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I'd say give it a try first, yourself. It'd be good practice if you have the time, that is. It shouldn't be much more difficult than trying to make him walk like you have.

One arm would need to swing out, holding a gun. After, it would have to bend at the elbow and raise the fun forward. Think along the lines of keyframes. You've got two major events there: 1) the arm swings out, 2) the gun gets raised upward. Give each of those two events three frames of animation, and figure out a start, middle, and end for each of them.

I hope that helps!

The new, extra bit of style infused into the characters is great. The actual drawings themselves are about as perfect as I could see the characters getting.

I do have one criticism for you, and it is totally a matter of personal opinion/preference, and that is the boy's skin color seems a little washed out to me. I liked the tones in the old sprite a bit better - But what do I know, anyway?  

Thanks for the comments - You're all right about each of your comments. This was an exercise in layer-based animating, and I think I got carried away with creating movement through taking a whole layer and knocking it down a pixel each frame. And there definitely needs to be a greater pause at the beginning and end frames.

IE: I think there could be more effective (and fluid) ways of making him crouch than to have the shirt and legs 'ratchet' down like they do.

Oh, Igor, your comment made me realize a flaw in all of the returning upward frames. The hair moves up instead of down. It should be getting flatter as his head moves up (instead of just re-using the 'moving downwards' frames in reverse.)

The thing that I am happiest with, and really the stuff I spent the most time on, is his facial animation. I think I got the brow raise right, and that was done in a more traditional way by redrawing the image in the eye areas each frame.

As another exercise, if the free time fairy decides to grant me my wishes, I'd like to do a more dynamic version of this with a lot more movement to it. Take the time to sketch out a definite direction for each frame of animation and go from there.

If you want to be wowed by something, check out this guy's work:

http://www.geocities.com/clamchowder1000/main.html

I've had this thing sitting on my PC for awhile now, and I thought I'd get some feedback on it as I don't have the time necessary for larger projects at the moment. (I've been the victim of a slew of bad hardware luck.) This was, more or less, a test to see how well I could animate a character that was stuck in, say, a 64x64 bounding box. Dack, here, is supposed to be an older fellow, and a bit of a monster killer.



See anything wrong with it?

(Oh, I almost forgot to add that this would be one of several idle animations and would not be constantly repeated as in the gif posted here.)

[more]

Everything is very soothing and smooth. Is the character depicted how it will appear in the game?

The only critiques I could give would just be a difference of style between yourself and myself. With that in mind, I think that the drawing is very complete and is more than adequate as is.

Normally, I wouldn't post unless I had some actual critiques, but this really polished and nice.

The aging officer provides a nice tonal contrast to the young Arizona Scott. It has real appeal in the youth vs. authority figure sense.

I'd say, because of the above, number one is a more interesting choice.

Thanks for the comments; the robot doesn't have guns or a shield because, well, he's a farmer. He does, however, have a vacuum pump in the palm of his hands for picking up crops. Not nearly as exciting, but it'll have to do.

The legs on these characters were intentionally done that small. I want the emphasis to be on upper body with really large-emotive/expressive heads. I'm going for a unique style there. It's a gamble, but I'd rather try and innovate than make something that fits the status quo.

Really the only way I know to clean up the edges would be to manually draw whatever color you are using as your transparency over the anti-alaised edges. Or to use the background eraser tool (also pixel by pixel).

I did a quick edit to show you what I meant:

That is really impresive line work for having been done with any type of technical pen or marker. I'll try and post something in a PM to you that shows a few of my experiments with trying to create varied, spontaneous lines with pens.

I definitely would have believed that your line work was done with brushes. That's excellent work!

I don't think you'd need a pure black for foreground objects here. The heavier lines around the closer objects properly dictate their distance/closeness. I'd much rather see all the neat lines in this instance.

However, black and white comics are most definitely my favorite to draw (and the cheapest to self publish). Occasionally I use red as well or another single color and do two color work. If you use the secondary color for just focal points it works really well.

?Mi nombre es Ramon?

That's all I remember from Spanish class...

What if the characters are recognized along the way as being the 4 decendents heralded in their ancient religion/culture? People could react accordingly spewing bits of info as they go. Other people could oppose them and their heritage and be out to stop them from completing the journey (possibly a secret society responsible for the 'end of the world.'). Kinda cliche, but it could work.

Also, what's to say that one or more of the characters wouldn't be opposed to this 'journey on a whim'. What if one of the quests was played as a character sent by the wizard to convince the straggler to come along? The character sent by the wizard would be informed of the plot and could pass it on, furthering the story.

Igor, I am, as always, humbled by your talent. Comic style drawing is my first love. I do all of my inking with Pigma Micron technical markers and am considering moving over to brushes. Might I ask what brushes you use? Your varied line widths look great!

Hey, no problem! I did a quick edit with some bouncy-bouncy tossed into the mix:

Boredom struck:



This is REALLY rough (mostly because there is a halo around the original drawing, to some extent). The character needs a bounce to his step and some facial animations would help.

It should give you an idea of what I was talking about, though.

Linked here is a Graphics Gale file of the animation: http://www.penguinx.org/Green Man.gal

Here is a link to Graphics Gale: http://www.tempest-j.com/gale/e (A great layer based animation studio.)

The thing to bear in mind with this type of character is overlap. When one ball/hand rolls forward accross his front another should be disappearing behind him.

Foreshortening will also be important. One foot gets bigger/closer as the other gets smaller/farther away. This character will completely be dependent on the illusion of depth.

[Erwin]

Erwin, I like the new cat image. His energetic bounding comes accross nicely. It's much more interesting than the standard walking animation.

Minimi, I had never heard of cat aids before until very recently. My mother-in-law's kitten died of it and, apparently, it is quite common.    

I'm going to be shading this guy today, hopefully. Going back to flat shading seems to be what the doctor ordered. Shading is definitely my weakest area, though.

Now if only the free-time fairy would stop on by...

Here's a work in progress of the replacement lead character:



I've changed the storyline a bit and I'd rather do something other than the previously posted robot.

The second version was catchy. It reminded me of the countless hours I incidentally spent listening to the Doom midis when I'd play that in marathon sessions.

I think you can avoid having to change the heel by making the left shoe (his right) be viewed more head-on.

Also, I like the fangs and the rips in the shirt, but the casual pose of the first image comes accross more nicely. I did a quick edit with wolf-like yellow eyes, lower contrast fangs, a corrected foot, and a more head-on perspected foot.