My arch-nemesis: The Walk-Cycle

[Eggie]

Heeeey, I was wondering if I could get some feedback on these walk animations I made in Flash. I'm going to keep tweaking and tweaking forever tomorrow probably starting with her fringe in the front view there but I wanted to put them up here as well, see if any problems leapt out at people.


The idea behind the animation being completely symbol based is that by re-drawing the various symbols I can quickly create spritesets for alternative costumes, pretty smart huh? Pretty smart if I can STOP THE BASE ANIMATION FROM SUCKIIIIING.


CURRENT TO-DO LIST

*Dial down hair movement
*Make front-view hair swing side to side
*Make fringe stop jittering
*Make feet in front view less inward facing

[Tabata]

I find them great - the peculiar motion fits beautifully.  
The hair (only in the front view) look as if it's not rooted in the head. I would imagine that it works better when they swing to the right and left, but are otherwise attached to the head.

[Anian]

Yeah, the hair is kind of off. In the side view I think it looks werid cause the 2 parts don't really  move like they have any weight, longer hair would move less and slower and the top part just a tad slower.
In the front view the top also moves a bit to jittery.

Everything else looks fine to me.

[Jim Reed]

She has a limp in the side view, and her boobs are off key. They fall down when the body is going down, while they should fall down when the body is going up. The boob problem is visible because of the limp, that is, both problems are connected.

When walking all the body is working to keep the head from moving as much as possible, so you can see stuff and not blurs, and yet your head is moving like it's welded to the body. The neck should bend so the head moves less than the body.

Her arms are not swinging in step with her walk. Instead, they do a double back swing/twitch for every pace she takes, while they should swing, so that each hand is (there is only one visible in the side view) opposite of the foot on the same side. If I sound too confusing, just walk around and look at your arms while doing it.

Concerning the front view, well....it's a complete mess =) Just fix the side view first and then copy the limb and body positions and movements to the frontal one as good as you can, and see if it looks better than this version.

You are not using any shading with this style, so it might be better if you change the colour of either the hair or her shorts. The current colours are too similar, tho that's just a minor issue.

I also think the head in the side view should be just a bit more forward and a bit more up than it currently is. If you really enjoy torturing yourself, you could try to make the hair swish around to follow her movements.

I hope all this makes you feel insecure in your drawing and animating skills and feel bad about yourself. It's what CL is for =)

[antipus]

I like the flash style, since it's different than the traditional pixel-poking sprites.  I love how smooth you can make the animations (as opposed to 6 or 8 frames).

The others have already mentioned some of the visual oddities about this go-around.  One of the things that caught me, though, is that the cycles don't go at the same speed.  Side-to-side it takes her a lot longer to take a step than it does from the front.  You should always, always make each view match length.  Specifically, you could shorten the side view whenever the foot comes forward; it takes too long to pull the foot back.

Good work, it looks like a fun character and a fun style!

[Blue]

Haha!  I like the style of the sprite. Others have already mentioned some issues that could be perfected, so I'll just come up with a suggestion I think is missing. I think it would look cool if her glasses also followed her movement instead of being glued to her face I wish I could animate a sprite with flash. Perhaps I should just practice more.

[Eggie]

I was planning on doing a new version and uploading it today but it just keeps getting woooorse every time I redo it. So here's what I'm going to do; get off the computer and let my girlfriend play The Sims for a bit, take a deep breath, cry, maybe watch a film then come back to it.

Just posting to let everyone know I'm taking all the crit on board and hopefully I'll have something to show for it tomorrow.

[Jasmine]

Also, you should tone down the bounce on her breasts.  Just watching that is making me wince, to the point of distracting me from pretty much anything else in the animation.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Apart from the improvements you yourself listed I think they're fine animations especially for flash art, which most people are really sloppy with and just use a lot of rotation for everything.

[Eggie]

Savannah: I think the new version I'm doing's a little toned down in that regard but I think the timing stuff Jim Reed was talking about was more to blame for it being distracting that it being exaggerated. Cartoon boob-jiggle is important



I think I've corrected some of of the physics but now there's this evil pop when her foot makes contact so darghfarghhfafaisurehateanimating.

[Scavenger]

I think I've corrected some of of the physics but now there's this evil pop when her foot makes contact so darghfarghhfafaisurehateanimating.

This may just be my imagination and I may be totally wrong, but...
Her foot seems to raise a little bit the frame after the heel makes contact and the foot changes shape so that it's thinner, making it look like when her foot is on the ground, it jumps up back off of it instead of being solid against the earth. Did you animate her walking across the screen, or just walking in place, like she's being shown now?

I think just making the heel positions a little more consistent across the animation might do it the world of good. The popping in the leg is fine, so long as the foot is in the right position. The energy will seem to be going somewhere, instead of just glitching.

[Eggie]

Ooooh, you're right!

[Eggie]

Better? Worse?

I have a sneaking suspicion it's worse but I've been staring at it for days now, I don't even know what I'm looking at any more.

[Jim Reed]

Much much better!
I think with just 2 more edits it will look just right!

Make the front hair and the feet (when they're at the back - lifting from the ground) less "clicky",  and that's all.

On a side note, I think some kind of a ribbon or a flower in the hair would give the girl more character.

Keep at it!

[Eggie]

Aaaargh, I forgot to save my progress yesterday. Re-do of the re-do with added Jim Reed suggestion-power:

As for the ribbon idea, not really her style but this is just the default outfit so there'll be some bow and ribbon action available should the player desire it. Bows and ribbons out the fracking wazoo.

[Jim Reed]

I  think it looks way better than the first one.

Good work!

[Anian]

Yeah, this is much more fluid and less twitchy than from the original post.