[animation study] Super Pumpkin Girl

[Bombshell93]

hello again, I wish I could be on this forum more often! but work is work.
Anyway onto what this post is about, I have gotten attached to a character design and a game idea recently, but in short, I suck at animating, admittedly I don't get much practice animating I'm often drawing stills, but I'd love to get into the swing of things so I might be capable of animating on my own.
Pumpkin Girl! a pumpkin head in nightmare land whose boyfriend Scare Man has got in bad with a mob and has been kidnapped, Pumpkin Girl has set out on an adventure to save Scare Man and brave the Creepy 6 and Mob boss himself, defeating them should she need to.

I'm dropping the Captain Plump design for something more fitting in the style, but hopefully the other 3 give you an idea of the theme and style of the characters and the way in which I intend to animate them, in short I'm thinking disney / warner bros cartoons.
For the moment sprite wise I have a pallet, I was at 1 point considering making it a NES compatible game but it would defeat the purpose of animation practice, I would be too restricted in terms of space for expressive animation.

I may drop the smaller sprite above and stick to the bigger sprite, it makes more sense on modern resolutions.
for the moment I'm stuck for places to start, I was hoping someone might have a thing or 2 to say about idle animations, in the mean time I'll probably sketch some frames and see how they look in pixel form.

EDIT:

first draft idle animation concept

I think it lacks the movement flow I want, it seems okay but I'd prefer something more exadurative.
Not to mention this looks a bit more like shes thrusting her hips than swaying them.

Any and all comments and crits are welcome and greatly appreciated,
Thank you for reading,
Bombshell

[Goemar]

I like Idle, try not too make the tits too jiggly in the final one or it may look silly but so far it looks good.

As for the 'sprite' - you can do better man. Keep the style simple and make these BIG (at least the size of your avatar) - anything less isn't going to do justice to your art.

[Bombshell93]

I agree with the simplicity but I think 64 x 64 is perfect for this character, maybe some extra breathing room on the canvas for more extreme animations but the characters scale fits fine as is.
here is a first draft of the pixel idle animation, I think I need to make the face react and the the hands steady a bit.
EDIT: slight refining to the right.

[Gwen]

Honestly, I like the smaller one more, the 64x64 just seems too simple, almost feels empty despite it being colored.

[Bombshell93]

the simplicity makes it easier to animate and the space allows me some room for precise fluid movement.
For the moment I'd prefer to work like this because I'm mostly trying to concentrate on animation, though sprite wise I may be wasting pixel-estate, animation wise I've got some breathing room.
shaded it would probably look better but before I shade the sprites I'd like the main forms to be well defined.

On another note I found the face isn't as good looking when I flipped it so I think the head needs a bit of attention, before doing so I made very minor changes to the animation,

[Gors]

i hate the fact that her head is not a pumpkin. it's an orange ball with a brown hat at most. Try giving her more 'pumpkin' features!

[Bombshell93]

thats mostly because the character is meant to be rather femenine, its difficult to have the details of a pumpkin amongst femenine features, I'll give it another try but as a slight adjustment to design I've reworked one of the concept pictures,
I'll probably have a better design in the morning because quite frankly her head in this picture looks deformed.

[Bombshell93]

OKAY! here is an update I hope people will take part in, as the lovely Gors has pointed out the head atm is a sports ball with a hat as much it is a pumpkin, so I'm trying out different designs to replace her head with, here are what I have currently, any comments on your favourite, your least favourite, traits you like / dislike would be greatly appreciated.

[Sevenstitch]

my fav face is D
my fav topper part is F

Keeps her feminine while reading like a pumpkin, will be more believable once she is shaded i think

my two cents



I like this idea you have going on, would like to see it keep going
Although most of your art doesn't seem to be, this particular set gives me a Tim Burton/jhonen vasquez vibe which i like very much

[Bombshell93]

I've tried to clean up the mash-up, I quite like it, I'll begin working it into sprite form,
I'll probably keep this going on for a while in design form at the very least, I'm a big fan of both Burton and Vasquez to be able to get anything with a feel of their work would be amazing, horror fantasy is such a fun thing to play with!

[Bombshell93]

got the head well enough into pixel form and thanks to the simple nature of the leaves and stalk I got some more motion showing in the head quite easily.

[Gors]

that's definitely more pumpkin than before, good job

though for a sprite this size, I think some more shading would do good for it.

[Bombshell93]

okay so 2 more frames added in to put some weight into the hips moving, I also fixed up the leg that seemed to be getting fatter when it swung, also shading! some polishing couldn't hurt but this is it in its current form

[Gors]

I'm not sure about the shading you've put, it's not showing her volume, and that's what you should do with a character like this. also her shirt shading is really distracting, a pixels more and it would be gainaxing

[Bombshell93]

I shall pay attention to and repair the boobies!
jokes aside is this any better?
edit: fixed a dodgey frame