Walking Sequences

[v6v]

Okay, so I tried to make a Gif of the entire game, but it was about 27MB. Too large for upload to any major filesharing sites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4yNJM7iJp4

Walking, Running, Standing, Jumping (I'm using the old standing animation, I'm going to switch to either of the two Vincent posted)

The running animation doesn't seem to be natural.

[Vincent]

Very nice!  It looks good!

Since you say the running animation doesn't seem natural, I looked at it and found 2 problems:
1- The "front" leg doesn't extend all the way, when it touches the ground, the knee is still bent a lot at that moment.
2- The motion of the leg going back and the motion of the leg going forward are essentially the same in reverse, but they shouldn't be.  When you run, to bring leg forward (in the back to front motion), you keep you knee bent and your foot high.  The foot only touches the ground when pushing (so in the front to back motion).

[v6v]

Very nice!  It looks good!

Since you say the running animation doesn't seem natural, I looked at it and found 2 problems:
1- The "front" leg doesn't extend all the way, when it touches the ground, the knee is still bent a lot at that moment.
2- The motion of the leg going back and the motion of the leg going forward are essentially the same in reverse, but they shouldn't be.  When you run, to bring leg forward (in the back to front motion), you keep you knee bent and your foot high.  The foot only touches the ground when pushing (so in the front to back motion).

Vincent:

Followed your advice:

I kept the knee up

Extended the leg out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Pgp48fslg

Incredible improvement, anything wrong with the jumping animation?

[Vincent]

Hey Galaxy!

Oh yes, well done, the run sequence looks much more natural like this!

It's hard to tell for a jumping animation.  Usually, running sequence are quite similar because the point of running is usually to reach a high speed and there are not a lot of equivalent and really effective ways to achieve this for a human.  But when you jump, there are many possible goals.  Examples: Are you trying to vault over something while not losing speed?  Are you trying to reach high?  Are you trying to reach a maximum distance?  Do you jump from a running or walking or standing start?  All of these things will affect a jump animation.

For LoK:R I tried to make a jump sequence that would more or less fit with all of this but focus on what would happen most often: which is try to reach high from a running start.  Which is, by pure coincidence, something I do in taekwondo (for jump kicks).  So I had a good idea of the body mechanic behind this jump.  In such a jump, to reach high, you must launch one of your knees very high while the other leg is extended to push from the ground as long a possible...  Hum, it's unfortunate, I can't find a good picture of this.  Anyway, when you go near the apex of the jump, the legs begin switching position: the high knee is lowered and the extended leg is retracted back near the body.  When getting near the ground, the extended leg is not the first leg to make contact with the ground since it is now higher than the leg taht was initially launched in the air.

In your jumping animation, I see 2 images.  One image when going up and one when going down.  The first issue I think is that these images do not really suggest movement.  The image of "going up" should show a position suggesting a push on the ground, the image of "coming down" should be an image of bracing for impact on the ground.  If you could insert an image for the apex of the jump, wou could make a smooth transition between your two jumping images and make more "extreme" stances for pushing the ground and landing on the ground.  In LoK:R, during a jump, I check the vertical velocity of the character.  Whe it is near 0 and the "jump" flag is on, I switch to the jump apex image.  When the "jump" flag is on and vertical velocity is going up but not near zero, I use the push the ground image, and of course, if the jump flag is on but all the rest is false, I use the landing image.

Hey!  I found a video showing a jump side kick.  Of course the landing and the apex of the jump aren't what you want since there is a side kick in it, but there is a slow mo in the video which will allow you to see the initial image (knee launched high and leg extended to push the ground).  From a running start and trying to reach high, I think it's pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kai2SSYQ9lg

I hope this helps.

Keep up the good work!

[v6v]

Vincent, thank you for the feedback and the motivation.

I will work on tuning my jumping animation sequence.

That will be the next major hurdle that I'll have to jump through (No pun intended)

The videos are useful because eventually, I'll have to animate attacks. Especially something like a flying kick would make a nice attack!

(Off topic)

I was replaying Legacy of Kain: R- I had to ask

In one of the locations, I believe it was a sewer under a part of a castle, you seemed to have done a wavy water effect in that level for the water, how exactly, did you achieve it?

I wanted to do something similar, I see it in a lot of older games.

[Vincent]

I'm glad to help you!  I can't wait to see your game.

There is no rocket science behind the wavy water effect, it's an animation with a lot of frames.  I ripped a lot of content from a SNES game called Demon's Crest to use it in LoK:R.  You can see what I ripped on the spriters resource web site (see link below).  You will certainly recognize some of the stuff in LoK:R.  (Ripping all of this was a project in itself, it took a couple of months to complete.)
http://spriters-resource.com/snes/demonscrest/index.html

You can see the water animation disassembled frame by frame in the "Forest Lake Background"
This web site is very useful to get base material for 2D games, I used it extensively for LoK:R.  But since most of the stuff is ripped from games, you have to be careful how you use it because of copyright issues.

[v6v]

I'm glad to help you!  I can't wait to see your game.

There is no rocket science behind the wavy water effect, it's an animation with a lot of frames.  I ripped a lot of content from a SNES game called Demon's Crest to use it in LoK:R.  You can see what I ripped on the spriters resource web site (see link below).  You will certainly recognize some of the stuff in LoK:R.  (Ripping all of this was a project in itself, it took a couple of months to complete.)
http://spriters-resource.com/snes/demonscrest/index.html

You can see the water animation disassembled frame by frame in the "Forest Lake Background"
This web site is very useful to get base material for 2D games, I used it extensively for LoK:R.  But since most of the stuff is ripped from games, you have to be careful how you use it because of copyright issues.

You're a spriter? That's awesome, I had no idea. (I saw your name on the sheet and stopped: (Wait is that the same Vincent??))

That's the exact effect that I'm referring to, do you mind if I use it for a bit? Until I can try and take a shot at it myself (It might be hard, it looks like 50 frames)

I never really understood if it was hardware that made the water do that cool effect in the older games

[Vincent]

Do you mean that you saw the demon's crest rips and wondered if it was the same Vincent before today? 

Well, I made the Demon's Crest stage rips, but that's all I did.  I did it because I had to do it for LoK:R, so why not offer it to the spriters community at the same time?  So yeah, same Vincent.   But I don't think I will rip anything else just for the kick.

Of course you can use the water effect!  It's there for that reason.  I'm very happy to see that my work is useful to someone else!