E-Man's Sprite R & D

[Virt]

Make his foot rotate back when it's behind him (basically the opposite of when it's in front of him)

[E-Man]

What do you mean? You mean when he is walking? Running?

[E-Man]

Forgive me for a double post this soon, but I actually have more to show for my sprites. I added some more posses (such as a looking down posse), so just let me know if something doesn't seem right.



I addressed the rotating foot problem on the Goomba, Trollerskates. Is this what you had in mind. Also, since the Goomba is moving his feet extremely fast on the running sprites, do I have to rotate those feet, too?



Also, here is a charge animation when a Goomba wants to take down Mario! It looks like he really wants a raise by doing something that most Goombas in 2-D platformers never do.

[Goemar]

The goomba's body moves too far back/his left foot (one closest to screen) moves too far forward. Just looks unnatural.

[E-Man]

Do you mean this for all the movement sprites (i.e. Walking, Running) or just the walking animation?

Well, Midi is on the case for helping me create even better Goomba walk sprites, so we'll just see how that goes. Besides, the guy really knows his stuff!

[Virt]

You didn't rotate his feet at all.

This is what I meant.

[E-Man]

Ah-ha! Why didn't you show that before?

Thankfully, Midi was clever enough to know what you were talking about and he offered to do something about that problem. I think I'll hold off on reanimating the walking/running posses until Midi shows me what he has and see if it's something that even Goemar would agree with. Besides, considering his skills, I have a lot of confidence that he'll actually pull it off!

[E-Man]

OK! While Nidi is handling fixing up the walk animation, I decide to rack my brain to create a jump animation for the Goomba.




Here is an example of a jump my Goomba could make.

What do you think of it? Besides the Paper Mario games, are there any games that feature jumping Goombas?

Just let me know if you would like to see a slower version of it, so you can keep track of the frames easier.

[E-Man]

Odd… Why is it that nobody has a lot to say about my sprites as of late? I asked Ton in a PM recently if the items sprite sheet I created is ready for submission, but he never mentioned a thing about it. On top of that, nobody said much about my Goomba jumping animation…

Oh well, I decided to make some more sprites and I created something that is rarely done in a Mario game: ledge clinging.





I could have just have the Goomba fall into the pit like the rest of its weak brethren did in countless Mario games, but since this Goomba is made of more sturdier stuff, I decided to give him a little more brian and brawn to help him stand up to that mushroom eater.

What do you think? I even added foot movement to the sway based on some advice Trollerskates gave me on how the Goomba should walk.

[Virt]

The jumping looks like he moves too far. I don't think a creature without legs would have that much power in a leap.
It looks like his feet sort of shrink when they move forward in the teetering animation. His upper body also gets smaller.

[E-Man]

To be fair, the jump animation is just a test to see how well the frame animate. I wasn't going for a jump that suits the Goomba's anatomy and the jump I used isn't recommended in most situations; however, how often is jumping power consistent in a Mario game? In some games, Mario is able to leap over houses, while in others (like the RPGs), he jumps slightly better than a normal person. For Goomba's case, I'm not going to recommend any jump distances for him and let the user decide what's right.

As for the ledge cling, I honestly don't see much of a problem with it. Regardless, after getting myself to calm down a little bit, I went ahead and fixed up the offending parts of the Goomba the best I could. Since I changed two positions of the body, though, that means I'm going to have to replace all instances that use those positions later.

[Kelvin]

I am so sorry it took me so long to get these up. Work has been cruel to me lately, so I've done very little sprite work. But, here we go:


The lower row is the one I edited. I moved the feet back a couple pixels and changed the one foot so that it rotates. I hope that's what you guys meant. If it is, I'll do the same to the running and charging frames. I may change the position of the feet on all the other frames as well; they all look kinda forward to me now.

[Gors]

Both sprites are bad, because there is no cohesion into the animation. The body is moving towards a direction, the eyes face another, and none of you are taking goomba's anatomy into account.

Goomba should first of all, look towards the direction it's walking. That said, the fourth frame in the walking animation is really awkward because his head is turning more to us than facing left. It's interesting to say that usually when we walk, we -DON'T- sway our head to the side; this is more of an exaggerated detail cartoon animators use to make the cycle stand out, but overdoing it makes the subject look really broken

The eyes are really annoying because it's not looking to the direction it walks either; it looks like he's looking up to the sky instead. Fix the face and head as mentioned, but take his body into account.

Goomba has stubby feet that is directly connected to the main body, therefore the body should rotate in the same direction as the legs does, UNLIKE human characters' walk cycles. Since we have two main horizontal stuctures in our body (the hip bone and shoulder bones), we can swing our upper body inversely to the lower body. Tiny characters such as goombas obviously lack that so each step should slightly turn his entire body according to his feet.

[Kelvin]

Oh jeeze, I feel so stupid for missing that. Especially since I had the same issue when I drew my penguin sprites. Thanks for pointing it out, Gors.

[E-Man]

Hmmm… Okay, Gors, I see what you mean now. Midi did well by fixing all the other problems for the sprites, but it looks like you knew what what they really needed all along!

I took a look into my Goomba sprites and I combined Midi's sprites with your critique.



I only converted the walk cycle into a GIF, but how are the other animations I did?