The Clockwork Mansion

Underground Warehouse => Abandoned Mine => Topic started by: Castle Pokemetroid on April 08, 2007, 09:11:05 PM

Title: Alec animated
Post by: Castle Pokemetroid on April 08, 2007, 09:11:05 PM
(http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l229/C-P_06/aleclightningspearanimated.gif)

What do you think?

And also, could I get an invisible backround for this?
Title: My review
Post by: Destina Faroda on April 09, 2007, 12:33:49 AM
This is okay, but not great.

I do like how you took two frames of Alec and made a pretty good looking animation out of it.  There are several problems with it, though.

One is the fact that Alec "jumps" around a lot, instead of being still.  This animation flaw is exaggerated due to the peculiarities of video game-based pixel art.  In hand drawn, "analog" animation, Alec should recoil a little from his movements, although not as much as shown.  In a game, though, his actual movement should be localized for a practical reason -- keeping him in one space takes up far less room.  In addition, if CVRPG is an action RPG (although it seems more turn-based), this should also be done also for the player's benefit, who has a constant subconscious awareness of the "boundaries" of the character.

The other problem is that the weapon is of higher resolution (more detailed pixel wise), than Alec.  Now for a comic this junction of resolution might work for a single frame, but for an animation it's just overkill.

My suggestions for improving are as follows:

1)  Either draw or an SNES style weapon and have it properly proportioned to Alec.
2)  Make a frame in the middle of Alec swinging.  While the blur you used to "tween" the frames looks okay, to a trained eye, it looks sloppy.

That being said, I'm working on giving this a transparent background.  It's not bad.  It just could be a lot better.
Title: Re: Alec animated
Post by: Castle Pokemetroid on April 09, 2007, 12:49:40 AM
But you know, this is like 10 times better than my other animations with CVRPG charaters. This may not be perfect, but I have gotten much better in animation.

Plus CVRPG has limited sprites, and I can't made sprites for beans.
Title: Re: Alec animated
Post by: Destina Faroda on April 09, 2007, 01:30:46 AM
Yeah, I know it's an improvement, and better than a lot of the CVRPG fan-sprites by far, but it suffers from some of the same glaring problems.

Just as though you can't really animate hand-drawn illustrations well unless you can draw or convincingly modify existing ones, you can't make a really good pixel animation unless you have some spriting ability.  And, as quiet as it's kept, it's not that difficult for people who are serious about pixel art to make CVRPG style sprites.  It's just time consuming, which is why no one who has the ability to sprite even at a fair level does it.

To be fair, I can't do much better, which is why I don't animate.  But I can edit.  This isn't perfect, and there's more I can do, but this is what I did (http://www.cvrpg.com/destina/images/alecfix.gif) with your file.

Title: Re: Alec animated
Post by: Castle Pokemetroid on April 09, 2007, 01:47:17 AM
Eh, It's not possible to be 100% perfect anyways, but for some reason I think mine is better...

Thanks tho.
Title: Re: Alec animated
Post by: Damaris on April 09, 2007, 08:14:21 AM
I do think it looks a little more convincing without the recoil, honestly.
Title: Re: Alec animated
Post by: llearch n'n'daCorna on April 09, 2007, 10:42:26 AM
Uh... according to what I see, it looks like the recoil is -backwards-...

.. ie, he's being pulled forwards by the recoil. Perhaps there's something there I'm missing...