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| Animation... how do -you- do it? |
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Joe Olivieri
Member #2,286
May 2002
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There are quite a few people out there that have some slick demos with very nicely animated characters. What I'd like to know is what editor you use and what general process you follow to make your animations. I'll go ahead and start so I can set the playing field but my process (and animations for that matter) are very much subpar. (that's why I'm asking! I use Paint Shop Pro 7. 1. Draw an outline of the character in all 4 directions. (I do mostly overhead RPG sprites.) 2. Copy the outline to a new layer, shift it a bit. Lather, rinse, repeat until I've worked up a complete animation for one direction. Repeat for the other 3. 3. Color in all the frames. 4. Put it all together. One thing that I do know - the secret to good results is practice. I'll keep practicing but I want to make sure I'm practicing good process |
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Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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You forgot: Aside from that, your method is fine. Here is what you probably lack though: Experience. It takes a long time to be able to bang out nice looking stuff. Trust me. You just need practice, and "eventually" it'll look nicer. -----sig: |
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gillius
Member #119
April 2000
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I'm not an artist, but if you do straight overhead, it is very hard to impossible to get good looking images simply from the angle. You might get realistic looking or graphically good looking but unless you can see the face of the character it won't achieve an emotional effect. The old Final Fantasy games used an unrealisitic angle but it works well. The benefit from doing pure overhead graphics is that Allegro's rotate_sprite method will work, reducing the amount of work you have to do. Gillius |
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23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
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Heh; I thought this was going to be about animations "engines" in code I do my outlines on paper; I find it easier. But I don't make it too detailed. Just enough so I know where everything is. Then I scan in and add the details. -- |
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Paul Pridham
Member #250
April 2000
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I use Graphics Gale, and generally I draw a monochrome silhouette for each frame. I get the transitions flowing as smooth as my bowels after an extremely way-too-spicey bowl of hot and sour soup I had when I was sick, block in the colour for each frame, and finally add details and outlines if needed. If I need to figure out perspective or anything, I either do that on paper or I might even load up a 3D modeller for some prototyping. ---- |
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Inphernic
Member #1,111
March 2001
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Quote: 1. Draw an outline of the character in all 4 directions. (I do mostly overhead RPG sprites.)
I'd prefer a program with onion skin capabilities for this one. The previous frames would be displayed in the current frame by reducing the frame opacity by ~50% for each frame displayed backwards. The only program I know that does something like is Disney Animation Studio for Amiga. -- |
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Johan Peitz
Member #9
April 2000
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Quote: The only program I know that does something like is Disney Animation Studio for Amiga.
Pro Motion has onion skinning and it's really great. -- |
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spellcaster
Member #1,493
September 2001
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Quote: The only program I know that does something like is Disney Animation Studio for Amiga.
Then you don't know a lot of gfx programs, do you? And of course you can get the same effect by changing the opacity of your drawing layer -- |
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Inphernic
Member #1,111
March 2001
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I'm a bit surprised. I do know graphic applications, but.. umm.. the dog ate the manuals! Yeah, that's it! Quote: And of course you can get the same effect by changing the opacity of your drawing layer
Yeah, but that's too much work. -- |
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Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
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I always shade the frames right after I've finished the outlines. Maybe because it's just easier to see the wholeness if everything looks more "3D" right from the beginning... OpenLayer has reached a random SVN version number ;) | Online manual | Installation video!| MSVC projects now possible with cmake | Now alvailable as a Dev-C++ Devpack! (Thanks to Kotori) |
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23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
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Quote: Onion skinning is one of the most basic features for any editor with animation ambition. Heh; I was adding that to Bola a long time ago because I didn't know any programs that did that -- |
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