I think you need more of the arms moving around, and a bit less of the crouching.
Yeah… My wife came in and said it sucks so I’m re-doing it 
I think the overall problem is if I’m going to do an attack with her in this stance, it won’t look right… so I’m going back to the drawing board.
If you guys have any links to good idle animations, I’d love to see them as reference 
-Pickle
Perhaps you could record yourself doing the animations and then take out individual frames from the video so all you have to do is draw the original art, not figure out how to draw it.
I tried your advice… however I didn’t have a camera on hand so I did my moves in front of the mirror (nerdiest thing I’ve done by far…lol). I have a wire animation I’ll toss up here tonight. The arms don’t really move, but when looking in the mirror, I didn’t really move them at all.
Anyways, thanks for the advice, I’ll show you guys what I came up with later
-Pickle
The idle animation should look more like tennis players getting ready to receive a serve…hovering their racquet back and forth.
JInQVyVaAfI
skip to 17:05 and you will see djokovic in his ready stance.
- Search something like “[movement] slow motion” at youtube
- Use some youtube video downloader tool
- export frames with ImageGrab, VirtualDub or Premiere
- load the frames as layers in your favorite image tool
- add a layer per frame and draw your wireframe
You can find a lot on Youtube, like
Jump:
6P8qmLl4rZQ
Fighting:
2ctKXPaFNIc
You can extract idle moves in fights from boxing videos like
Plzh4crz9MA
This is a lot of work, but it may help getting more real life animations…
Btw. I assume you have seen the thread about Spine , have you? It seems you can now export animations to frames like animated gifs: http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/spine-2d-skeletal-animation/27914/msg/254777/view.html#msg254777
Sweet mother! :o
I had never heard of it… is there anything Nate can’t do!?
I can’t wait to get home and try this out
By the way… here’s a new combat idle animation.
Old Combat Idle Animation:
http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/femaleAnimations/femaleCombatIdleAnimation1.gif
New Combat Idle Animation:
Maybe I should go for an animation like this one:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/7312.htm
-Pickle
Hey guys… hope you all had good holidays. I got a new computer, an inkling(http://www.wacom.com/en/creative/products/mobile/inkling), and I switched from redbull to coffee :o
We also integrated the animations into the game and it’s very apparent that they need adjustments lol, so I’ve been re-doing the sprite sheet.
I’ll post up some new stuff as I get it, but don’t worry… I haven’t stopped working on this
-Pickle
Sweet I have always wanted a graphics tablet to draw with and I am glad that this did not just die.
I have done martial arts since I was 4 and have studied many systems and the biggest thing I hate in idle animations is too much movement. Even when you look at MMA, it is just a slight back and forth on the toes not all this tribal nonsense. Make things subtle. 2-5 pixels moving for breathing and so forth.
This is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt. Keep at it man. ;D
Thanks Stumpy
I try to listen to all the help people give, and I really do appreciate it. However I can’t always follow through with the advice people give simply due to time constraints. I do get a kick out of posting on here though, and I might just take a swan dive off a cliff if I gave up on this project lol.
I have tried doing an online comic, writing a book, and various little programming exercises, but I’ve never actually followed anything through to the finish… so don’t worry, unless I get plucked from this world before my time, I plan on finishing this game
-Pickle
Hey everyone,
It’s been a while I know… basically I was messing around with grass animation (which looked pretty good… until I forgot to select the right color palette)… anyways, I decided that I should stop messing around with other animations until I get the female animations done, and this is basically where I’m at:
female combat idle animation (attempt 3):
Note: I did a google search for sword and shield… so just so you know, those aren’t my artwork… I just didn’t feel like drawing any at the moment
-Pickle
Looking pretty good…btw I’ve always wondered how you make the animations still run properly after adding equipment on (for example a shirt or something, how would you get the shirt to move with the arm and body in the animation). Not to deviate too much, I’m sure there was a thread on this but I can’t seem to find it.
I see you also changed the name. Nice eyes on the U 
Layers… basically every layer is an animation placed on top of another animation…
I have [in order from back to front]:
- Cloak layer(not wearing cloak, so none showing)
- Base layer(girl in undies)
- Helm layer (currently no armor, so use hairtype/color AKA blonde hair)
- Armor layer (not wearing armor, so none showing)
- Offhand layer(shield)
- Main hand layer (sword)
These layers will switch around a bit depending on the animation, but basically I draw all the animations by hand and test to see if they look properly. I haven’t done a whole lot of testing on this, but from what I have done, it seems to work out ok.
Yeah… if you’ll look in the first screen shot, the title has the ‘Ü’ … basically the game is pronounced “you-nehm-brah” … I was just too lazy to look up the alt-code for the Ü lol.
-Pickle
First try at the combat animation… I left out the shield because it didn’t really have much to do with the overall attack.
Female Attack Animation 1:
http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/femaleAnimations/femaleCombatAnimation1.gif
The foot position is bothering me, I think I need to transition it from back to front better… but I think it’s good for a first attempt.
Another problem I’m seeing that I’m addressing with the other programmer is that the frame isn’t big enough to handle the slash, so we’ll probably be expanding the frame size to allow for more movement.
What do you guys think?
-Pickle
When you lunge forward, the rear foot needs to pivot sideways and lift off the heel. The forward foot needs to shift a few pixels just to keep it from looking totally static, you’ll probably need to try both directions to see what looks good.
That’s what it is! Thank you sproingie
-Pickle
[i]Edit: I resized the frame to ensure that the sword is completely shown, which is a drag since I now have to resize every frame, and I’m sure I’m going to have to again if I want to use items like 2h hammers and axes.
Also, I should have an updated animation up tonight[/i]
Updated the attack animation… I also widened the frame, but I think I need to modify the slash… Something doesn’t seem right 
Female Attack Animation 2:
-Pickle
No idea what actual sword slashing looks like, but it seems weird that there is no deceleration at the end. The sword stops instantly. Maybe it would be different if it was obvious the sword struck something. The flick of the wrist at the beginning is very awkward. Besides that, the sword should have a motion blur between those two frames, too, but the wrist flick should be removed.
Edit: [url=http://pickleninja.com/unembra/img/femaleAnimations/femaleCombatIdleAnimation3.gif]This animation[/url] looks very good, but two things. First, the outline on her left leg disappears at one point. Second, her arm carrying sword should be resting parallel-ish with her torso. From her shoulder to her hand, her elbow would still be bent like that. That becoming tiring after a while and it means that she would have to rotate her arm 270 degrees counter clockwise in order to strike downwards with her sword. You can't rotate your arm backwards like that and going through that motion would be a waste of time and energy. (Very bad in combat.)
The flick of the wrist is probably wierd looking due to the number of frames used to animate this… when I was posing with a broom stick I noticed that I had to rotate the stick for a more fluid movement (otherwise I’d just keep the arm stiff and cock my arm back…which didn’t feel natural at all). I really want more focus to be on the actual slash part of the animation and not the preceeding motions to set up the slash, that’s why I used only 3 frames. (I try to keep the animations to at most 10 frames)
I agree with you on the sword slash… I think the big grey and black swoosh is rather poorly done.
I searched on pixeljoint and found a couple animations where there was a sword slashing effect, but nothing that really suited what I was trying to do…
Had I spent a little more time and looked elsewhere I think I would have found a better animation to look at…
google image search (no idea who did this one):
I think the fix is clear that I need to continue the slash on for another frame or two and maybe add a tiny bit of after effect trailing the sword.
I noticed the leg outline problem… I still need to clean this animation up and toss it into the sprite sheet, so I assume it’ll get fixed then
I think I get what you’re saying on the arm positioning… I’ll try to make some modifications.
This was the animation I was looking at when I did my animation:
Freelance Fighter by Adarias (http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3171.htm)
The sword this character is using is much much smaller than the one mine is… therefore the effort to wield would be much less and carrying it in this position seems natural (that’s where my problem lies)… I’m trying to make these animations in such a way that I can have my character wield numerous different types of swords without having to animation the motion to swing them for each and every sword… thus I think some might look wierd if they’re larger than normal size (which lets face it, I dont think I could wield a sword that size with 1 hand; much less a girl of her size lol).
as always, thanks for the help
-Pickle