Pixelhammer: A Star Soldier Saga
Hey guys, i think this is my first post here. I'm a designer from Brasil.
i recently got my paws on Aseprite, a great pixel art animation tool and started fooling around with some gifs to try out some pixel art and unrust my animation techniques. Wow what a surprise, Its a joy to work with!
So, i decided to play around with it and make some sprites so one of my programmer friends can use it to make a mock up and who knows evolve into a proof of concept for a simple game we were thinking of.
This first test subject references an existing IP that i will not mention but i'll call "Star marines". If we decide to make it available for download in the future i'll make original characters, but for now lets just use this little blue guy to mock up a game 
Long story short, on the long run i will just hand these over to a programmer i develop games with, and just make a (non profit) game to use as proof of concept to try to develop into something serious (with different characters) in the future.
for now, enjoy the star marine gifs!
idle star marine
shooting star marine
(when we implement these, we'll adjust speed according to gameplay)
cheers!
Replies
idle starmarine
shooting starmarine
slashing star marine
starmarine walkcycle
now working on jumps and wall jumps
cheers!
If they're for the player character I'd perhaps tweak some on the shoot animation. Seeing how it is a bit to slow and unresponsive. Take a look at this GDC talk and see if you can implement the LoL-tip for responsive anims.
(go to 03:30 / "Trick 2 - Responsive Anims"
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023479/Animation-Bootcamp-Tricks-of-the
the programmer will still adjust the shooting/slashing animation to gameplay, currently we just got the sprite on the map to try out gameplay (we were thinking megaman meets metal slug). i think the walkcycle has 20 frames and the shootcycle as well, i'll have to tweak it a bit.
currently i'm finishing the jumps
I'm going to make a full on game soon, but to test our production pipeline, we've began to make a test fangame using 40k for testing reasons and for fun also. hopefully no IP problems cuz its a fan project without any money involved. We do not intend to make a full multiple hour many level game with all the complexity of a comercial game, we just want to make a beat em up / shoot em up level with reasonable development.
So, without further blablabla - learned to actually use aseprite and worked on the animation cycles of our characters.
these are the original test sheets
Idle ork boyz
Walking boyz
Running at you
Attack 1
Boyz getting hit
And a WiP death animation for the boyz (still no clothes)
for now that's it!
although i will later make more animations for the ork, i will start making the core of the marines now so we can put them against each other on the engine
updates!
everything is gonna be cartoony and over the top like the orks being brutal but silly
the marine's actions are gonna try to feel "tactical" with "swat" vibes. the reload animations i'm going to do a john wick flick reload. Hopefully that gets the message across that the marines are special forces.
forgot about the finished dead orks
cheers!
shoulder charge
edit: removed for updated animation below
It would be awesome if you showed a break down of some point how you approach these animations, I have animated for 7+ years but I am just starting to get into 2D pixel animation, these are blowing my mind right now.
about a breakdown - i thinik i'm doing the basic keyframe then filling the gaps - but many times i get carried away and over animate some things and the actions end up slow. most of my animations have to have adjustments so it doesn't feel clunky - like the melee sequence has 100 ms frames, 50 ms sequences, then stops in 100 anticipation, then goes back to 150 at key frame, then speeds to 70ms - its all over the place
@davidcruz thanks! we are beginning to implement the sprites into unity now!
melee attack
marine getting hit in the face
celebrating pose! (does anybody recognize the pose?)
C&C welcome!
repeating shooting for context
and now tactical reload
i made the animation very long on purpose cuz the disadvantage of being ranged is having to reset your magazine to give time for enemies to close in. he will have to manage ammo and have space to reload - that's why his melee sequence ends in a kick to knock back enemies so he can reload
i'm working on the fall and get up animation, and also slowed down because we are starting to implement the animations into the engine
one slight update: getting pushed
geting right back up
rolling dodge
size test for celebrating emote
Some animations are needed to give the characters a breather when they are under a lot of pressure, so i decided to add some emote animations that will basically stop the enemies from continuing to pressure the player instead of surrounding and beating them up - also to avoid just hanging out doing nothing (like always happens in beat em ups while the player is down).
So here we are - two small emotes
Smirking giggle
Enthusiastic nod
Straight out mocking laughter
At this point we are building up the game logic - and the enemy templates for when we start fine tuning the gameplay. The bullets casing already fly in the right direction with cool physics, hitboxes are in, the animation triggers are looking fine, its starrting to look like a game - some more polishing and then we can start working on gameplay.
The Programmer is spending some time setting up a user friendly system so i can change the stats without coding (cuz i'm a coding dummy)
Well, i decided the thing they are going to be doing most frequently i be getting hit so i added some variety to the hit animations, now we have 3 hit variations:
original
2 more
variations
QUICK ATTACK
quick wind up frames (4), low range, low damage
STRONG ATTACK (remade)
slow wind up frames (6+pause), longer range (slide forward) high damage
COMBO ATTACK
slow wind up frames (7+pause), longer range (move forward), multi attack.
Also added a Waaagh emote, cuz orks need to WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!
C&C welcome
Started working on the Shoota boy for the project. also decided to rename it to pixelhammer because of possible IP infringement although its a fan project.
tried to convey the swagger of the dakka toting badass
Idle shootaboy
Walking Shootaboy
C&C welcome
whack!
revamped fall..... aaaand right back into the action
I didn't want to do a martial artsy street fighter whirlwind kick or whirlwind knife cuz it would feel too kung fu and not soldier enough.
So i spent a loong time trying to figure out what could be a 360 attack with marine-esque moves... and this is what i came up with - a quick combo thats not particularly fancy - other than the knife twirl in the end iduring the animation recover phase. |Tried to make his speed in execution tempo just be badass superhuman rambo soldier convey the pówer of the move.
1-Knife slash (hit both sides)
2-uppercut bolter (hit forward)
3-Kick (strong knockdown push forward)
4-Knife backslash (strong knockdown push backward)
man, i am quite proud of this badboy
oh - he pushes off the enemy but it would be a pain to program a separate animation in case you dont hit anyone with the kick, so a little suspension of disbelief there :P hehe call it artistic license
C&C welcome
amused, taunt pew pew, Warcry!
Looks dope. Amazing art. Are u still working on it?
awhaleyx sorry, i want to make the game first, then if we dont actually launch i'll probably sell the assets on some platform once its done
ereimer24 sweet, looking good! if you want some constructive criticism, when you are tweaking details you can coordinate the elements by animating them by kinetic chain - start with legs, then add the torso and its relation with legs, then do the arms and shoulders in relation to torso - use follow through for the natural looking bounce!