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Glad to be helpful! I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable on animation myself, I only learned this recently trying to look up an explanation for why the walk cycle was bothering me, but I'll try to elaborate on the whole contact pose thing.

Basically, walk cycle animations tend to have 4 key frames: one contact pose where both legs are on the ground, one on the front and one on the back; a second contact pose where the legs' positions are reversed; and two passing poses in between where the legs are superimposed.  So for example, you could animate a character like this:

  1. With their left leg on the front and their right leg on the back (first contact pose, idk if it matters which leg goes on the front first)
  2. With the right leg raised behind the left, both right below the body (first passing pose)
  3. With the right leg in front and the left leg on the back (second contact pose)
  4. With the left leg raised in front of the right leg (second passing pose)
  5. Loop back to the first contact pose.

It's admittedly a bit hard to tell because the animation is so fast, but here, each of the playable overworld characters seem to have only one passing pose where the legs are perfectly still, which I think is acceptable under this limited pixel artstyle; but also only one contact pose that repeats after every passing pose, with the same leg on the front and the same leg on the back (which one is which depends on the side, since the sprite is mirrored) every time.  So it ends up looking like the character is only ever taking steps with one of their legs somehow, if that makes any sense.

Again, I wasn't even sure if this was intentional, especially since the forward and backward walk cycles look much better, and it's argurably a very minor thing many players won't even notice. But I did find it quite distracting myself, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Hope this helps!

(Oh, and I'll have to think about the playtester thing)

I will see what I can do about this,  I am not really knowledgeable about animation either which is pretty apparent if you look at the enemy animations in combat. Now those I dont think I have the skills to improve,  but I should be able to figure something out concerning the sideways walk. 

If you guys need any animation help, I'd be glad to help you out. I'm a budding animator!

Perhaps if I need something truly special, otherwise the amount of work I would ask of you would be staggering. Anyhow, you should be in the credits too, if you want to just send me the text you want added. 

Yeah for sure. I can just give you tips instead of full work maybe.

Thanks for the credits offer! Idk what text... maybe something like "really likes da music" next to my name for now, if I can contribute some more then it can change

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I was thinking playtester and whatever name you would like, or perhaps a shoutout. Solodevs need to fill out their credits sequence anyhow ;). Well, thats way into the future anyhow, so dont think too hard!