Blink and you'll miss it!

[Sean]

Hey,

Don't hit me too hard, I thought it was catchy a topic title!

Anyway, I'm working on a "title screen" for one part of my game. This is suppoused to represent a blinking motion as the character wakes up...





Half Speed: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v650/Magic265/2blink.gif

Any advice?

Edit: That bed, is a placeholder.. that'll be replaced by in-game graphics

[auriond]

The effect is good, but the shape of the eye doesn't seem to hold? I mean the eye seems to actually change shape as it opens and closes. Which is great for a bleary just-woke-up sort of thing but I can't help getting distracted by how the left side of the eye closes faster than the right side. Maybe you can increase the amount of blur around the edges to take attention away from them.

[Sean]

I tried to equal out the eyes, so both sides close together. I also added an extra blink. I still think it looks a little awkward, I don't usually animate so I'm not sure what the problem is. Do I need more in-between frames... or less frames.. or what? 



Edit: Would help if I attached the image! 

[Layabout]

why is the character, if he is waking up, not on the bed. is he on a chair?

[Sean]

Edit: That bed, is a placeholder.. that'll be replaced by in-game graphics

Hehe, that picture is just a placeholder. I'm going to replace that with an in-game shot later on. I'm just trying to perfect the effect first Also, each picture is a synopsis of the day to come!

[auriond]

Hmm.... the animation still looks slightly jerky. Maybe you need more in-between frames. How many frames do you have currently?

[Ghost]

There could be an additional frame added to the second blink. Apart from that, I think it looks okay, even with the slight "jerkiness"- that actually adds some style to it IMO.

[vict0r]

Well, as I understand it, the person wakes up or something. Looking at the angle of the eyesight, he's also sitting. Try to sit down on a chair, and pretend like you are sleeping.
You feel that? You drop your head. And again, when waking up again, you raise your head.
This illusion of movement can be done pretty easily by extending the drawing further than the "borders" or the eyelids go. Then you just move the background (or whatever you would call what you look at) downwards.
This would create an illusion of head movement, which would make the whole sequence more "alive".

It would probably help with more in-betweens. Also, you might consider only one, slower blink with more frames, instead of the two quick ones.
This could probably help bringing forth the illusion of being tired, thus making the sequence more alive!
Try it out and see what looks better!

[EagerMind]

You're pretty close here. Some suggestions:

- The top eyelid seems to open more than the bottom. Maybe try to even out the motion between the two?

- The top eyelid still distorts too much as it opens. Instead of having it "curve open" as it does now, maybe draw the eyelids more like a camera shutter and gradually increase the curve as it moves up (or down, in the case of the bottom eyelid).

- Kind of related to the second point, there's too much jump between the last frame with eyelids and the frame without any eyelids. There's a lot of dark on the corners that suddenly disappears. Perhaps an extra frame or two in addition to the changes I already mentioned might fix it?

Anyway, it looks like this will be a cool effect!

[Da_Elf]

the easiest/cleanest way to do that is to use some masks with feathered edges in after effects. however that becomes too clean and looses the hand drawn feel that you have going there. Although you could probably post process the images in PS afterwards