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Hey guys!

I've posted some work on here before and got some great help. I'm hoping I can get more of the same with my background work.

Here's a shrinky dink version


and here's a link to a bigger version
http://www.daverigley.com/img/REPAIRBAY-LARGE.jpg

I'm going for a cartoony(but not wonky styled) repair bay and on the far right I'll be adding in another busted up ship as well as an engineer character. The ship on the left is supposed to have the four "arms" interacting with it, I guess I never got that far. I haven't put much thought how to fix up this background yet I'm just getting re-acquainted with my old project. Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

-24

Hmmm, tough choice!

A manly nod to the Captain for trying to provide a looping mouth cycle for a creature without lips to lipsync with.

Misj's wildness and Jim handing in 3 heads both earn them a manly nod as well.

I gotta give the win to Saberteeth though. There's something about Dick Jockington that makes me wanna hear what he has to say. Sorry I don't have a lil trophy or anything, I've been swamped with side work.

Thanks for all the submissions guys!

Saberteeth, take it away!

Whoa, pretty slick guys! The voice acting is great quality and the music really helps sell the mood.

I'm getting a little frustrated with the one option clickingthough. I find myself grumbling at the screen after hearing the same excuse over and over again when all I want is her to look at something to give me a hint at what I'm supposed to do... Keep in mind I'm pretty terrible at these games

Speaking of being terrible at these games... can someone drop me a quick hint?

Nevermind. Just realized you can right click *sigh*

Well.... Saberteeth you are totally in the lead right now!

Still 8 days for competition to sneak on in

Make something that really speaks to me
If a picture is worth a thousand words, make this worth a few more
Give me some blah, blah, blah!

Theme:

Talking head loops

Rules:

I'm just looking for a talking head.
No bonus points for any more body parts(but you get a manly nod if you do go above and beyond here)
Make it loop so the head talks forever
It doesn't technically have to say anything(but you get a manly nod if you do go above and beyond here)
Many nods are not legal tender and can not be returned for cash or in store value

To help you get inspired here's Smilin Stan S. Stanman ... now somehow get that energy in just a head!

Wooo! Thanks Sin^2

Fun fun. I'll start up a new competition very soon, just gotta finish up some work first then I'll make sure there's some trophies and a fun category ready to go.

So..... 3-way tie?

not as good at all as twentyfour and Questionable

Hehe, I dunno man. The sheer size of your button kinda puts you up quite a bit. Something that big and red needs to be pushed!

Couldn't pass up this chance to try out pixel anim for the first time... wish I gave myself more time though



Not exactly a useful button like the auto toilet flusher above but it'd keep someone like me entertained for a few hours!

-24

I feel really REALLY bad for the dude who lives on the rock in bg #3, how does he get his groceries up there? I'll just assume there's an elevator installed in behind.

What really stands out to me is the lack of depth. Bg #2 really feels to me like there's a rock column in front of my face and another just behind it but they are very close to me and then there's just sky, and even that seems a bit flat.

If the mountains are to be in the mid ground try adding some foreground elements to give us a better sense of distance. A few rocks, maybe an old highway and a few cactuseseses. Spice up the area behind the mountain range with some more mountains but fade them out a bit.

Ooooh, I just found a killer piece of reference! http://www.gamekicker.com/files/Full_Throttle_-_large.gif Check out how the clouds are done, they give a great sense of how massive the area is.

That's all I got.

Watch your feet. They aren't on a flat plain right now, kinda like a shallow half-pipe.

The arms could be a bit less stiff, but personally I'd avoid the broad monkey-walk posing(specifically the down) in the Richard Williams pic above.

Jim: There really isn't a hard set of rules on walk cycles. If it looks good it's good! The Animator's Survival Guide is a great reference but I feel it shouldn't be followed so strictly that arms reaching the peak of their swing must hit on frame X of a walk cycle. 

I think the animation is coming along nicely Irish! Sephiroth's pose suggestion is good, except I'll point out that the arm/leg moving forward shouldn't both be from the same side(try walking like that sometime, it feels unnatural and you look like a robot). Use the work you've done on the profile walk and apply it to the front on walk. Bring the profile frames up alongside the front on walk and use some horizontal lines to give you an idea of the placement of the feet and hands.

Here, I scratched this together as an example.



Hope it helps a bit

I don't know why this has been so tough for me to grasp. Everyone's pretty much repeating the same answer, so obvious that's the right one

The only thing I'd changed beyond what you've seen already to what I'm dealing with in AGS is the right-click 'crop edges' after importing them, I think that may be my failing(Aside from, y'know, planning properly)

Okay, I'll re-work the walking anim. My only concern there now is if I need extra pixels to counter any stretching out he does in his walk... how do I import him without ending up with nearly triple the pixels used in his first pose before the big stretch? Import it frame by frame managing the pink area by hand beforehand?

Thanks for the advice guys, I appreciate it. And sorry if I'm coming across thick-headed here, I think I've been lookin at the problem from the wrong angle.

Forgive the colours, its a quick gif export from Flash while I'm workin on paid stuff.

I can see problems right away just comparing them like this. But I used the crop edges to shave the walk down to it's minimum and crop edges symmetric on the talky. As you can see I actually tried measuring out the talker. With the walk I thought invisible pixels meant non-existant so the program would auto crop to the character since the pink pixels "don't exist" 

I have flash files where I'm re-measuring with the pixel grid right now but if you can tell me what went wrong here maybe it'll save me some time later tonight

I'm using the exact same start pose as the walking anim but the size of the stage has changed because the walk is quite broad while the talk is just a slight lean and nodding head. The character is a snake I posted earlier in the critique forum so defining "feet" is a bit of an issue.

I just popped on the 1x1 pixel grid in Flash and have snap to grid set on as well. Hopefully I can figure this out but if anyone wants to see the flas I can email em to ya.

Also, I tried using the "crop sprite edges" in AGS... still tinkering to see if it's helpful or not so far

I think so!

If ya wanna get real nit picky there's lil pops here n there but nothing I'd fix

I still wanna see that smiley thing bouncin around though!

Okay so 4 or 5 attempts later and I have the talking character lined up well enough that when the talk anim starts he doesn't shift... UNLESS he's facing left! Then the flipped anim shifts him backwards. So now I need to jigger with a left facing anim and import it separately so he doesn't shift when he talks?

I'm assuming this whole process is much easier when using simpler characters. I'm doing cleanup and animation in Flash so adjusting pixel by pixel blindly hasn't been fun.

Can anyone direct me to a tutorial that covers this sort of issue? I think I might have figured some of it out based on what GG said but I wanna make sure I'm not digging a bigger hole for myself down the road.

That`s not what I said dude.

I said "If you're going to convert it anyway...". I think you might as well use MOV as the initial export because the audio is way better than swf's butchering.

You're probably best off using what Trent suggested. I hear it can even turn lead into gold.

If you're just gonna convert it anyway I'd suggest exporting as a .mov anyway Cluebie. An swf makes all all audio sound like it's coming from a tin can. If you have After Effects or Premiere I know you can import swfs and audio seperately to make a good quality video for your cut scenes.

Good luck!

Egads, another Character importing issue!

I have my main character all set up to walk around, no issues there(so far) and now that I've added in a profile talking anim I find the talking anim is cropped nice and snug against the characters ass end where the walking anim isn't cropped as tightly so when it's time to talk my lil buddy shifts back a few pixels, says his piece and pops back from whence he came.

This cropping of each frame of anim is getting a bit frustrating for me right now, is there an easier way of doing this than using a mouse with a steady STEADY hand. I want to have nice broad gestures with my characters so I won't always have the option of reusing a form fitting crop mask from the previous frame... it just feels so tedious and clunky compared to everything else I've been slowly learnin this past month or so.

Sorry if this has been answered a couple hundred times. I did a quick forum search earlier today and another a few minutes ago. Nothing seems to answer my problem that I've seen.

So, is this gonna be a "Sorry kid, them's the breaks" or "[link] try searching HARDER next time 24!"?