Hand-drawn walkcycles

[Tamanegi]

I have a problem with my hand-drawn walkcycle: Usually, with a pixeled walkcycle, I would make the foot on ground move a fixed amount of pixels in each frame and adjust the values in the character info accordingly. But how do I do it when I have a higher resolution and my frames are hand-drawn? There is no way I can have the feet always move exactly the same amount of pixels, but I'm sure there must be a way to make the movement look right without any moonwalking or ice skating.

(Mods: Sorry, I think I picked the wrong sub-forum. Please move. Thank you.)

[Khris]

There is no way I can have the feet always move exactly the same amount of pixels

Maybe not the exact amount, but it's a highres game so it shouldn't matter if it's a couple of pixels off. What's keeping you from getting out a ruler...?

[Tamanegi]

What's keeping you from getting out a ruler...?

Mostly the fact that I had already drawn almost a whole animation before the problem came to my mind
Is there no way I can fine-tune each separate frame so they aren't evenly spread? Say, like in this way:

x---x---x--x--x---x--x
One walkcycle, x are frames

[Anian]

Could you like post what you did, I really don't quite understand what you did.
You want frames to last different amount of time? There might be a way, but I think you should have set up a stick figure and determine how the character will walk before you went and drew it all. Besides layers with transparency, a lot of animating software has onion skin features, what are you working in?
But I think in all cases, you'll get a choppy animation if you try post-fix the frame timing.

[bustee]

If you just want to have some frames last longer than others you could just use the ones you want to last longer more often and adjust the speed of the animation to suit your needs.

Like, if your cycle is c_1...c_8 and you need c_4 to last 1,5 times as long as the others, you could put

c_1c_1...c_3c_3c_4c_4c_4c_5c_5...c_8c_8 and double the speed of the animation.

Is that what you are asking?

[Khris]

You can also move the feet in Photoshop using the warp or skew tool.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Please post an example of your work here so someone can help you, otherwise there's really not much can be done to help you improve.

[Tamanegi]

This is the mock-up of the drawn animation; frame 8 is a copy of frame 4 because I haven't drawn that one yet, but it makes little difference in terms of my question. Each frame is 217x400 pixels. It is still in the rough state as you can see.



I guess I ultimately will have to correct the legs so that the travelled distance is constant between frames... also I just noticed that I need to pull the front arm in frames 5 and 7 back a little because the transition from backswing to foreswing needs one more inbetween.

[dbuske]

Wonderful character.

[Andail]

First frame is good.
Second frame not so much, at least the bottom one which has a too short arm. I would bend the knee more, to put the foot closer to the other leg. You don't really swing the foot until later in the stride (when it's about to touch ground).
Third frame is ok, although in the bottow row the arms haven't moved. I'd reduce some of the movement in the previous frame, since it's already reaching back too far.
Fourth one is quite good, although I think you should move his upper body forward, as it looks like he's suddenly stopping now, or recoiling.

It would be easier to judge if you provided an animation.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Normally what I do is skew the movement of the fore and rear legs and arms so that they are at slightly different positions when moving back and forth.  Typically, I will make the rear leg come down a bit further ahead than the fore leg and the foreleg will go back just a bit farther than the rear leg does.  This prevents the dreaded frozen movement effect some animations have, especially short ones, where the movement appears to stall at certain frames (usually when the front and back legs cross).  It also reflects the fact that most people have uneven strides in reality and helps to make each frame unique.  The point is that as long as the walkcycle is competent you don't need to worry about precise movements as long as they are reasonably close.  Once you import the animation into AGS you can always work with the animation and walk speed to get a good balance.

[Tamanegi]

This prevents the dreaded frozen movement effect some animations have, especially short ones, where the movement appears to stall at certain frames (usually when the front and back legs cross).

I don't really understand what you mean by that, but I understand how to prevent it by your explanation

I didn't correct anything yet, but I finally got to draw the last frame, so here is the complete animation:


Things to correct so far:
- arm position in two frames so it isn't fully extended for 3 frames
- sewing lines on pants missing in a couple of frames
- arm length has been mentioned, but can't really find anything
- pull decorative strap further back in right leg back movement
- same movement: Line on sweater should move back with the leg a bit, seems detached

[Anian]

His right arm (the one that's closer to viewer) kind of has a long pause when it's forward and then it kind of jumps back too fast.

The arms are a tad too short, his palms should be in the height of the middle of his thighs and both arms get shorter than that when they go to the front. I know you're probably foreshortening but it's kind of too much, the arm doesn't move that much closer and farther from us that you even need to foreshorten it all (although you could just slightly). It's one thing when action heroes do it or the limbs are facing the viewer, but here it's just not that extreme.

Btw you should've really planned out this movement with a stick figure, before you drew it all, so you know where the bones/limbs go and what kind of curves the make in the movement. I like the style of the drawing though.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Frozen movement is when you have a series of frames that essentially repeat the same motions in reverse and almost look like the animation is pausing a bit.  This happens when the arms and legs cross each other going in opposite directions if the artist simply mirrors the arm/leg motion without any alteration, though you've avoided that.

In addition to what Anian said, I would also bring his legs back a bit farther behind him and lift up the leg a bit more as they move forward to avoid the shuffling feet look you have now.

[Snarky]

Try covering up the bottom of the image and look only at his head and shoulders. You should be able to notice a fairly significant limp. (His body goes up more when he's standing on his right leg than when he's on his left leg. Also, I think the way he raises his shoulder is a bit catwalk-y; in fact, his whole right arm is a bit prancing in those forward frames.)

And when the right hand is forward (where it seems to hover for a long time), you've given it a very exaggerated turn inwards while closing his fingers, which makes it seem like he's giving a secret hand sign. (Curling his fingers and thumb in some frames looks weird in general.) His arm gets way short in these frames as well.

If you look at the far back of his hand movement, you'll see that his left hand is turned with the palm backwards in that position, while his right hand has the palm turned forwards. Either is possible, I guess (though personally I think palm in towards the body is more natural), but I think you should be consistent.

It's a nice drawing, and apart from the things mentioned it maintains good continuity on the limbs and volume between frames. How all the little details get deformed as they move looks very convincing, and almost looks as if it was rotoscoped or drawn from reference.

[Tamanegi]

Thanks for all the input, guys!

That's a lot to redo... it almost makes it worth redrawing everything. I also get the impression that the feet are too small, what do you think? Hand and feet are really difficult for me to draw.

Thank you The character was made without any reference or rotoscoping, I just used a tracing table to draw the later 7 frames. Which is harder than I thought, because by some freakish law of physics the bottom drawing is made to appear bolder by the light so I can hardly see my strokes on top.