I still haven’t decided on the final look of the character, but I’ve started sketching the way he will move. Here’s one of his preliminary animations: the run cycle! Most of Ryuuhi’s ninja moves aren’t too realistic, but this particular run cycle is very traditional animation-wise, except for the extra weight put in the hammering of his feet.

Notice the two frames marked with an arrow. They are extra ugly frames that not only look bad, they don’t let the motion flow correctly/convincingly. Not that 0.05 seconds of screen-time are particularly visible, but we want to make this look as good as possible, don’t we?

Also, when you’re animating something, if you detect/suspect any errors early on, it’s important to correct them right away. Otherwise they will haunt you, turn more difficult to correct later on, or in worst scenario generate even more errors.

I also made a slash animation:

This kind of motion is not found in nature or traditional animation. And the way it is animated is exclusive to pixel art. With this kind of “special effects”, you have the freedom to experiment a little, but keep in mind the timing of the movement. Remember that is has to be functional in a game!

I have some more animations, but they’re too long to post here!

But as a bonus, I corrected one of the aforementioned frames while writing this post:

Looks much better, doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Little Ninja, Sprite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.