animation -- aka the third ring of hell!

[frission]

Wow, I never realized what a pain in the ass it was to do animation (not in AGS, in general). Here are my first real attempts (other than walk-cycles, from which I happily use others as a good template) at animation. Comments, critiques, suggestions, etc., are desired.

Filling out forms, staring into space (we've all been there):





Here's the one that took me all evening to do -- putting down the pencil, getting up, scooting in the chair.





Here's that last one again in context:





Thoughts, suggestions? I did these all in Photoshop with about a zillion different layers. The last one (some fifty-five frames or so) really made me almost go quite mad, but at least some of these animations should be useful elsewhere (e.g. the "leaning" one). I got away with just using my walk-cycle animations for some of the frames but the standing up bit really was tedious. I'm rapidly scaling down my ambitions from an animation point of view.

[MrColossal]

I really like the art of this game, however I think an important thing for you to experiment with is when to not add a frame. He gets up out of his chair VERY slowly and there is a frame for basically every pixel of movement in that animation. Try removing every other frame and see how it goes. I tried it on my computer and he got up a bit speedier and the persistence of motion is good enough to trick my brain.

[BOYD1981]

i kinda like the slow way he gets up, i get the impression from his balding head that he's not young and therefore might get up out of a chair a little slower. if that is the case and is going to be a running theme through the game i'd say keep it (and possibly give the character a bit of grey in his hair).
to reduce the amount of frames you could have him place the chair under the desk while at the side of it, i seldom often walk round to the back of my chair to push it, and if i do it doesn't take as many steps as it takes that guy 
one thing that does bother me though is the height of the desks, or rather the lack of it, with chairs that height it looks as if you'd need very thin legs to get them under it and would constantly be bumping your knees.

[frission]

I think you guys are totally right about skipping frames. It didn't even occur to me to do that until I got to the walking bits, and I realized that if each walk frame only advances one pixel it looks rather comical (he looks like he's running on ice in that case). Bad news is I wasted some time on needless frames, good news is I won't do it in the future! :-)

[MrColossal]

Deleting frames is easier than adding them!

My girlfriend also felt that him standing slowly was nice for his character but I think there are more economical ways to get across an older man standing than by adding 50 frames to an animation.

[Candall]

I think there are more economical ways to get across an older man standing than by adding 50 frames to an animation.

Indeed.  Old men are slow about standing up because it requires a lot of effort to boost their bones out of a position they've been in for awhile.  There's also the pain of the sudden joint movement.

You might try having him rock forward suddenly and think about how old men linger for a moment after they've done so, perhaps clutching their knees or backs.  That would take very few frames and bridge just as much time.

[Sparky]

I'm so not encouraging someone who has the patience to make 50+ frame animation sequences to obsess over details

I love it when there's nice fluid animation for minor characters. It really adds to my enjoyment of a game.

On another note I'm really enjoying seeing assets from this game filter through the critics' lounge. It's fun to see everything come together piece by piece.

[monkey0506]

There's technically nothing wrong with having more frames (as long as you're not concerned about file size of course), you just have to properly adjust the frame's speed to make sure that your "extra" frames don't slow down the animation. IMO simply adjusting the frame speeds appropriately would be enough to turn this into a nice, fluid animation.

However, please do something about those pants. Maybe it's just me, but the pants look completely flat and the darker shade is so much darker it nearly burns my eyes. Of course I'm sure some of my "art" has burned many a retina in its day; I'm no artist, but perhaps you could do something to not make the pants stand out so much (they draw my attention especially with the difference in the two shades).

[Dualnames]

i like the animation.(Where he get;s up from chair). Looks smooth. Reminded me a little of how Trilby walks...

[hedgefield]

Haha, it's nice to see someone else who loathes animation aswell. But you did a solid job though. I think for this graphics style, the animation is perfect. There's even a slight oldschool feeling to it.

[frission]

i like the animation.(Where he get;s up from chair). Looks smooth. Reminded me a little of how Trilby walks...

Not a coincidence! ;-) I used Trilby as a template for understanding walk-cycles and the like. What I love about Trilby's walk-cycles is that they convey almost perfectly the type of walking you see in early Sierra AGI games, like in Gold Rush! where the character is "large" -- that is, not his normal, small self -- such as the scenes in the hotel room and lobby and I think also the post office.

Edit:

Just as a note -- he's not supposed to be that old so I think dropping some frames is in order. :-)

But thanks for your comments. I'm enjoying trying out new things and posting them here and getting feedback on them. The feedback has helped my work a LOT. At some point I'll be a bit more confident in things and be able to charge on full-speed ahead but I want to sort of make sure I have a good idea of what I am doing before I go off and try to make 20 rooms or so!


No need to double-post - ProgZ

[frission]

Here's the last one again with about 25 frames dropped!

[JimmyShelter]

Looks great.

More natural than your first one.

[stu]

i'm not 100% sure about the way he walks all the way around the chair just to scootch it in, although it probably does fit in with the grx style.

i was thinking something like this would seem more realistic.

[Evil]

I was just going to say way Stu said. It all looks great, both speeds work really well, but the walking around the chair looks too gamey. It's like there's an animation of him standing, then in game he walks to a point, then the second animation of him pushing in the chair.

Stu's animation is a little too drastic. When I get out of a chair, I push it back, half turn to one side, stand and push the chair in at my side.

But really, the player is only going to see this probably once and they're going to be too into a story to pay any attention to how accurate an animation is. But given that you're animating the whole sequence, I'd have him push it at his side.

[OneDollar]

The animation is awesome. The main question is do you have the time to animate everything else in the game at that level?

[SpacePirateCaine]

I'd like to just throw in my two cents on this animation as well - Firstly, as Mr. Colossal said, definitely pay attention to the number of frames you're using to accomplish something. It does stand to reason that the more frames an animation has, the more fluid the motion, but even the human eye can only interpret so much movement at one time, which is why if you move your hand left-right in front of your face rapidly, it looks more like a transparent hand with a lot of fingers than a quickly moving hand.

I noticed, especially when digital animation really started becoming mainstream in 2D cartoons, that they overused their ability to process a lot of frames in a shorter amount of time. I find that a very good starting point for animation is about 10 frames per second. It's choppier than a lot of animation (which generally, as far as I remember, goes between 12 and 15 frames per second). Of course, you can always have a single frame run longer or shorter than others. Not all motion happens at the same speed. Sometimes a short pause in movement can make all the difference between a believable animation and one that doesn't really work.

Another thing to bear in mind at all times is kinetics: opposing forces and natural movement. The biggest problem I see with his animation is that he somehow has the massive strength and agility to lift his perfectly vertical body off the chair without adjusting his center of balance. He just kind of floats up while unbending his knees. I'd suggest having him lean forward to keep his body over the center of his feet - all weight should be evenly distributed around the central point of balance. I threw together a really quick animation to illustrate the point I mean: Note that once he's off the chair, his body weight is always evenly distributed in front of and behind his feet.



I've slowed down the animation a little bit when he's standing to show where I mean.

[Nacho]

Are you using this as an excuse for practising? Because then, ok, use this thread and learn...

If you are using this thread for getting a good animation, functional and that is going to look perfect in a game, come on! Stop... You did it, you archieved it with the last edit, move on and start another paint for your game.

[frission]

The animation is awesome. The main question is do you have the time to animate everything else in the game at that level?

Haha, well, maybe, maybe not! The way I figure, most of the things I am animating will probably be able to be used more than once anyway (maybe not this particular animation), so as things go on in the game it'll become progressively easier to animate things.

I was just going to say way Stu said. It all looks great, both speeds work really well, but the walking around the chair looks too gamey. It's like there's an animation of him standing, then in game he walks to a point, then the second animation of him pushing in the chair.

Stu's animation is a little too drastic. When I get out of a chair, I push it back, half turn to one side, stand and push the chair in at my side.

Yeah, the more I thought about this the more these particular suggestions made sense -- it looks pretty silly to have him marching around the chair to push it in! I'll simplify this a bit; I don't think it'll be that hard, and I can keep the "pushing" animation for use elsewhere if need be.

I'd like to just throw in my two cents on this animation as well - Firstly, as Mr. Colossal said, definitely pay attention to the number of frames you're using to accomplish something. It does stand to reason that the more frames an animation has, the more fluid the motion, but even the human eye can only interpret so much movement at one time, which is why if you move your hand left-right in front of your face rapidly, it looks more like a transparent hand with a lot of fingers than a quickly moving hand.
...
Another thing to bear in mind at all times is kinetics: opposing forces and natural movement. The biggest problem I see with his animation is that he somehow has the massive strength and agility to lift his perfectly vertical body off the chair without adjusting his center of balance. He just kind of floats up while unbending his knees. I'd suggest having him lean forward to keep his body over the center of his feet - all weight should be evenly distributed around the central point of balance. I threw together a really quick animation to illustrate the point I mean: Note that once he's off the chair, his body weight is always evenly distributed in front of and behind his feet.
...
I've slowed down the animation a little bit when he's standing to show where I mean.

That's pretty useful -- thanks for throwing it together! I'm thinking a lot more about framerates now; I was, you're right, thinking about making things very fluid, and only near the end of making it did I realize that egads, life isn't necessarily THAT fluid unless it is moving VERY slowly.

Are you using this as an excuse for practising? Because then, ok, use this thread and learn...

If you are using this thread for getting a good animation, functional and that is going to look perfect in a game, come on! Stop... You did it, you archieved it with the last edit, move on and start another paint for your game.

I do these threads for practicing, learning, etc. My feeling is that if I subject myself to a lot of strong criticism and re-working early on it will help me not make big mistakes down the line that will end up wasting even more time. I also am a strong believer that progress is, well, progressive: the more I do, the easier it will be to do it. So if I go in strong I'll come out even stronger -- and the comments here and in the other threads have definitely helped me with that. It's been my experience with other projects, anyway. In any case, I'm a horrible perfectionist with extremely lofty and obviously unattainable goals. I have very grand designs for this first game o' mine, more grand than they really ought to be, but on the off chance that I do pull them off I think the outcome will be pretty awesome.

[Eggie]

The slow getting up could be kind of like the elevator doors in eraserhead.