09-19-2013, 09:53 PM
I guess you didn't really post here for C+C, but I'm going to give you some anyway
I looked through your gallery and noticed that all of your idles do the same weird bouncy thing with arms flailing whichever way. While this generates interest in the viewer because of the amount of fluid movement going on, it can be pretty ugly and nonsensical. There's no reason for people to be standing around, rapidly pumping up and down, moving their limbs as if they're struggling not to drown while they're standing. It's just really too much. I think I'd like your work a lot more if you made more subtle idle animations and kept all that fluid, exaggerated, bouncy movement to the things that benefit from it, like the walking animations you've done. Looking at your gallery, everything is just constantly bouncing and it looks way too homogenous/repetitive. It seems like movement for the sake of movement, and rather than being fun and cartoony, it just rubs me as really unnatural.
You've shown that you can do some nice animations, but I feel like your technique would shine more if you would be more choosy in how you use it. It sort of reminds me of the great drummers in my band class who loved to show off, but had to learn how to hold back and play more quietly. They certainly had skill, but it was more appreciable when they learned how to control their ability and make it blend in subtly with the rest of the band. When they tried to be loud and showy, it just threw everything else off. I feel like your idles are, in the context of every other animation you have, throwing the rest off, in many cases.
Also, yeah, it'd be great if you could do something about the selout. I don't know if they're like that as a result of resizing or something, but the lack of smoothness in the outline makes your sprites look like they've been ripped out of another image and have artifacts around the edges. The pink bear in your gallery seems to suffer from it the least. If you can, try to make your outlines less broken apart. It's pretty jarring on things like the cop's arm in idle cop 3 or the other animations of your green alien ote thing (the shield one you posted here covers it up).
I looked through your gallery and noticed that all of your idles do the same weird bouncy thing with arms flailing whichever way. While this generates interest in the viewer because of the amount of fluid movement going on, it can be pretty ugly and nonsensical. There's no reason for people to be standing around, rapidly pumping up and down, moving their limbs as if they're struggling not to drown while they're standing. It's just really too much. I think I'd like your work a lot more if you made more subtle idle animations and kept all that fluid, exaggerated, bouncy movement to the things that benefit from it, like the walking animations you've done. Looking at your gallery, everything is just constantly bouncing and it looks way too homogenous/repetitive. It seems like movement for the sake of movement, and rather than being fun and cartoony, it just rubs me as really unnatural.
You've shown that you can do some nice animations, but I feel like your technique would shine more if you would be more choosy in how you use it. It sort of reminds me of the great drummers in my band class who loved to show off, but had to learn how to hold back and play more quietly. They certainly had skill, but it was more appreciable when they learned how to control their ability and make it blend in subtly with the rest of the band. When they tried to be loud and showy, it just threw everything else off. I feel like your idles are, in the context of every other animation you have, throwing the rest off, in many cases.
Also, yeah, it'd be great if you could do something about the selout. I don't know if they're like that as a result of resizing or something, but the lack of smoothness in the outline makes your sprites look like they've been ripped out of another image and have artifacts around the edges. The pink bear in your gallery seems to suffer from it the least. If you can, try to make your outlines less broken apart. It's pretty jarring on things like the cop's arm in idle cop 3 or the other animations of your green alien ote thing (the shield one you posted here covers it up).
![[Image: sxv5uJR.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/cqpCy.gif)