[Trumgottist]

Originally Posted by Mares

I hope you don't mind, I opened your animation with my gif making program, to observe your methods.

Of course I don't mind. I posted it here, didn't I?

12 pictures going into this is quite an impressive number, especially at this resolution. A lot of time must've gone into this. Care to share?

I don't know how much time went into it (as I wrote, it was a while ago), but it took a while, yes. (It was faster than my earlier and uglier attemts at animating a walk, though.) If/when I get back to it, I'll probably add 12 frames more. Then I'd get one frame per frame. Right now, he moves every second frame without the animation changing which makes it slightly shaky.

The more natural your character looks, the more natural he has to move if it's not going to look strange. Have you seen Richard Longhurst and the Box that Ate Time? It's one of the first AGS games, with graphics that are... not pretty. The walk animation of the hero basically consists of flashing different colours on the right and left leg. It works (and even looks pretty cool) on those crude graphics, but with more realistic graphics it doesn't work. We can identify with a smiley, but a realistic human face with only one small detail a bit off looks strange.

Doing a walk can be very hard work (at least for a newbie like me) but it's very satisfying to see the character walk around in the game, so it's absolutely worth it trying to get past those randomly moving parts of the body.

Btw, I think some kind of up and down hair motion, due to the high-point/low-point nature of the walk, would do wonders to liven his face up.

Agreed. If/when I get back to it, I should work on the head. As you can see, that part is a simple cut and paste through all frames.

My current game has two non-human main characters. One of them is easy to animate, but the other one has been harder to get right. I've settled for a walk that, while not realistic (don't analyse how he's actually moving!), is fluid enough not to disturb. (I think. It'll be interesting to hear other people's comments when that time comes.) Their walks work well with two frames per frame, though. Probably since they're simpler.

Thanks for the inspiration, btw! I've not been in a state where I've been able to work on my game for the past two weeks, but today I really feel like getting started again.