Cyberguy's Bucket O' Pixels.

[Kelvin]

Wanna see more squirrel! ^.-.^ The beaver looks kinda smushed, though. o.-.0

[Cyberguy64]

Did some more anatomy and facial tweaks on the siblings, in addition to stripping them of their clothes for the purpose of getting a better feel for their respective anatomies. I ditched the horns on Cobalt's helmet because there was no conceivable way to get his horns to poke through the helmet and still look natural on his unarmored head.

I also started on an Inkling sprite because of how much fun the Testfire was. It got deleted due to my crappy computer... so I started fresh with a new one!

[Cyberguy64]

Decided to clear away Cobalt's outlines like my Inkling sprites.

[Brutus]

in addition to stripping them of their clothes for the purpose of getting a better feel for their respective anatomies.

We all know that's only the reason you state

[Cyberguy64]

in addition to stripping them of their clothes for the purpose of getting a better feel for their respective anatomies.

We all know that's only the reason you state

"Yeah, take it all off, Cobalt! Show that neck! Let's see those horns!"

[Cyberguy64]

So, between Splatoon, getting and internship and other misc facets of life, I've been pretty busy lately.

I decided to go back to basics and re-sprite and re-animate Cobalt, again, using what I've learned during my time here. Here's a WIP.


I've tried to really work out a sense of his musculature and overall feeling of motion.

[Cyberguy64]

And it's finished! I drew a lot of inspiration from Freedom Planet in getting his motion together.

[Bombshell93]

is this by any chance inspired by Scaler?
the hair / head spikes struck familiarity
also, love your sprite work but tone down the saturation a little bit, play with hue a bit more on your blues maybe, it seems a bit overpowering and dark atm

[Gors]

I think the animation has no real meaning. I mean what is he doing?

Would you do that, naturally? The key for idle animations is naturality - it's the basic pose all other animations stem from. It really looks a little weird pulling legs like that

also saturation too high, yes

[Cyberguy64]

Ouch. He's supposed to be leaning slightly back and forth, flexing his arms and wings. I guess I didn't do a very good job making it feel natural.

What would you suggest to make it feel more right?

I'll try to drop the saturation some. It just feels like every time I try, he ends up dull and grey, and he loses the vibrant colors I want him to have.

[kidicarus29]

Ouch. He's supposed to be leaning slightly back and forth, flexing his arms and wings. I guess I didn't do a very good job making it feel natural.

What would you suggest to make it feel more right?

I'll try to drop the saturation some. It just feels like every time I try, he ends up dull and grey, and he loses the vibrant colors I want him to have.

Think about what you would do if you were just standing somewhere. Let's say you felt the need to itch your nose, so you rubbed it a bit and then put your hand back down. You wouldn't keep doing that constantly, would you? Unless it bothered you more, of course, in which case you should probably get it checked out.

My point is that the natural pose shouldn't be any more complicated than simple breathing and blinking. If left idle for too long, however, then the character should execute some sort of action that indicates their own idleness. The player's idleness is not the same as the idleness of the character. These actions are akin to the nose scratching example I used before. For your character, it would be flexing his wings. After that plays maybe once or twice, the character should go back to breathing. You could even do a sleeping animation for really long idling, like a few cheeky games do. Think Earthworm Jim!

[Cyberguy64]

All right, I tried to keep it simple, to the point, but still full of motion and excitement. I also dropped the saturation a good deal on most of his palette.

I had plans to expand it with a stretch/yawning animation, but I lost some major base poses due to computer trouble....

Also, a quick compare between the most recent revisions and the last major overhaul their sprites got. Geo's new staff gem took forever to get right.


Also, thanks so much for all the criticism. I greatly appreciate all of it. I couldn't improve without people who are willing to call out my mistakes and failed experiments and get me back on track.

[Ridge Troopa]

I think it's important to note that the style of game play influences how quirky an idle animation is. For 2D platformer styles like this, things usually don't get too crazy, but for a fighting game like Street Fighter there's a hell of a lot going on. You just have to decide what pieces of your character should move to make it match with the game play or what they're doing.

The new animation is a great improvement, nice job. I do agree with Kidicarus29 that the wings shouldn't 'flex', but I think you had the right idea making them animate a little. They're such a large part of the sprite hanging off that they could use a tiny bit of motion.

Also, your use of sel-out needs some work. You've used it on the nose and hair, but then nowhere else on the sprite so the head and body don't really match anymore. You should probably make the outlines on the head slightly darker in places and apply some more sel-out on the arms/legs/body.

[Cyberguy64]

School's been railing on me lately. Got these made up for fun and to try and keep in practice.