Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → Animation thread

@Cenere:
What strolling? I give random filenames... It's just walking.
Alright, haven't really done any work on the upper body at all, just the basic shape - I appreciate constructive criticism, but asides mentioning that I should get more weight in (which I absolutely agree to, just don't quite know how to achieve it in that scale), yours isn't very constructive... Or I'm reading it wrong.
How should the torso be moving more? Please at least try to specify it, I really need advice on how to get it to look good.

Okay, you know... Uhm... When you walk, the weight of your body shifts from one leg to another. Meaning, if you lean back, the weight will be more on the leg behind you, than the one before you. In a normal walk, it is the leg before you bearing you weight most of the time... Something... I will shut up now.

Makes sense. Thank you, I'll keep that in mind when I continue the work on it.

Oh I know!

Lemme try this again...Zophia, try walking really exaggerated for a while and compare the motion of your hips to your shoulders. Normally your hips are counterbalanced by your shoulders i.e. they would rotate in the opposite direction to your hips.

In the case of your animation above though, the action is very quick indeed (this is okay for cartoon animations, though: we're not aiming to be realistic so much as convey motion), so I would actually aim to minimize the motion of the whole body and concentrate on the shoulders, which can be conveyed further by the arms swinging oppositely to his legs. This will probably make him look like he's marching which seems more appropriate given the speed.

Yeah, probably ignore what I said earlier :P

This might not help, it is just random knowledge for later use.
Women move their hips more when walking; the exaggerated would be catwalking.
Men move their shoulders when walking.

Actually that is very useful. I hadn't thought of that.

hrrm... I just got a question, If you (in GIMP) make the layers transparent how will the animation actually turn out? just wondering...

Also, the exaggerated is often good for skiing... I just had to say that...

I'd say something here but I'd be repeating Cenere and Strop... eh... good work...

The effect of making the layers transparent depends on whether you're combining or replacing layers. If you're replacing, then the animation will play normally but the whole thing will just be...transparent, which, if you're playing it on a set background, can work to your advantage or can be a real pain.

However if you're combining then all the layers will *stack up*, so the layer below will be displayed under the layer above it. If you're specifically looking for a cumulative effect then this is okay but more likely you're not. You could probably cover all unwanted bits up yourself manually (not if your bottom layer is also transparent) but at this stage, just leave it to the optimiser :P

And that's the one thing I hate about animating in GIMP... When done drawing the animation, I must draw a background, duplicate it X number of times, and merge each and every layer of the animation with a background layer... Have I missed out on a critically useful shortcut?

And again, thanks for the advices.

Yeah zophia, that's what I ended up doing with my latest little doodle.

Actually what happened was that I made all the layers transparent so I could work as if on a cel. Then I duplicated all the background layers before drawing on them. After that, I then had to resolidify them by pasting a white background underneath. Teeeedious.

I was hoping I too was missing a shortcut.

However if you're combining then all the layers will *stack up*, so the layer below will be displayed under the layer above it. If you're specifically looking for a cumulative effect then this is okay but more likely you're not. You could probably cover all unwanted bits up yourself manually (not if your bottom layer is also transparent) but at this stage, just leave it to the optimiser :P

@Pazx:
Are you drawing on transparent layers?

@Strop:
Why is there no shortcut! D:

*looks at post* More than seven words and on topic. Good, I can post it.

@Zophia:*yells from backstage* "yes, I am!"

*runs onstage, stopping only to dodge a tomato* well, I think I might give gimp a rest for now... I might see what else I can do. If I'm bored I'll attempt gimp again...

Walking guy; He's strutting! Strutting!!

... was thea ABC monkey thing from that cruddy perverted high school detective game? you know, with the guy who loves his family crest (the freak).

@thoadthetoad; yes.

I just had a though, we should see what animations we can come up with in 5-10 minutes. It'll be good, come one! (I wanna see what some of the best animators on the site can come do in ten mins!)

here is something I just did (8 minutes...)



I hope... hrrm... what was I hoping...? *yoinked away*
(Hey, half of my posts in the music art + writing section contained a reference to a comedy act, or a stage performance ^_^)