Animation quality

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Wombat2112

Banned
1.Does anyone have any advice concerning achieving best fluidity of motion in sprite animation?
2.For transitioning motion smoothly is volume of sprites ever a key factor?
3.Is timing often relevant?
4. I have Fighter Factory. What software if any do you recommend paid or free if any? Eventually bones and muscles will be needed.
 
For best fluidity the more frames the better however it isn't always practical, there's some things you have to take into account for an overall balanced feel.

quality of sprite, If working with high definition sprites the more frames the better and the speed of the animation should be fast but not too fast to create a fluid motion BUT you also have to take in account the size and weight of a character, for example


This single move from start to finish would take me about 1 week of work if it was all my own original art work which isn't very practical, if it was all my own work it would probably take me a whole year to make a complete character. 🫤

Since the sprites are already available it only took me an hour or so to make but still a whole character at this size and frame rate could take me a couple months to complete with no artistic effort on my part.

Working with smaller sprites means you can do less work overall and it look really good so my advice is if you are wanting to make an original game think 16-bit or lower don't make anything bigger than 50 x 50 pixels and keep the palette down to 14 colours MAX, this way you never need more than 12 frames per animation for fluid looking motion at the correct speed.

I use adobe photoshop for everything graphic related.
 
@DOWNWARDPLUNGE

as far as software i recommend Ebsynth,
with it you can color sprites or recolor sprites on your own style by using just some keyframes

i have not had a chance to try AI tools, but it is said that if you learn to use the prompts correcly, animators who work with 3D rendering are able to render stuff in 20 frames and use AI to generate the rest for a total of 30fps
or that it is even possible to turn a simple line drawing style sprite or illustration into a realistic or 16 bit shaded image and such...

basically these programs are varios degrees of frame interpolation software, these programs are typically used to turn a 24 fps animation to 60fps... but they allow for some "cheating" like the time saving 3D rendering trick i mentioned earlier

last there are bunches of youtube channels dedicated on tips and analisis of how to do animations for retro games -

but if your game is an original thing, i say do your own style, sprite animation, like music, has become a bit too formulaic, because a lot of folks never go beyond the basic tools of the programs that are typically used.

fortunately , as your skills become better , you can go back and fix it
 
Yeah 15 to be exact, it takes a lot of effort, Usually when I have an idea for a game I do 1 level 1 character, work out all the mechanics so I have a good base then I tell myself I'll come back to it later, done that about 10 times, I learn a lot but I never complete anything. This particular mod was working with higher resolution and exaggerated animations.
 
danno said:
Yeah 15 to be exact, it takes a lot of effort, Usually when I have an idea for a game I do 1 level 1 character, work out all the mechanics so I have a good base then I tell myself I'll come back to it later, done that about 10 times, I learn a lot but I never complete anything. This particular mod was working with higher resolution and exaggerated animations.
Click to expand...
Well that's probably the way to do it is learn how to complete as many tasks and functions as you can. Then when you want to actually create something you will have the knowledge tools. I'm starting with a simple shooter there is a new one called Mega Alien Destroyer I didn't know the linking rules or I would have posted it. There iare 64, 32 bit and Android versions. It's a free download for a week. It's exactly like something I want to make and then later on I want to learn how to add better effects and probably things that will require scripting knowledge. None of which I have as of yet. I recognize things like my mathematical operators Bool (True False) and terms like Void, Class, INT variables Got a little C++ experience. Although much to learn I still have as Master Yoda would say. I have a cool idea for a Marvel Beat em up adventure game. But I want to learn much more before I even try. LOL.
 
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