these in:

[abstauber]

@Wayne
These frames are hilarious But including those in a walkcycle would include way too much frames for me. But I'll definately consider to use 5+6 in a talk animation. This pointy finger is just too cool

Anyway, I've manged paste Ben's base sprite on the stickman and this is how it looks.



Not as drunken as I thought, but adding delays as suggested might do the trick.

[Igor Hardy]

Would be nice if he did bend a little more at times (in the losing balance sort of way).