Twenty expressions

Post finished and unfinished work here for critique and appraisal.
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Nogitsune
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Twenty expressions

Post by Nogitsune »

Some of you may recall that survey I did for a new pet site. Some of the pets are being made by the artist J.C. http://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/jc/ She has recently started doing flash animation for expressions that may eventually appear on the pets. Here is a Chinese Dragon type: http://jc.furrynet.com/chinadragon/dragon.html she isn't quite finished yet, which is why only one whisker is moving. Also, the tiger at the bottom of the page is not hers. Thoughts?
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Huggles
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Post by Huggles »

I moved this to the Art forum.

I remember the pets from a while back, but the dragon is awesome. I know it's probably a huge pain to do, but I would have invested more time in making the body move, even ever so slightly like in sprite breathing animations, rather than focusing on the hair. It's very windy while the body is still very stiff. The playing and eating animations are very nice though. If she wants to maximize her time and lower her frame count, spriting sites are some of the better places to learn since 1 pixel can literally make or break a piece.
Cranberry
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Post by Cranberry »

The dragon is adorable, but it moves too much and too fast for me... looking at it for too long would drive me nuts. I notice this a lot with animated creatures (in those RPG videogames, especially) -- people design them so they're constantly moving, twitching their tails and noses and ears and paws and breathing heavily and moving their eyes around too much. It's not realistic, and it's just irritating.
Last edited by Cranberry on 13 Aug 2007 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Figment
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Post by Figment »

They make me feel seizureiffic. They move waaay too quickly and obnoxiously.

I fucking hate animation. I could never, ever play a pet site where the pets were animated -- I play largely for the art, after all. Even if I didn't have irrational, searing dislike of animation, it's all a bit too disney for me.
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Post by Silverevilchao »

My problem is that a site with animated pets would most likely break my computer. My browser nearly locked up just navigating the dragon page...
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Aqua
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Post by Aqua »

They're cute, but even on my fast computer the page lags. Plus I think seeing animation like that would bug me after a while. D:
bonecrivain
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Post by bonecrivain »

It's cute, but a little manic. I think if a site's going to do animation with the pets, there should be one animated pose...or three, maybe...with the majority of the emotions still being static. That would get on my nerves after a while. My pet doesn't have to be constantly moving.
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Post by Officer 1BDI »

I actually don't mind the images being animated, but having so many on the same page turns everything laggy on my computer. I agree with Huggles about the chest/center being static compared to the hair, and maybe having the hair moving so wildly would become really distracting/annoying after a period of time, but I think that dragon is adorable.

I think the expressions are great for the most part. There was something about the "sigh" expression that I thought was a bit odd, but I couldn't tell if it was due to the lag or if something was genuinely off about the timing of the animation.
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Nogitsune
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Post by Nogitsune »

While I tend to agree that it would be interesting to have the whole body move, it might be slightly problematic for her. I also agree this might be a bit much to look at after a while, though I find it extremely cute right now. I really don't know where or how much these would be used on the site, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't either...
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Kuroro
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Post by Kuroro »

Well, I don't have any problems with the constant movement. Now that some of you mention it, it's indeed very manic, but it doesn't bother me. I wonder if this is because I play/used to play a lot of rpg's and yes, like Cranberry said, I did notice that usually monsters/animals (like in the final fantasy games or Wow) never seem to be standing still. There it only bothered me if the same cycle was repeated all the time. Slightly.

I animated stuff for games myself, I love animation, so for me these pets look like a great idea to me.
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Post by thelonetiel »

The main problem I have is the flat, consistent line art. There is a defined border of good art on Neopets from where they switched from standard Flash lines that have a constant thickness everywhere to a more refined, I'm sure painstakingly defined varying lines.

It is a lot more work to have nice line art in Flash (at least from what I remember, working with the program), and I'm sure animation is easier with the current method, but right now the art looks horrifically outdated, at least compared with Neopets and Subeta. The animation is cute, but I tend to play sites for pretty art. The design of these pets is nice, the artist is definitely talented, I just dislike the style.

If she can't convert to more variable line art, I think it'd be helpful to change the colors. Black is very flat, but different colors to match the pets would be helpful. I recall the old krawk had lines of this style, but the colored line art made it less obvious.
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