My favourite project on TDC! Because:
- Another World is one of my favourite games
- I like the atmosphere of the game
- „I know the setting of this story as Kárpátok”.
Really amazing work, thanks! Can't wait to play the final version!
Hey speaking of Borgi's avatar... Is that from Castlevania or the old KNP library? Looks familiar!
I don't know what to add as I haven't played the demo or anything, but I gotta say I love the look so far. It looks a bit dark but with the brightness upped it looks really easy on the eye. I'd imagine you're throwing in some lovely "handdrawn" animation work like in Another World?
Should be a good run this.
I would just like to say what an amazing job your doing here atmospheric/cinematic platformers are the way forward. With my all time favorite game being Flashback The Quest for Identity, this game is already just simply incredible.
Keep this up! I will definitely play it when its out. Cant wait.
Thanks Jaleis1nsane!
We will definitely try our best to make it a nice experience for you
Eternalman is redoing the grafics right now and it's already looking much better, at the moment the main character is getting a makeover
Ideas for bosses and gameplay elements are being tossed about etcetera.
By the way, if you have any suggestions regarding the visuals this is a good time to make yourself heard
Thanks for all your nice comments Jale!
I'm very glad to hear that you enjoy it so much. I sincerely hope you will like the graphical make-over too.
As I stated in the devlog, I really like the main character's design, but it doesn't really fit the vision of the era and location, since that would need a lot more work-hours due to the level of detail neccessary, and I couldn't produce that result in such a short time-span for the competition(for several reasons, we only had a week).
Therefore I'm currently going over every animation and remaking them to fit the intended design!
Hopefully, no one will feel that the make-over is a step back design-wise.
So keep popping in to check the devlog for further info on the make-over and the project in general. And if you are interested in the animations in the game I intend to release a full spritesheet on the main character from the preview sometime during the development of the game. But it's A LOT of frames, and A LOT of work to compile them into one large image, so with my tight work-schedule (I recently became a dad, so I don't have that much spare-time just yet! ) for the game, I try and focus solely on the redesign right now.
About how I learned...
I've always wanted to be good at animations, though I've always had a hard time with it too. But I came up with this technique a while back.
The key is in the silhouette
I read a tutorial on fighting game sprites and poses, and the author kept coming back to one crucial point. "If you can visualize the full body just by looking at the silhouette, then it's a good pose."
I thought about that for a while and thought "Hey, wouldn't the same principle be true for animations?"
And it sure is!
If the silhouette of the character or object is clear and easy to interpret, then it's a good animation!
But that applies more to when the animation is done really, so an important step is how you "plan" the animation. I always build a sketch of the animation using a simple skeleton design, i.e I draw out the animation for a stick figure with the right proportions.
When the skeleton looks ok I apply the silhoutte of the character to it and adjust what's needed.
And lastly, when the silhouette looks good I start the actual coloring of it. You often need to adjust things such as thickness of limbs and such during this step. But when you're done, the animation will be smooth and proportional!
Another important fact is that it's not easier to make an animation with few frames, it's actually easier if you up the frame count. Like a normal running animation, for anything but a small rpg-sprite I recommend atleast 8 frames for a running animation. In Silhouette the main character uses 10 frames for it. What's actually the point with more frames is that, the more keyframes you can incorporate into an animation the more smooth it'll be.
In short(!), that's my thoughts on animation.
I'm contemplating writing an article about it here on TDC, so when I have the time...
Once again, thanks for your positive input, that's really what keeps one going!
And also, TDC has this convenient feature called "Favourites". If you "Favourite" a project you'll be notified whenever the devlog is updated.