Moving Forward - New Animations!

[Jesse - PVGames]

Moving forward, I believe I have found a good solution to my workflow issues that ultimately led to me putting a halt to the character creation pieces that most people enjoy. I have some new software in the works that will definitely help both me and you (it will be free). This software is a sort of character generator but with some powerful and flexible features. I will talk more about that when it's closer to being finished!

But in the meantime, I have revised/remastered existing character animations and created a huge slew of new ones. Right now there are 70 character animations. Every animation comes in 8 directions. Most animations (with the exception of walking, running, and death poses) have a total of 24 frames of animation (3 frames per direction). You simply will not find a more comprehensive set of 2d character resources and animations anywhere else.

In addition to the 70 animations, I re-did all of the expressions/emotions as well. There are now 24 different expressions and emotions (these are what will make up the face sets, busts, and paperdolls). There are multiples of most types, such as multiple "neutral" expressions, happy expressions, sad expressions, angry expressions, nervous expressions, and others.

To be clear, this will all be a new set of character generator pieces with a much larger diversity in animations. The clothing options will be fewer initially as I am moving away from doing individual clothing pieces (pants, shirts, boots, belts, gloves, neck pieces, etc all separate) and moving towards providing more complete outfits (a combined shirt, pants, footwear, etc, but hair, headpieces, and specialty pieces will be separated).

Here's a look at the 70 animations (well, 69, I had an error with one of them):

1. Walking
2. Running
3. Idle 1
4. Idle 2
5. Idle 3
6. Idle 4
7. Idle 5
8. Idle 6
9. Kneel
10. Interact
11. Sleep
12. Sitting
13. Throw
14. Use Item
15. Casting Idle
16. Casting
17. Block (Shield)
18. Block (Unarmed)
19. Evade
20. Get Hit
21. Idle Unarmed
22. Punch
23. Kick
24. Dead (48 dead poses total)
25. 1-H Idle General
26. 1-H Idle Slouched
27. 1-H Idle w/Shield
28. Attack 1-H Overhead
29. Attack 1-H Slash
30. Attack 1-H Stab
31. 2-H Idle General 1
32. 2-H Idle General 2
33. 2-H Idle Polearm
34. 2-H Idle Polearm Stylized
35. Attack 2-H Slash
36. Attack Polearm
37. Idle Dual-Wield
38. Attack Dual-Wield
39. Idle Bow
40. Idle Crossbow
41. Attack Bow
42. Attack Crossbow
43. Idle Pistol 1
44. Idle Pistol 2
45. Idle Pistol 3
46. Attack Pistol 1
47. Attack Pistol 2
48. Idle MG 1
49. Idle MG 2
50. Attack MG
51. Idle Rifle
52. Attack Rifle
53. Critical Health Idle 1
54. Critical Health Idle 2
55. Critical Health Idle 3
56. Critical Health Idle 4
57. Cleaning/Tinkering with Object
58. Begging
59. Crying/Sobbing
60. Tapping Foot
61. Casual Conversation
62. Playing Instrument
63. Merchant Wave
64. Head Scratch
65. Sweeping
66. Supposed to be Sitting and Writing, but I messed up
67. Sitting on Ground
68. Crouching
69. Casual Sitting
70. Resting

It might be hard to tell just by looking at the still frame of the animations what some of the more action-oriented animations look like. Also, without them holding the props such as weapons, it might take a bit of imagination to see what the characters might look like with these things in their hands. I'll show more examples later on after I do some more work.

There are a number of new animations to support guns, and not just melee style weapons. These poses and animations will work great with both modern-era weaponry as well as sci-fi and other genres that utilize firearms. Zombie apocalypse anyone?

I tried to incorporate a number of various "task" based animations, a number of which are pretty flexible. The Cleaning/Tinkering with object animation for instance works great for cleaning a mug, or fiddling with a small machine. The overhead 1-H attack can be used for fighting or mining/harvesting, etc.

================================================​

Now, I still have a bit of space left that I can fit a few more animations in before running out of room. I am open to suggestions! Just keep a few things in mind when suggesting:

• The action or stance should be fairly gender-neutral. These have to work for both males and females.
• The actions should stand alone, and not have to rely on other figures. This omits things like dancing with a partner, riding a horse, etc. The amount of frames required (not to mention the work required) becomes exponential and untenable.
• The actions should preferably be multi-purpose and able to be used in different contexts (not always possible, I know). I know it would be very cool to have like... a jumping spinning slash attack, but the use and function of such is so niche that it is difficult to justify using remaining space for it.
• Nothing vulgar.

Right now, I have room for about 3 more animations on the current sheet. If there are a ton of good ideas, I might expand to another sheet which would allow for 26 more animations, but I'd prefer not to if I can avoid it!

So I would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions you may have!

 

[The Stranger]

Hey, @Jesse - PVGames.

Will these stick out like a sore thumb next to the other characters you've created, and characters we've created using your older stuff? Are they the same size, and do they have the same level of detail, as the previous sprites?

For animations, perhaps a crouch walk one (for devs who'd like to have a sort of stealthy movement animation), and a ladder\wall climbing animation.

 

[BloodletterQ]

The complete outfits are a decent sacrifice. Only thing I can ask for is maybe easily recolorable outfits. Maybe a layer sheet on top with just base colors for a colorify+colorize layer? For convenience, stick with pieces that are already available.

 

[mardin]

Ok, first of all I think it is great that you are doing this! Although I would prefer it to be divided in upper wear, leg wear and so on I can see that this is gettin' too repetitive for you, and if this keeps you more motivated then it's best for all of us!

I hope that colors are still adjustable, like @BloodletterQ pointed out. And I hope that Hair/Headwear will still be seperate, because that way you can build an army of different soldiers with the hair and weapons variety, which is very important to me!

And I definitely 2nd the crouch/crawl! On all fours (on the knees would be best...because that way the weapons disappear/get holstered, otherwise you would have to make a crouch animation for one handed and two handed).

Also: I don't think I see a lying/dying pose where the character lies on his/her stomache. Don't want my huge list of human enemies die all with the same animation over and over.

@Jesse - PVGames and just to be sure...you mean all of these animations are for 8 directions, right? Even the Aiming ones and the Begging ones? ALL!? That would be frkn amazing!

And one last idea that I would like to throw in there...I know this would be a lot of extra work...but would it be possible to make 2 animations for the weapons and the shields? The first one would be normal, the 2nd one would be holstered. Like a rifle that gets strapped to the back! Or the shield that gets worn on the back and a sword that is strapped to the belt if currently not used. Not for all of them, daggers and pistols wouldn't need one. Maybe just a few. Might be too much work, I'm not sure...but it would be frkn awesome.

 

[snow91]

OMG this is the best! I was sooo hoping to get some attacking/casting animations! Thats fierce!

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

I'll answer the questions posed thus far:

Regarding if these will be the same size/detail as previous resources: These shouldn't be too terribly different from existing characters. They are a little bit larger, but not so much that you couldn't mix older resources in. They are a bit bigger because I expanded the size of each frame to 160x160 pixels instead of 128x128, but I also "zoomed out" a bit to give more padding around the character so there is more room for longer weapons (polearms, rifles, etc), bulkier clothing, etc. The level of detail should be slightly higher than before as well due to being slightly larger. I will throw up a side-by-side comparison at some point to show.

Concerning recoloring: For what I can, I am aiming to make clothing as neutral in color as possible for easy recolors. This is not always possible, of course, especially with intricate designs and complex patterns, but it is something I will endeavor to do. The new software will also allow for you to easily recolor the various clothing layers.

Concerning outfit pieces, hair, headpieces, etc: Hair and head parts will definitely be separated, as these are the primary pieces that tend to make a character "unique". Dividing outfits into upper and lower might work, I will see how much extra work that takes once I get all the new software up and running. I am pretty much almost definitely NOT going to return to how I was doing it, where there were separate pants, shirts, footwear, gloves, accessories, back items, neck items, headwear, etc. But a top and bottom split might not be asking for too much.

In regards to the number of directional facings: Yes, every animation has 8 directional facings. Every movement, every attack, every idle, every action, all 8 directions.

Concerning the dead poses: There are poses that have the character on their back, and others that have them on their stomach or on their side. The 48 number is a bit misleading on my part, I apologize, as that includes all directional facings of each unique position. There are 6 unique death positions, each with 8 directions.

In regards to having holstered weapons and shields: That would not require any extra animations as those would be made the same way an outfit would be made, so I can see about adding some of this stuff. I do not plan on making "intermediary" animations where the character actively sheathes/unsheathes a weapon or anything like that, the amount of animations required for the large number of weapon types would be too much. But just having sheathed or unsheathed versions is not a particularly difficult thing to do.

As a note about weapons and shields and the animations: Not all weapons or shields will be supported by all animations. Some animations will work universally with most or all weapons and shields (walking, running, some of the idle animations, etc), and some animations support no weapons or shields at all (begging, sitting, sleeping, etc). Some animations will support only weapons or shields if they make sense to do so. A handgun for example will work with the various handgun animations and idles, but will not work with 2-H attack. The way I am setting up my workflow for weapons, it will be automated as to which weapon type will appear for which animations. Right now I have it down to a few classifications:

• 1-H weapons (swords, daggers, maces, etc), which have a couple different combat idles and 3 different weapon attacks (overhead swing, slash, thrust)
• 2-H weapons (large swords, battle axes, but NOT polearms)
• Polearms (spears, halberds, pitchforks, etc)
• Dual Wield (two swords, daggers, small axes, mixed and matched, etc)
• Unarmed (went with an MMA style for this, looked cool and felt pretty universal, can add things like brass knuckles, cesti, etc)
• Bows
• Crossbows
• Handguns (all forms of pistols) which have multiple combat idles and weapon attacks
• Machineguns (all forms of handheld MGs)
• Rifles
• Shields

So a sneaking animation, depending how I set it up, may or may not support visually having the weapons out. Personally, I never really found it to be a problem if weapons in hand disappeared in-game momentarily for certain animations, and this feels like a natural one where it wouldn't really matter much one way the or the other.

It sounds like the sneak animation is the big one. If I can do it in 3 frames, I will, but I think it will more likely require 8 frames like the walking/running ones. If it does, then that pretty much fills up the remaining space for animations; thus, wouldn't be able to add in the stair climbing one unless I begin a whole new sheet, in which case I would need upwards of 25 more animation suggestions to help fill the space (no point in leaving it more than half empty!)

 

[BlueVikingr]

If you're looking for animations that might be useful in a wide variety of games and circumstances, might I suggest a Jump animation? There's certainly no need for jumping spinning special niche moves or anything, but I would imagine that a lot of people would find a generic jumping animation useful.

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

Jumping is also a great suggestion!

So right now:

Sneaking/Stealth
Climbing
Jumping

 

[BloodletterQ]

You haven’t steered from more graphic stuff, so I’m curious about your thoughts on decapitated bodies...

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

@BloodletterQ - Do you mean as part of the character templates? I wasn't planning anything like that.

 

[Paz]

I would suggest animations like:

Praying
Meditating
Talking on the phone

 

[padr81]

Potentially amazing Jesse. Giving up the character creator and such close control will be well worth it for those animations in 8 directions.

 

[Paz]

I would suggest animations like:

Praying
Meditating
Talking on the phone

Totally forgot one which I think is a must..

Drinking

 

[BloodletterQ]

Good point. Probably going to be an easy edit. Assumed for a template pose. Also wondering if you'll take outfit suggestions.

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

Alright, after some work, I got a pretty decent sneaking animation I suspect (maybe with some tweaks, can have this one allowing to hold weapons and such as well).

I will add:

Praying standing
Praying Kneeling
Meditation (though the above two, if I do it right, can serve this dual role)
Drinking (good call)
Jumping
Climbing

Any other suggestions?

@BloodletterQ - At the moment, not really taking suggestions on outfits, still hammering out the animations.

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

Alright, just finished up all of the suggested animations! Praying standing and kneeling are also usable for meditating (both standing and kneeling). Drinking, jumping, and climbing all good to go.

Any other must-haves?

 

[Backlash404]

sitting tinkering, for like crafting which could be verstaile if theres like a potion station or crafting bench. Along the same lines a smithing/hammering animation.

 

[Paz]

Alright, just finished up all of the suggested animations! Praying standing and kneeling are also usable for meditating (both standing and kneeling). Drinking, jumping, and climbing all good to go.

Any other must-haves?

Leaning? (folded arms perhaps) like leaning to a wall
The reason I suggest this is because most of the times you have quest-givers or NPCs just standing up straigh doing nothing in particular

 

[PsychicToaster]

Super excited for these! I suspended work on my medieval project when you mentioned you'd be doing these at some point. Currently writing out my Mythos story and lore instead xD

 

[BloodletterQ]

Perhaps this is meant as a chance to practice and experiment before moving on with my pet project...

Eager to see the final product. Try not to overwhelm yourself. We want more and you’ll just make yourself lose the motivation.