Walking Animation Tutorial

Discussion and analysis of graphics, story, levels, and so on.
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CommanderSpleen
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Walking Animation Tutorial

Post by CommanderSpleen »

Today I was infused with some inspiration and wrote up an article I've been planning for some time. It describes how to draw a walking animation sequence. Hopefully it will help some folks with their modding.

Let me know what you think and how it can be improved.

Read it here.
KeenRush
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Post by KeenRush »

Thanks Spleen, this should be useful to me if anything! The walking cycle is my biggest problem in sprite design.
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XkyRauh
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Post by XkyRauh »

Image
Image

A few pictures would really help your cause out.

The most important thing, for me, when doing a walk cycle, is to make sure the character looks like they have WEIGHT in their body somehow.

See how the straight back in the lower left looks stiff and awkward? Make the character lean FORWARD (as top) or BACK (as middle) and the cycle is suddenly loaded with personality. :)

The further apart your character's feet are, the faster they appear to be moving. Check how the "strut" has tiny stride compared to the "purposeful" run.

If you're limited to 4 frames, 1 and 3 should effectively be mirrors of one another, as should 2 and 4. Remember to make sure your character looks good in silhouette (can you tell what's going on, even if it's a shadowy black outline?) and make sure you have opposite limb action (right foot forward, right arm back).

:) Run cycles are the best!
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Ceilick
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Post by Ceilick »

This is cool, nice analysis spleen, and nice pic xky. For the sake of learning something, I'm going to redraw my keen6mod's boss character's running animations using this.

Currently, it looks like this:
Image

It actually matches up somewhat well with what's here, but I'll post again once i've made changes.

Edit: Wow, actually it was a lot worse than I thought. I dont think i've ever spent so long editing a animation cycle, or creating one for that matter. One of the major problems where I had an "Ah-ha!" moment was that the character didn't swing his weight correctly. His weight was falling away from the foot on the ground, rather than being carried by it.

Another problem was that, not being a human character, this guy's legs don't work exactly the same; the upper leg is practically non existant, though there is still a knee.

Image
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CommanderSpleen
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Post by CommanderSpleen »

Xky: Haha, those are great. I'll work your comments and diagrams into the tutorial.

Ceilick: That's an absolutely perfect example of what I'm talking about. I'll add a before-after section of your sprite as well.
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Post by levellass »

An interesting and in-depth article. I am not sure if this helps me, since I've tried to avoid redoing main-character sprites, focusing instead on the less animating ones, such as enemies, which often lack the flexibility to put into practice your tips, but this is the kind of thing people need.
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