Hello, everyone. A few weeks ago I finished some basic animations for the two protagonists of my upcoming game. I’m looking for feedback on whether they look natural and presentable, and also whether my use of the linear easing style is working (the first walk animation is cubic, but the other three animations are linear).
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Hey bro,
These are all kinda basic. The character looks more like they’re prancing in place than they are walking in place (maybe that’s what you were going for, but it just doesn’t look right). Additionally, the positions that the arms are in are a bit awkward (specifically in the hunched-looking animations), and the leg movement in the second walking animation doesn’t look much better.
That said, the first walk animation should tell you a lot about knowing how to use easing styles correctly, and if it looked significantly less stiff, given more room to move, and slowed down, it would be a solid walk animation, because your use of the easing directions look correct to me, and thus, makes the animation look more natural than the others presented.
Something to think about while making a walking animation is how a human’s legs look when they’re walking; how when you take a step, your feet go out in front of you quite a bit, return to the center, and kick out behind you. When it comes to bringing that leg back in, bend the knee outwards before the foot goes out. Applying that to both legs usually result in a solid walking animation. Think about the same thing when making a running animation too.
I know applying that principal to an R6 character is a little difficult. The best way to simulate an R6 knee is to use the top edge of a leg that is in front of the player. You seem to be kinda doing it in the second walking animation too, so simply do that a bit more. I hope all of this makes sense to you.
I don’t have as much to say about an idle because it is harder to make less stiff, but again, that can be fixed by using easing styles more.
That’s all from me. Good luck on your game.
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I agree with all of your points. They’ve given me some food for thought.
“Prancing” would be a good word to describe it. The characters these animations are going on are a tad eccentric.
Just for clarification, are the arms on the hunched animations facing too far inward or is there a different issue that I should look into?
I was a bit hasty with the legs on the first walking animation; I’ll definitely work on making it a bit more similar to the second.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Yeah, no problem. To elaborate here:
The issue for me stems from how the left arm is angled into the torso while the other one isn’t. Realistically, both arms should be very slightly angled into the torso (like how far the right arm is) and also slightly lowered down (doing this in particular implies more weight, thus being more realistic), but the way they’re positioned doesn’t look right to me. It’s a very basic change, and is probably not even all that needed, but I believe it’ll help make the animation appear less stiff.
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On the hunched animation, I would make the character look down a little bit more.
It’s also much easier to animate if you use a ROBLOX avatar with the standard ROBLOX head so you can see exactly what’s happening.
I’ve made some experimental changes to the second walking animation just to see what opinions are. In this edit I have:
- Slowed the playback speed of the animation. The speed this animation is now playing at is a more faithful representation of its appearance in-game since the characters don’t walk nearly as fast as 16 most of the time.
- Lowered the arms.
- Exaggerated the up and down motions of the torso and arms.
- Fixed arm orientation.
- Placed the head lower on the torso and made it look slightly downwards (it is going to remain looking ahead in the idle animation so that it’s more straightforward in cutscenes).
- Experimented with easing styles to give the impression of the character falling into each step.
- Increase range of motion for the legs.
- Swapped the dummy’s block head for a classic head.
Maybe lift the legs up more when they take a step, it looks a little unnatural
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