C&C: My first walking animation

Paper Carnival · Wed 31/12/2003 17:51:38

The last time I've tried to do a walking animation I had to stop while in progress, because it sucked. Well, I decided to give it a shot again... Here is what I came up with:

He looks better when walking across the screen

I need C&C mostly about the animation, but not for shading/colours/the face etc (but C&C for that is still welcome). You see, this is bone animation and the body is only for testing. If I want to have a different character I can just redraw the whole body and assign the points to the bones. And yes, I know his face isn't good. I'll improve it later.

EDIT: Why doesn't he animate? Am I doing something wrong?

Darth Mandarb · Wed 31/12/2003 17:58:07

You need to set the animation to endlessly loop, or it'll just go through all frames 1 time and then stop.

The animation seems pretty smooth ... I need to see it repeat before further critique.

But I will say this ... speed it up a notch or two. It's pretty 'slow motion' ... maybe that's what you were going for?

Looks good so far!

edit it looks like maybe the first and last frames might be the same. I would suggest removing one or the other to avoid a 'lag' in the animation as you'll have double frames!!

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Paper Carnival · Wed 31/12/2003 18:13:22

I'm not into gifs at all; I just combined the png files into one gif file. I don't have any program that can edit the gif dynamically (that is, change animation speed, make it repeat etc). Do you have a program in mind?

EDIT: The last and first frames are not the same. That is, because they used to be the same (I had to make it this way so his bones get restored to their original positions), but I had deleted the first frame before I uploaded it.

EDIT x2: If you just drag and drop it into Windows Media Player, the animation will play fine and will loop for a while before it finishes

Chicky · Wed 31/12/2003 18:24:22

seems good enough to me, ver smooth. I like the style, very dott lookalike. i think yuo should go for really wacky backgrounds aswell

- a chicken

Nine Toes · Wed 31/12/2003 19:17:38

That's not bad, Guybrush Poopweed...

Is it just me or is he moving kinda slow?

...or did you make him like that for a reason?

EDIT: Now he's not moving...

EDIT: Now he's moving faster than the first time... now he stopped...

earlwood · Wed 31/12/2003 20:11:05

Not bad Guybrush, just 2 things to comment on.

First, the outline on the top part of his arm...its hardly notice able now, but it will stick out like a sore thumb when you are playing an AGS game full screen.

I would change the way his hand (closest to us) is drawn, it looks like he is walking up to cup someones...goods.

still smooth though, even with the same beginning and end frames.

Paper Carnival · Wed 31/12/2003 20:16:28

hehehe, thank you... What's a poopweed anyway, weed for wiping your poop?

I don't think he walks *that* slow. If you drag and drop him in Windows Media Player, he walks fine and loops a few times... That's how he normally walks. Well, I'll reduce the number of frames anyway. There's no way I'll make the characters have 25 walking frames (x4 for each direction = 100 per walkable character), no thanks.

I never knew I could make that crap... I guess it's a lot easier than I thought. Now, it's time for the serious business... Up and down animation! Yikes! Any ideas of how to do that by using skeletal animation

EDIT: Sorry, erlwood. I posted before I read your post. Thank you for your comments. That small upper outline was not intentional. I screwed something up in it, so to remove it I have to delete the whole arm

. I'm not familiar to that program yet, so there probably is a way to remove it; I just don't know that yet.

As for the other thing... Yeah, lol, I see what you mean. Well, as I said, I can change that in less than a minute without changing the animation at all (because I use skeletal animation). I think I'll make a revised version (with better face, hand and without that outline and with a loopable gif). Just not now, because it's close to 2004 at the moment and the guests have just come to my house.

Damien · Wed 31/12/2003 20:19:02

Unfreeze, that's the program you need.
Just simply drag and drop gif's onto the program, check the box for continuous animation, select the time interval between frames and click on "make animated gif".
Get it here!

Note:Although you can drag and drop bmp's and other image files, when you try to make the animated gif, you'll get an error.

Paper Carnival · Wed 31/12/2003 23:33:04

Here he is...

Strange, in IE he appears very slow. I guess you were right all along... In Windows Media Player, he goes pretty fast. Well, just use ur imagination a bit... Imagine him walking faster...

I've done the two new earlwood suggested in almost no time. I couldn't remove that outline, so to fix it I had to draw another shape (with the same color as the shirt) over it. What took me so long was to make it a loopable animation. I mean, I had to render all that in png format, then converted to gif... Somewhere in the 10th frame I screwed something up, then I had to start over again and again. That's because I'm feeling very sleepy now... It's been 1:29 hours the year changed

PS Thank you, Damien, for that program. It was useful. That's what I used to make it loopable. Btw, that Frame Delay textbox... Should I put a higher value to make the animation go faster? Cause I left it to 0. Normally, this animation is as fast as it can, it just has a lot of frames.

Damien · Thu 01/01/2004 00:16:07

That's weird, i thought that animation speed is in 1/100sec between frames. for example: if you enter 50, it's 50/100, and that's 0,5 secs per frame.

Eggie · Thu 01/01/2004 13:56:42

Really cool. I like his slowness. It matches his dejected, wobbly head.

Paper Carnival · Thu 01/01/2004 15:07:34

Thank you Turkie. I don't think he should go *that* slow, in the game he'll have at least twice the speed.

That's a nice animation Damien, but I think I can point out a small mistake. The character is like in isometric view, but his legs and right arm are not.

Damien · Thu 01/01/2004 17:41:22

If you want to make your walk-cycle faster, delete some in between frames, but be careful not to remove keyframes!

Hollister Man · Sat 03/01/2004 04:01:20

VERY NICE.

It looks like it was animated in Moho? Possibly flash, but I KNOW Moho used bone animation. I wondered the same thing, how to do bone animation of odd positions. My main thought was to draw a basic standing view of about eight different "directions". Then draw from those and animate them.

In the way of critique, I would remove the two "armpit" points from the bone so that they stay in position while his arm swings. At least try it, it might work well for you.

Paper Carnival · Sat 03/01/2004 12:20:59

Yeah, he is animated in Moho

. I think the bones are fine. You see, first of all I done the leg animation. Then I done a simple arm animation, and seeing he was moving a bit robotic, I added torso/head/hand animation.

Now I am having a very hard time animating the up/down walking animation... If this was cell-shaded 3d animation (which works with bones as well) I'd be finished so far.

I found out about moho in another thread. Somebody asked for a program like that, and somebody else introduced it to him. I think that was you. If it was, thank you

. If it wasn't, thanks anyway for your feedback