Grim Art

[Grimlock]

Bob Barker....

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

Samus's hot stepsister: 
(She's single guys)  :wink:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Alisa Orlova]

Not the best quality but it's doesn't matter.
[spoiler=Omg, they are so cute!]
I hope we OK Sir.Vis., it's was just a joke. :wink:
[/spoiler]

[Grimlock]

DuckTales (NES) Level Design concept art :

I made this yesterday.  I was messing around with a few ideas I've had for a DuckTales hack I might do as a side project some time in the future.  It seems like it would be a fun/quick project since it's basically just 5 levels plus some title screen and ending graphics.  If I had all the graphics designed it would be pretty quick to put together assuming I can make the changes I'd like to.

This is just a Photoshop rendering for a "Spooky Forest" theme.  I'm going to do a Duckberg theme next but I might expand on this concept some more first.

[Quietus]

I like the graphics, but none of it really screams 'forest'. Maybe 'swamp'?

[RealRed]

Branches don't get larger as they stem further from the tree. It may be worthwhile to simplify the large background chunks to leave space to enhance other aspects, like the leaves in the bottom of the background. They're cool, but they look more like magical windows than forestry.

[Grimlock]

Yea, the background is very inefficient.  It was never meant to be graphics that would end up in a rom.  It's just concept art I slapped together fairly hastily.  It would all have to be redone.

[Grimlock]

Experimentation with spine based animation:

(The graphic I just tossed together from a quick Photoshop sketch)

Overall I'm pretty impressed with it's capabilities.

[RealRed]

Looks like Drawn to Life for the DS.

https://youtu.be/MQFOzyn8iew?t=6m34s

[Grimlock]

More experimentation with skeletal "spine" based animation (gaming assets):

These animations are pretty rough (as is the freaky face character)... 



Basic Skeleton Setup:



Walk Animation:



Run Animation:

[Grimlock]

I decided to give myself a challenge:



Samus Concept art work (Downloaded from the internet):



Fully animated (20 frames):



Pieces cut out and edited in Photoshop:



Skeleton setup:



From here I can do pretty much any movement animation. 

[snarfblam]

I think the difficult part of this kind of animation is making it not look like a flash game. It seemed to work well enough for Crazy Eyes in your first animation, but for a more "serious" application I'm guessing deliberately reducing the number of frames in the animation could help. Kind of similar to how movies shown in 60 fps somehow seem cheaper ("soap opera effect") than movies shown at 24 fps.

[Grimlock]

Yea, that definitely crossed my mind when I was first introduced to this type of animation system.  I'm still learning the ins and outs of "Spine" but the output appears to have a FPS value that can be set.  The above Samus animation was set default to 35 FPS.  As soon as I have some time I'm going to put together some more animations and experiment with different FPS values. 

Over all it's a pretty neat system, it brings a lot of tools traditionally only available to 3D animators to 2D.  There's a lot more tools available than just the simple bones I'm using.  With the mesh tool for example you can make 2D images distort in a way that produces a 3D look, as though you're working with a 3D model.  It's pretty impressive.