Help with smooth animation

sl-images

im having real trouble with the animation ive drawn the character fine and made the frames but when animated on what ever fps it always seems very much like a flick book ( very un-smooth ) please see youtube vid below for more detail

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WMn99CW_sYs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

VoidedSky

Send me your project file;
Cowtechman at gmail dot com

QuinnZoneStudios

Although my game animations are running at 30 frames per second with an actual new pose for each frame, I think 15 FPS also looks pretty good too most of the time.
Most likely TSB was correct, just add extra frames of motion and it should look nice, provided they are all lined up correctly.
Good luck and keep going, it will be worth it!

sl-images

Thanks for the quick replys....

the animation already is made of a 15 frame walking cycle ... what ive noticed is that in the
'platform game' template the blue player is made up of 8 frames running at 10 fps and is very smooth, how has that been achieved

regards

QuinnZoneStudios

The question would be, do you have a different image/pose on each frame? So for example, if you have an 8 frame animation cycle, you would have to adjust the slider up to get a smoother motion (albeit faster).
Therefore, if you are running an 8 frame cycle at 15 frames per second, you are holding each frame for almost twice as long, therefore making it appear to flicker.
So I suspect that is your problem.
Hope that makes sense?

old_kipper

You could try stop framing some real footage of a kangaroo to work out how they actually move and then move your parts to match it as closely as possible. Look at the weight and how it transfers through the body and then returns back.

When animating a walk or jumping cycle for film, the character will move forward and back horizontally as it contacts the ground so it matches the travel speed and stops looking like it is sliding. This is possible by making the animation smaller than the actor size and having it move around a little in the art frame, but it will still have the same boundaries for collisions. A non elegant way around this is to have a circular collision area which often is closer to the actor animation that it would be if square.

15 frames is more than enough to make it look smooth if you get the animation right. In fact with a bit of work it might be ok with 8 even if you are limited to moving pieces around rather than drawing individual frames. I am not sure how you are putting the pieces together but if you had then in something that allows you to play them back as you moved them over the frames it would really help. After Effects, Flash or I am sure something much cheaper or free would do this.

Hope that helps. Kipper