RogerRevamp

[Tabata]

It's your original - I only moved some of the layers a bit  - nothing else


Well he still has a very unique style of walking, but that can be part of a char and depends on the story you made for him. So if you ask others for their opinion, they will tell you a thousand different things, if you don't explain, what kind of walk you are "hunting" for.

The best chest for me in personal would be "a bit of" the first one (the color not that intense, more like a shadow, given from the muscles underneath)  and giving him a waist (if he has muscles, he should have a waist, too), but if he likes burgers that much it might be the wrong choose  

Edit:
I forgot to tell, that I made the walk 20 ms slower.

[None]

Okay so we're up to V7.



Really think I've got a winner here. I've taken lots of things into account, I smoothed out some of the 'bounce', slowed the playback (thank you Tabata)

As for the chest, I went back to the original muscle, and lightened it, smoothed out some of the definition, etc. (thank you EVERYONE specially you Abisso) so what you guys think? Do I get a gold star?

This is the version I'm most happy with so far.



Sorry for the double post, but I just had to do this for lolz.



Please don't double post, even for lolz.

-ProgZ

[Jim Reed]

Your arms should swing one frame later than your legs for it to look better. The hands are at their widest one frame after the leading foot makes contact with the ground, which isn't the case here. besides that, the sprite is very good!

[None]

Never heard of that Jim.

According to everything I've ever seen the hands should be their 'widest'/'largest'/'closest to the camera' at the point right before the foot goes down.





ref:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq9A5FD8G5w&feature=relmfu

You could do an edit and show me how it looks, if you still think you're right about it.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I would agree with charles.  The way I've learned animation, and everything I've read, suggests the left arm is farthest forward when the right leg is on a down step and farthest backwards when the left leg is on a down step (and the reverse for the right arm).  This is how I've done all of my animations and no one has ever said they look off timing.


I've made a lot of minor edits to your latest version, most notably changing up the colors by varying them away from boring primaries and into more interesting shades.

1.  Shifted the colors away from primaries toward more eye pleasing colors.  Shifted the skin slightly towards red, the white of the shirt slightly towards blue-red, and reduced the intensity of the purple.

2.  Added some additional personality to his uniform by taking the triangle that often appears in the series and placing it on his otherwise boring chest.  Also added some gold to the cuffs.

3.  Adjusted size of hands down and gave them more of a defined shape.

4.  Adjusted face, reshading it so a more defined face is visible.

5.  Made hair animate with the motion of the body.

6.  Adjusted belt up one pixel.  It looks better and more proportional to my eye now.

7.  Adjusted shape of feet as they draw back so it looks like he picks his foot up instead of just shuffling it forward again.  On the down step, fixed two frames where the foot moved up a pixel when it should have remained in the same position or moved down.



Like I said, I made a lot of minor corrections to an otherwise competent animation.  I would pay attention to color, though.  Imagine a player having to stare an entire game at the character when it comes to the palette.  You want to give the eye some color variety without falling into primary 'solid' colors.  This is especially true since we do not have to deal with restrictive palettes like EGA unless we want to.  Try placing it up against a neutral background and adjusting the colors until they are soft on the eye.

Other than a few minor points with the size of the hands, I think you've done a fine job.

[Jim Reed]

I'm not much of an expert, but I read "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams, and he says the arms are at their widest on the *down* position. That isn't exactly "one frame after the contact frame" like I said, but it could be, depending on how much frames you use for a walkcycle.



Looking at your frames, your hands seem to be at the widest on the contact position (the frame where the heel of the leading foot touches the ground).

[Abisso]

There's nothing to do... ProgzMax = King Midas. When he puts his hands on something it instantaneously turns into gold.  

That bouncing hair doesn't look too good though... gives the impression that he's winking. And in your edits' list you forgot to mention you made his penis look bigger. If you didn't, and I'm just imagining things, I've got a serious problem here. Everything else is an improvement, since a bit more detail is always good.

That said, your last edit is definitely ok Charles. I'd say you can be fully satisfied with the animation, and the chest looks fine too. You could try to add some detail like ProgzMax did, but not necessarily... it all depends on the style you're looking for, and on the time you want to spend on every sprite, cause more detail in one character forces you to add more detail in EVERY character, to match the style. And when you have to make a game, a compromise between extreme quality and reasonable time is always necessary.

[Tabata]

... so what you guys think? Do I get a gold star?
This is the version I'm most happy with so far

Even if the up/down is too strong for my personal taste, you deserve it:
                               
... and the most important thing is that you yourself are satisfied 


To me now he makes the impression of a confident type who knows already, that he will win. 

[None]

Progzie, you're a dahlin! 
You make me so green, I have so much more to learn.

There were changes I didn't like but you fixed quite a few little bugs.

Version 8 guys:



I didn't like the big triangle on the chest, so I made it a smaller decal.
I didn't like the hair, but you did make me notice how 'static' the head was compared to everything else so I animated it.

And against my baser desires, I softened Rogers package to something sub-equine.



I'm VERY bad with colors Progzie, I'm blue-purple, red-green colorblind, so I'm always nervous about 'experimenting'. Any more tuts or tutorials you can suggest about how you make color choices would be fab.

@Tabata and Abisso
I'm NEVER satisfied.

p.s. Progzie, did you remove one of my yellows? I couldn't find it?

EDIT-
Just realized there needs to be a delay on the head. brb.

Taken care of. <3

OH, almost forgot, @Jim Reed, I downloaded that book! A lot of the reference seems almost exaggerated in nature, I hope to use some of that on the more 'cartoon' characters I might use like Fester Blatz. There's lots of theory in the book, it will be very helpful in the future.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Jim- I see what you're saying, I thought you meant on a down step the hand shouldn't be all the way forward (and it should, typically).  As your number of frames start to increase, though, the precise timing becomes somewhat less of an issue because if you had, say, a 32 frame walking animation you'd have a good 3-4 frames of slack in the arm motion.  Point being, I don't think it looks bad in this animation.

Abisso- Raising his belt is what did it.  I didn't raise his crotch line when I raised the belt because it didn't really bother me, but if someone is bothered by penises then I suppose it's an issue.  The winking effect is from his hair overlapping his one eye briefly, and a darker hair inline would help with that but I wanted to stick to the lighter ranges charles was using.  Again, it's not something that would bother me or cause me worry.

charles- I think the new version is fine.  You might make the symbol a bit darker at the bottom (a small v-shape below the design) so people know it's there, but aside from that I think it looks fine.  The head motion is good, too, though maybe a bit too extreme?  He almost looks like he's looking side to side instead of straight ahead.

I didn't remove any of your colors, I just altered the shades themselves.

As far as palettes go, I'm really not sure how to help someone colorblind.  It's an interesting challenge from a teaching and learning perspective since I don't know how well you can perceive subtle changes in color like the ones I made.  For instance, do the darker trouser shades now look very slightly red-gray, or do you perceive any difference at all from your original?

What I would recommend to anyone who wants to improve their color theory is to start with a neutral background color, like a neutral brown or orange-brown or red-brown.  Those are predominantly what I use depending on the colors I intend to use, and the sprites always turn out having colors that work well on both bright and dark backgrounds and don't burn the eyes.  

I think choosing a good neutral background is about the strongest starter advice I can give to picking good colors, in fact.

Next, I would say that even if you love primary colors to ultimately shift away from them as they tend to be very distracting and hard on the eyes.  Here's a quick example of a sprite made almost entirely in primary colors (the skin tone is not):




The strong purple and yellow of the hair in particular are really overpowering and distracting here.  So what's the solution?  Mine is to mix it with a complementary color to dilute the intensity somewhat while also shifting the color every so slightly towards a more interesting shade.  Take example 2:




Here I've shifted up the almost black outline to a reddish-brown, taken the pure yellow and added a touch of blue and about 1/3 less green for a slightly pale orange-yellow, I've dialed back the pure white ever so slightly while giving it just a tiny bit more blue so it doesn't look so stark white, and the pure purple I've shifted more into red by decreasing the blue about twice as much as I did the red.  The colors remain identifiable for what you want them to be while being altered just enough to make the sprite easier to read and more pleasant to look at.

Hopefully that helps.  I have a stronger understanding of color theory than I can really explain and it just comes with a lot of practice, so my advice is to practice.

[None]

  you so did Progzie! The color count on your version is 25, it should be 26 (including tp).
You used one of the skintones as a darker yellow in your emblem.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You mean on the sprite itself?  I thought you meant I removed one of your colors from the palette.  In fact, I used the unused white as the background color, after turning it a neutral brown, so it evens out

[None]

  I keep trying to tweak it so the head doesn't move as much, while still staying dynamnic, but everytime I do it messes with the whole 'flow' of it...
Think I may need to draw something else, maybe a bg, before I do the rest of this characters walk cycles, it's getting grating on my nerves.

edit:
Think I'll leave it be.

And I'm totally missing 90% of the subtleties in your color changes, Progzie.
Oh well, I'll keep submitting stuff to Critics Lounge, till I can get it satisfactory on my own, that's why I'm here, to get BETTER.

edit:
Okay so I added some definition to the emblem, and changed the eyes a bit, not a drastic change, but I thought it helped make his focus appear to stay 'forward'.

[Tuomas]

all these jumping and popping animations make me think of lemmings

[Abisso]

all these jumping and popping animations make me think of lemmings

Sorry, but I definitely had to do this:

[None]

@Tuomas
Does he still 'jump too much'? =_= I'm gonna edit this thing into oblivion, roger's last edit will have him becoming a well endowed woman, with laser eyes.

@Abisso
Am I missing something... What does a squashy blue cactus headed roger have to do with lemmings.

[Swordofkings128]

WOAH those Rogers are all great... would be awesome for a Space Quest 7 fangame(which btw if anyone is going to do this let me know! I'd love to be involved )

[Monsieur OUXX]

Am I missing something... What does a squashy blue cactus-headed <insert name here> have to do with lemmings.

That's pretty much the definition of a lemming

[Tabata]

Am I missing something... What does a squashy blue cactus-headed <insert name here> have to do with lemmings.

Yes, the blue and green are veeery different in real