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Preparation & Artstyle.


Ribbit

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I'm finding it quite difficult to use Spriter effectively with my designs. It's a good program but there isn't much coverage available on prep work. Just the one example of the bobble head style grey dude and some monsters. I will probably have to change how i do my art but there's no guidelines on this as far i am aware. By that i mean nobody mentions if your body parts should over extend on the top or bottom (for realistic proportions). How far into the body should you color your thighs. Should the pelvis be more like a "V" shape then have the thighs attached to it? Which angles should you not use when coming up with your final art. Been working with 3/4 view characters. The range of motion, particularly from the torso down is fairly restricted. 
For example... lets take a look a this posed outline which would be pretty standard in more realistic proportion drawings.
d140b864cd183b673578114d39d1140a--comic-

Check out those legs. How tf would you animate that without it looking terrible? lol.  Is this outline even viable for clean animation?  If you remove the knees from the equation how would you get the thighs to animate properly and move in sync with the pelvis. With the shapely bulge in the forearms and the elbow area itself wouldn't this cause complications for common bends or straitening the arm?  Is the solution to just cover it up with armor and long clothes?... Don't want to drastically change a design by covering up a character that's meant to be scantily clad.

I can't locate and don't remember the artist name... but this artist drew and animated the mantis chick in your frontpage video.  Also animated a great looking rat humanoid with a blade later in the same frontpage video. The arm movements great and works fine for that design somehow. This is just 1 example i could find where the creator may not have had to change his process to get it to work with bone animation. Would there happen to be a tutorial available anywhere that focuses on humanoid prep work while using realistic proportions? I've searched for weeks but can't find anything. 

What changes would one have keep in mind to make their character "spriter friendly" without having to drastically alter / reduce the art quality or edit parts 100 times so they fit with movement?

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Sorry I just spotted this post now.

With 2D bone animation software, any angle that is not perfectly overhead or side-view is much less easy to animate,,, so in your example, the leg on the left (her right leg) would be fairly easy to animate and her left leg would be much more limited.

The thinner the joints and more reliant on black outline the art style, the harder it is to animate while keeping the joints looking good in all situations. It's definitely a skill which takes time and experimentation to perfect.

The artist you speak of, tombmonkey actually shared many of the spriter files you speak of in this thread: 

But sadly all the links now seem broken.. If I can recover any of them I'll come back here and post new links. If I can't find any within a week I'll try to remember to create a new tutorial video and example file based on your example... with your permission if you give it.

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Sorry I just spotted this post now.

With 2D bone animation software, any angle that is not perfectly overhead or side-view is much less easy to animate,,, so in your example, the leg on the left (her right leg) would be fairly easy to animate and her left leg would be much more limited.

The thinner the joints and more reliant on black outline the art style, the harder it is to animate while keeping the joints looking good in all situations. It's definitely a skill which takes time and experimentation to perfect.

The artist you speak of, tombmonkey actually shared many of the spriter files you speak of in this thread: 

But sadly all the links now seem broken.. If I can recover any of them I'll come back here and post new links. If I can't find any within a week I'll try to remember to create a new tutorial video and example file based on your example... with your permission if you give it.

Oooo ok. Insightful!  I started off on something a little complicated (Diagonal scythe attack) and for the most part am using 3/4 view parts. But ya that would probably need a side view torso and pelvis at the very least to look proper.  Did another character in the time since last posting, a female with a gun which was much, much easier to animate in this style just a little recoil shock and kick back in the gun and upper body. Little muzzle flash.  

Thanks for reuploading tomb's files as well you've been a great help!


 

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