bwwd

he should jump up more, grab some running and walking references from google,maye try to split feet in half where toes are because feet need to bend when jumping up, without it it would look stiff.

Nice, try to put some more details onto his outfits like scratches or something, also try to make leg and hand further from camera a bit darker than the ones closer to camera, it will create abit of depth and will help to get rid of that flat empty look which is boring and simple.Also dont be afraid to squash and stretch body parts, it will improve animation a lot if you will learn how to stretch them properly.

I wish there would be option to merge keyframes easier instead of them stuck one on another, id like to mmove keyframe on timeline and if i move new keyframe to old one then it will be updated to new one, now i have to delete,copy paste etc

Very impressive, this looks great, starts to look like ubiart framework :) It's not really free deforming because theres a grid which is probably not possible to shape in our own way but its kinda possible to deform body parts already if you chop up everyhing in joints, its not possible to animate something like rope, bending from straight line.I made quick lazy test with heffer and spriter B5, would look better with elbows and feet chopped in half to deform them I whish there would be something to make joints deforming possible and set grid so you would bend hand in elbow or bend leg in knee area using just single picture of entire leg and simple grid to mark joint areas.Separate hip and knee bodyparts are ok too but it all looks better if its one entire leg being deformed, it looks more organic this way and less cutout like.

hand drawn phases are never that smooth and stand out too much

Well there is freeform deform and skinning at the end of the video on kickstarter so im sure devs know that its very important if you want to create organic characters. My limitation is that i need to use that technique, without it its going to look odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_and_stretch It is possible to deform body parts but only using rectangle walls and corners.

so you say its better to limit software based on what supports plugin that can sends animations between engine and animation software, noooooooo its like handicapped fat guy slowing down sportsman by not letting his legs go.I thought its free minded software and i hope it will be.Implementing deformations in this software can push game engines creators to support it later, thats how you create revolution, lots of cutout animations look very stiff but look at rayman origins game, ubi framework is fantastic. You can always export stiff animations, but i hope to see more control over shape and deformation, its real freedom and adds a lot of dynamics to animations. This is just one feature and can add a lot.Not easy to implement but totally worth it. IF game engine doesnt support some feature then it would be good to add preconfigured templates for every supported engine so you would start project made specifically for it and some features would be disabled if engine doesnt support it so you cant use deform in animations for example.Thats not really any problem at all.

nice anim just legs are bent for too long in the air and are rapidly straightened when closer to the ground

you have some nice designs:) About animation, you need to add foot deformation too, its very stiff and it should bend when you walk so your character is on toes , deformation like this is not currently possible so maybe try to use 2 layers for foot, one layer is toes and other one is rest of the foot.Also entire hand is one element but its bent in elbow and wrist and looks more like real animation not cutout thanks to it being only one element. I made this running anim using cutout character too but i used deformation so it doesnt look like cutout that much, foot is only one element but deformed a bit so it looks like bent toes sometimes.

Hi there, i did some testing in Spriter and... I have one big suggestion so i could animate in spriter like im used to - DEFORMATION feature. Currently spriter is kinda simple cutout animation tool, theres lots of similar softwares already, best tool on the market for this is in my opinion stickman from cutoutpro website, it has ragdoll physics and has great deformation layer, supports bones and control points to deform body parts , i made some animations for my games with it: These are not possible to do in spriter currently because of limited deformation, currently its just linear scaling when you click on border and resize from side but would be great to actually deform the body part with bones or points so you could flex muscle , using one image of entire hand and assigning 3 bones to it so it will bend in elbow and wrist, without deformations like this cutout animation looks very stiff and i would like my cutout animations to not look like cutouts but like animations so they need to deform freely however i want whenever i want but in preplanned places so in muscle areas etc. but would be best if i would choose deform places myself. I recommend to give stickman software a try, i can upload one of my characters for devs to test how it works, if spriter could get close then it would be really great. You can check out more of my animations all made in stickman cutout animation software on my deviantart: http://bwwd.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0 Im not really a fan of using bones all the time cause they can also limit you, sometimes character must stretch his body for dynamic effect and with bone its not possible or if stretch is too big then bones are bit misplaced, would be nice to have similar control points like in stickman, that allows for full control over single body part, you can add as many points to it as you like and then stretch them out. This is screengrab from it: http://i.imgur.com/NL4zgLD.jpg I rarely use bones in my animations maybe for head so it wont deform that much, but i controll pretty much myself how far body will stretch, or maybe you could introduce bones that could stretch(stickman has them too). Anyway its easy and fast to make character in stickman you just import body parts and click on them to create points then assign every part to points and you move points around to create keyframes, thanks to ragdoll physics animations are very fluid. Im currently making platformer you can see some gameplay vids on deviantart profile, all chars are cutouts, everything is drawn by me .