The animation looks good! Here are a few suggestions, though:
1. When possible, try to use a "real life" reference. You might be able to find some videos of birds flapping their wings on YouTube. Sometimes there are peculiarities about a movement that pick up from watching a video.
2. Look for a character's "energy line". In figure drawing, the energy line typically goes from the top of a person's head and follows their spine. It is that line that you want to animate first. In your example, the wings are animated nicely but the bird's body remains stiff. I would focus on drawing the body frames first and then use layers to animate the wings. The wings should not be powered on their own... they should be powered by the body.
3. You may have had this in your example, but some "up and down" movement would work well. The bird should be "pushed up" with the downward flap of the wings... and then gently float back down the to original start position.
4. Make the sprite feel "less stiff" by adding some additional movement. For example, the headfeathers never move in any of the frames. I might animate them with a small bounce (a frame behind the wing flap) so that they seem to slightly follow the wings. That's what I did Jon's sprite's hat. The hat has a slight bounce because of the falling movement.
5. More frames always make for a smoother animation. I almost always shoot for somewhere between 8-10 frames per cycyle.
Here is a quick (and very dirty) mockup of some of the things I mentioned:
Jess, that's a pretty nice animation. Although those motion blur lines are not very good, it looks better without them.
Also, when making an animation it is always better not to reuse (i.e., copy and paste) a previous frame of animation as you'll end up with stiffer animations. Blocking out simple coloured shapes is a good technique to get everything more lively (like Jess has shown). This is also something I recently learnt. Notice the difference between these 2 animations I made (the old one using a lot of copy and paste).
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Thank you so much for the advice, Jess! I've been toying around with it, and here's what I have so far:
I can't wait to see what he's going to look like once I redraw his flaming wings. I wish I could apply similar techniques to all of the other monsters and NPCs, but such a task would be extremely time consuming, so I'll reserve this technique for the most important characters - the phoenix being one of them.
I like your suggestions too, Alastair. I'll keep that in mind, especially for combat-oriented animations.
Alastair - Yeah, that motion blur was done fairly quickly. I do like a slight blur on quick movements but this one could have been done better. In the game Metal Slug, the machine gun has a nice motion blur when it fires.
Spaceman Strife - You're welcome! And, your new sprite is REALLY looking good. That wag on the phoenix's tail is very good. Seriously, great job!
I know you're not finished with it, but allow me to make a few more suggestions:
1. Make layers out of everything. I would have separate layers for:
(1) the body
(2) the feet
(3) right wing
(4) left wing
(5) head
(6) head feathers
(7) tail
I know that seems like a lot of work but it's really not. And, once you get it set up, it's easy to play around with the movement without actually having to do any drawing. Then, once you get the movement down, you can update the individual parts with their respective animation. What program are you using to create your animations? By any chance are you using GraphicsGale? If so, I can create a .GAL file to show you what I mean.
Also, since you're still working on this, here are two specific suggestions:
1. Give the head a slight bob with the wing flaps. This would be easy to do if the head were on a separate layer (see above).
2. Give the head feathers a slight bounce. Much like what you've done with the tail feathers.
I can make a mockup if this isn't clear. Just note that these are "minor" adjustments and that what you have already looks great! Keep at it!
The program I use has always been MMF2's built-in Picture Editor. Though I find the color masking tool of 1.5's editor to be particularly useful, so sometimes I use that instead and then copy-paste into MMF2. To deal with the lack of layers, I have a spare (and unused) animation in the active object that just has bits and pieces of the character for me to put together later.
As for the bird, I can probably play with the minor stuff later, but for now, getting the wings drawn is my main concern. Beyond that, his animation would look extremely fluid to the point where he no longer fits in with the rest of the game's sprites. Granted, it'd be fun to try out, and if I have some more free time in the future, or if I get volunteers, I'd love to give everyone an animation makeover.
Anyway, I have a different question... How would you draw a walking/running animation for someone whose back is facing the camera slightly? For example, in 3D fighting games, characters often have their bodies twisted a bit so that you see the details on the front of their outfit even though they're looking to the left or right, but if you face the other direction, it's the opposite. (If you've played Super Smash Bros, Marth comes to mind - when facing left (I think), his cloak obscures most of his body). I cannot for the life of me find a good reference animation, and I have no idea how the heck I'm supposed to word that in a search engine.
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Edited by alastair john jack
I wish I could apply similar techniques to all of the other monsters and NPCs, but such a task would be extremely time consuming, so I'll reserve this technique for the most important characters - the phoenix being one of them.
