Some character animations

[Morgan]

I drew some character animations for a game I might make. The game would be called Dead Silence. I just thought of it not to long ago so its still in a very rough draft stage. The main idea is that the main character is a writer who has had a case of writers block for a while. He overhears some men talking about some elaborate illegal endeavor and uses the idea in his next book. The men find out and as punishment cut out his tongue. He looses consciousness and when he wakes up he is in the land of the dead. Turns out he’s not entirely dead yet and someone just made a mistake but he’s having trouble convincing anyone because he can’t talk do to not having a tongue. That’s all I got for now and things might change but what I know for sure is that the main character will have his tongue cut out and be involved with the dead somehow. Also I would like to have a talking severed head that he caries around with him for some reason.


The thing in his hand is a stick and he's suppose to be wearing a cotton gray sweater over a white button down shirt and tie but it looks like a trench coat. I'm not to happy with the walk animation but it’s the best I could do. And the bottom left animation was originally going to be a blink animation but it looks more like he’s casting a spell or something but it looked cool so I kept it.

[Questionable]

More Frames.

I really like his look and it's a pretty cool concept. Reminds me a little bit of "Monkeybone," maybe pick that up for some inspiration. I just think you need more than two frames per animation.

[Morgan]

Im not very good at backgrounds but here is one that I started. What do you think?

[Trent R]

For starters, don't use jpegs. They create artifacts throughout your image. Save them as pngs.

~Trent

[Gilbert]

But Morgan is no starter!

JPEGs are actually okay, but it depend on what kind of graphics it is about, if it's more complicated or photorealistic it saves more trouble to load a JPEG file than a huge PNG file from the net; but if it's more simple or with flat colours lossless PNGs are preferred (especially when you want people to help by editing the image).

Judging from this background, it's much  better to be saved as PNG though, as the artifacts are quite visible, possibly due to heavy compression.

[Trent R]

But Morgan is no starter!

JPEGs are actually okay, but it depend on what kind of graphics it is about, if it's more complicated or photorealistic it saves more trouble to load a JPEG file than a huge PNG file from the net; but if it's more simple or with flat colours lossless PNGs are preferred (especially when you want people to help by editing the image).

Judging from this background, it's much  better to be saved as PNG though, as the artifacts are quite visible, possibly due to heavy compression.

True, but like you said. They're very visible.

But to be positive, I love your sprites. I'd say add more to the walk (at least 2 frames) and perhaps to the wink/sleeping one. I kind of like the others with short animations.

As for the character himself, I don't think his sweater looks like a sweater. But it doesn't look like a trench coat either. It looks (to me at least) like a grey suit jacket with coat tails in the walk animation. Yet in the other anims, the 'tails' are in front, so they look very odd.

~Trent

[Angel Dust]

The character design is cool but, like everyone else has mentioned, the animation needs more frames.

As for the background it's quite good apart from the sky. There are too many stars and they are placed far too orderly. I would suggest giving it a graident, probably stick a moon in there, perhaps partially obscured by some clouds maybe, and a small scattering of stars.

[pslim]

I agree with Angel Dust about the sky in the background, but man I really REALLY enjoy the style of the background art. I would love to play a game that looks like that.

[Eggie]

If I could make a two frame walk work as well as that, I would use a two-frame walk no question.

[Morgan]

I knew that you couldn't post in JPEG but I posted that really quickly and forgot to change it to PNG. I know that I could make it look better with more frames but it’s the animation process that usually causes me to give up on games. I spend too much time on them and try to hard to get them perfect that I get frustrated and quit so I'm trying to keep it simple and do animations with very few frames. I think its because if you are making an animation with lots of frames your trying to make it look realistic and as good as possible and being a perfectionist makes it very difficult to be satisfied with any of them but if you use a small number of frames the goal is to make it look believable and that is something I can achieve and be satisfied with.

I made the stars look more like they were in constellations and removed a lot of them. I also changed the sky a bit to make it look less flat. Dos anyone think that there are too many rocks?

[Trent R]

I think the problem with the rocks is that I don't get why I'm seeing them... Is it a cutaway of the hill or is that how the hill would really appear if I was walking on it myself. (If the latter, the grass looks like long chunks of sod). It's confusing for the player.

As for your sprites, I really do like your short anims and I also understand that trying to hard gets less work done. However, I think the walk sprite should have 3, maybe 4 frames. One standing, one with his right leg forward, and one with his left leg forward. That would keep it short and simple, but also flesh it out.


~Trent

[pslim]

I think the problem with the rocks is that I don't get why I'm seeing them... Is it a cutaway of the hill or is that how the hill would really appear if I was walking on it myself.

I think the shapes could be clearer, but I sort of like that you can't really tell what perspective you're viewing from. It makes the natural features seem almost symbolic (or even allegorical).

[Morgan]

I have some more characters and while I didn't notice a problem with having only two frames with the first character I can definitely tell that these characters could benefit from having a few more frames. I might just make all the characters with two frame animations and make some quickly done backgrounds, like the one I posted, just to flesh out the game and go threw when I'm done and add more animations and maybe spend some more time with the backgrounds. So I guess I'm more interested in what you think of the characters than the animations unless you think I should keep the two frame animations than I would like to hear your opinion otherwise I will probably add more frames in the future.

The first character is a half man half snake boy with a mask on and the other is a pregnant lady that was originally ugly but became less and less ugly as I worked on her. They will be key characters in this game.

[The Suitor]

I'm totally digging this style! I assume this is going to be a side-scroller?

Can't wait to see a finished product.

[Morgan]

My computer has been broken for about a week and a half so I'm just getting back to working on this game. I'm trying to get a background style worked out and I have changed it a bit from my first background I posted.


I drew it first with green bushes but I forgot that I want the game to take place in the fall so I did a quick paint over but I don't like the paint over nearly as much as the first one. I threw some characters in so you can get a feel for what it will look like in play. Also I didn't add any noise to the grass or bushes yet like I did with the first background I'm not sure if it really needs it.

[Trent R]

Love it!

-Looks fine without the noised grass.
-Like the new guy.
-You lose the Writer's face in the spring bg. The pink faces on the pink bg look fine.
-Will these be long scrolling rooms? Will the foreground trees scroll too, but slower?


~Trent

[Snake]

Wow, Morgan! I love your artwork! Your characters are great.

It probably won't work with your ideas, but your BG with the trees framing the outside, looks perfect. I was thinking maybe you could have this with all the BGs, maybe having each scene be framed in somehow with a different design.

The new guy reminds me of George Micheal

[Morgan]

Snake - thats actually exactly what I was thinking of doing. I have an idea for another background that shows the inside of a shop and it is framed like your looking at it through a key hole.

[Morgan]

Ok, so I have a new background that I'm having some trouble with.


I like the background but I want to add a lighting effect where it looks like rays of light are shining through the leaves and lighting up the ground in patches. I’ve also decided that the game will be in the fall later in the game but start out in the summer.

[Snake]

I like this one. Cool to know that you are framing all the BGs! Honestly, it's looking beautiful and fits perfectly with your art style.

As for rays of sun... I'm not sure how you'd go about this. Especially if you're talking about doing it from the foreground - which you might not be able to do without having to lighten up some of the area around the leaves - but that will be inconcistant with the "all black" framing idea.