Anyone got tips on animating?

[Burningscarlet]

Basically, does anyone know how to animate sprites/anything in general?

I've been trying flash, it seems decent. I'm also trying to animate my stuff in photoshop by drawing the individual frames but I have no idea where to start. After effects also seems like a good option, but I have absolutely no idea how to work the puppet tool (well I've looked at tutorials and I have a general idea but it's hard to find tutorials related to h-game stuff haha)

Does anyone here have any experience with animating? And if they do would you have any tips to share? Help out a fellow h-gamer here

 

[Burningscarlet]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

Here's an example of the stuff I'm working on. It's the poses I plan to animate once I finish getting everything in order

 

[Iggy]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

The first pose (on the left side) kinda looks like she's doing a Megaman slide, except lifting one of her legs, as if expecting to slide onto a phallic object of sorts.

 

[Burningscarlet]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

That's a pretty sick concept. Now if only I had the animating skills to turn that idea into reality I'd make her megaman slide into all the phallic objects if you know what I mean

 

[UrineOnU]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

I'm not too good with line art sprites but I usually separate my sprite/drawings into sections

and i think that's how most people make flash videos, usually it's the body parts if it's a human or creature. Each section can be separated by layers in most drawing programs.

First thing to do is the outline of the body parts. Then I always put my color on a separate layer but labeled with that body part. When all the parts are finished you assemble and make any edits to your model then your first frame is done.

In animating you sometimes can nudge your body parts or rotate body parts and modify them slightly but Depending on how dynamic your animation is going to be, you may have to draw certain things at different angles and orientations and not just nudging something to the side a bit, you gotta do it frame by frame entirely different.

It requires a lot more work, but it's something that has to be done sometimes.

here's a crappy example of something that I never finished, but the right breast and foot have 4 frames each edited a little more than a simple nudge and rotate could muster but what i was trying to do with this is to see how comfortable i was making a large animated sprite the result was I was I'm just not ready for something that large.

Its probably best to practice with some smaller simpler things then attempt much larger things that require more frames at multiple angles and perspectives.

 

[Burningscarlet]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

Good stuff! I don't know though - if I was planning to do full sized sprites in Photoshop for example, would I need to do it all individually and not section by section?

Not that I mind, I've got a lot of time, I need a starting point, lol

 

[UrineOnU]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

Good stuff! I don't know though - if I was planning to do full sized sprites in Photoshop for example, would I need to do it all individually and not section by section?

Not that I mind, I've got a lot of time, I need a starting point, lol

If you don't want to do it in sections, that's fine you can draw the entire thing whole, the most important thing is to know is to plan what exactly you are doing, you can draw the entire sprite on one layer as long as you can manage it and keep it efficient.

To begin any animation you take your completed initial pose

then you know what to do at this point or you haven't decided, it's always better to know what you were doing beforehand,but in this instance she is trying to remove a tentacle from her vagina.

So If I did the second frame I export to a .gif program verify the transition and make edits to it. Then i got my second sprite frame of the animation

then i do this 15 more times for 15 more sprites

then the animation is complete.

In my initial plans I wanted two loops a transition and a end.You can loop a set amount of frames,transition one animation to another animation one scene to another scene, reverse it or end it. It all depends on your initial planing and what you need for the game,show or movie.

Anyways I'm probably explaining all this wrong. It's probably better to look around at some tutorials on the internet about how to begin a animation than take my advice. I pretty much came up with my own methods and they may not be all that efficient.

 

[Kyrieru]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

You must be registered to see the links

Watch all of these, starting with episode 1. He goes over a lot of the principles of traditional animation which apply to any medium, as well as specifics regarding flash.

If you already know how to use flash, skip episode 1.

 

[Burningscarlet]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

Thanks Kyieru. Your game maker template is a huge help! Helped me work out the kinks in my own platformer and I managed to figure out what was wrong. Hahaha

Oh, btw, what's your opinion on full sprite h-animation in game maker? Is it really difficult? Because I'm thinking of animating the gifs in photoshop and then just exporting it to GM studio.

 

[Kyrieru]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

Thanks Kyieru. Your game maker template is a huge help! Helped me work out the kinks in my own platformer and I managed to figure out what was wrong. Hahaha

Oh, btw, what's your opinion on full sprite h-animation in game maker? Is it really difficult? Because I'm thinking of animating the gifs in photoshop and then just exporting it to GM studio.

Well, regardless of how good you are at animation, large sprites down in photoshop will mean two things,

1. Dealing with sprites will be more time consuming since it's being done outside of game maker. (you'll have to inport them, and re-import them anytime you want to change something)
2. Unless you know how to properly optimize your game, it will probably be much slower than smaller sprites.

Other than that, it just comes down to how confident you are in your animation, and what you want to do. If doing large sprites in photoshop makes you more enthusiastic about working on the game, then do it.

 

[???]

Re: Anyone got tips on animating?

If you do decide to take the flash option just for animating, keep in mind that exporting animated gifs won't record any sub-animation in the result. That is, MovieClips on a timeline that you might animate separately like hair, eyes, or whatever won't show up in the .gif file. If you do this, you'll need to have everything animated on a single timeline, the end result being frame by frame.

For animating itself, I would say that if an animation doesn't quite have the look you want, you can make subtle movements in between frames to give it a better transition. Another approach is to make a start frame, an end or bookmark frame, and then make the animation gradually head in the direction you want it to go:


First is the starting pose:

Second is how I wanted her body to appear at a certain point:

Third is the motion, essentially moving between the two points(sub animation incl.):