Player character anim test (Shadowplay)

[GarageGothic]

This is a walking animation test for the main character in my game. The pencil style drawing was rendered with Poser's sketch render tool and combined with flat color layer in Photoshop.


If you've seen my earlier character art post, you may notice that she isn't as pale in this version. I thought it was just too monochrome, and while it fit well with the other background, most locations in the game will have at least some color. It's lost some of the stylized look, but I think it will work better, when cutting to almost realistic dialog closeups, than it would with the old look. Tell me what you think. Did I screw it up?

I should add that I will of course correct the error with the boots breaking through the pants.

Also, if anyone has an idea about how to resize an animation without antialiasing the outer edges, please do tell. Even if it has to be done frame by frame. Preferably while still allowing for bilinear resampling of the actual image. I'm seriously considering installing my old win 3.1 version of Micrografx Painter, because incredibly that old program could do it, if you selected the actual picture area before resizing the whole image. But Photoshop always antialiases the edges unless I use nearest neighbour resampling, and Jasc Animation Studio can't even do pixel resize without messing up the edges!

If I find no other solution, I'll have to render the characters at the actual size they'll be in the game.

Edit: Relating to this, I have a few questions to those with experience in these matters. How many frames would you consider necessary for a walking animation (for each direction)? This is 12 frames. I thought of cutting it down to 8, like Indy FOA used. Also, what's a good (pixel height) size for a character in a 640x480 game? At first I wanted the player character to be larger than the other characters (so she could get closer to the camera for some scenes).  But then I realized it would cause problems with the walk area size settings if I ever wanted the npcs to move around. Final question: Does number of colors in a sprite matter if you import it into a hi-color game. Is there any file space to save by reducing the palette before importing?

[Nacho]

Wow! I would say that it´s perfect... but I suppose you´d want C+C, so... I think that the shadow in his right eye must be removed from some sprites, or added in all. If it´s in some of the sprites it look  weird.

Anyway, grat job!

[Flippy_D]

His belt is a little too high, but this is very stylised and such. I like it.

[Eggie]

Nice. Might look better with less colours...
Y'know...might look more...spritish and less Jet Set Radio...

Not that that game didn't have kick-arse graphics...

[Ben]

It looks good.. Very Poserish, but good  

The face kind of bothers me though. I think you might want to clean it up in photoshop, getting in and taking away the stray pixels.. Actually, it might be better to just redraw the face completely to give it more personality. That's really the one thing that bothers me about poser; Everybody looks the same. If you make one face in photoshop and paste it into each frame it would really improve the character..

EDIT: also, you might want to change the light source. Having it from the side likethat might look weird if the character is in a place wit a light source on the other side. I'd suggest putting the light source in front of and slightly above the character (in other words, right between the character and you). That would give less of a hint of where the light is coming from, so that the backgrounds won't clash with the characters.

[SLaMgRInDeR]

hey, its looking good, but you might wanna get rid of those lines tho, they make it look a bit weird.
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[Mezlo]

Your animation looks fairly good and the highlights on her slacks look very good. I was wondering if the way her arms bounce away from her body was part of her character or attitude. I've only really seen large women's arms move like that. Maybe it's the position of the elbows when her arm passes her body. Another thing that stood out for me is her finger nails. They look a little like claws to me. Maybe a lighter shade for the nails.
She's looking good though.

M.

[Igor]

I'll repeat myself, but i got to say it again- this is certainly the best piece of work coming from Poser i have seen so far.

Must agree that pale skin tone looked better though- much more stylish. The current skin makes character look too "3d rendered in 2d" style. As far as animation goes- it's perfect! Very relaxed and nice looking!
Just be sure to not put beauty of animation in front of playing experience. There's nothing more nerve-breaking, than a character that needs half of minute just to pass a screen

About size of characters: i think the best way would be to make sure that backgrounds are drawn in manner to allow character to be more or less of the same hight in every scene... or if there's more distinctive perspective, to be reduced. The only rule is: don't ever *enlarge* characters! Seeing the main character suddenly crumble into huge pixels just spoils the atmosphere.

[Neole]

It looks great! Only problems are the position of her elbows which are sticking to her waist all the time, but its no big deal. She also looks perfectly like a female now.

The current size is pretty ok and will allow you some good closeups in the game. Number of colors can be anything in a hires game. Number of frames 12 is perfect, you just increase the frames per second in the game walk option so she doesnt move too slow. I have a thing against watching characters move perfectly realistically too slow across the screen. I would rather have them walk funny but quicker! I dont think you should try and save space on the main character animation, since thats what people will watch all thru the game.

[GarageGothic]

Thanks for all the feedback, it's very helpful.

I must admit that I hadn't even noticed her finger nails before you mentioned it (I think it might be the outline, not the nails as such that is dark), nor had I thought much about the elbows. I'll look into it when I get home. I can't really see it here since I'm at this really crappy computer at school, which can't show animated gifs properly (they just flash like crazy and almost freezes the computer).

As for the animation, I've actually watched women in the street, studying their walk. And I think this is pretty close. But I might go home and play some movies frame by frame to copy the actual motion. I was using Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs as inspiration for her movement scheme and body language, but you don't get too many shots of her walking towards the camera.

I agree that I should have stayed closer to the pale look of the earlier version. I will change the skin tone to a slightly bluish and less saturated color. Maybe a bit brighter, but not as white as in the previous version. It just wouldn't work with the talking close-ups.

Since most people apparently still think she looks male, I had a go at the face in Photoshop, just changing a few pixels really, but it made a lot of difference:



I think it made her look far more feminine, but I'm not really happy with this detailed face. It's too realistic for the stylized look that I'm going for. Maybe if I throw in some more dark pencil-like lines and change the skin tone. Also I should throw in some randomness for each frame, because I tried copying it into every frame, and it looked like the character was wearing a cardboard mask, because nothing changed.

Any thoughts on how to improve it?

[Igor]

Hm, i don't know... to me she seems even more like a man now.

Here, i did a quicky of how i think you could add a bit more of feminine touch, but still keep boyish attitude:


I used thinner neck, bigger mouth, narrower face and a bit wider eyes. Don't know if that's what you want though.

[GarageGothic]

Wow, that looks great Igor. Maybe a bit cartoony for my game (especially the neck), but I see what you mean. I'll probably end up doing the face as a pencil drawing and then adding it to the Poser body. I'm pretty good at working with morphs and magnets (tools for changing the character mesh in Poser) but the detail gets lost when using the sketch render. So maybe drawing it by hand would be easier. I also love the very simple shading in your pic. It's very effective.

[Igor]

Yeah, must say i prefer the loose sketchy lines on face on animated gif, over more detailed face on second example. If you could add some feminine features from my example, but still keep the looseness of first animation, you'll have a winner