I put my game related things in this thread

[qoxolg]

I don't think, when jumping in general, your body makes much of an angle. What happens when going up, is that the legs also sweep up in sort of a cycling motion. This happens especially when jumping after running. Your legs almost naturally make that motion. From standing still its a bit more unusual for casual jumping, but when you try to jump higher, it's not that weird.

Here is how I made my jumping animation (just to let you know: I didn't use reference for it at all so it's probably crap, but it will give you an idea)

First I go trough knees to start the jump. The good thing about 3D engines, is that animation blend into each other, so it's not a very long part.



Then we move up with one knee up



Then move the other knee up for the cycling motion



Fall down pose. Here I just let the animation loop with slight movement of the arms going up and down.



To give a feeling of weight to the character, after touching the ground, move trough the knees in one frame and go up in two (at least make going back up slower then going down.

[Zorafim]

I've been wanting to add this since the beginning, but I felt animations were more important. Now that I have most animations in place, it seemed like a good time to add it.

Look familiar Q?

[qoxolg]

Ohohoooo yes! Just like the concept art! Does this mean some of the other art I made for you will make it into the game?

[Zorafim]

Zorael is going to be a major character, so definitely him. Of all the characters you drew, the only ones left alive are the cat and the sea serpent. The serpent I may have swimming around the sea if I can spare the time, and maybe I can have the cat sleeping in the mission hub.
While the rest aren't alive, I may use their designs for enemies.

I actually had the picture up while drawing this, and tried to copy it as much as possible. You did such a great job with it, so I wanted to use it.

[Zorafim]

I finally got to it. I need to sketch the pose on Paint before I fully commit to it, I've found. There's no point spending hours drawing a pose, only to figure out at the end that it's just a bad pose.
Thanks to mentioning that the body is mostly straight, I got something that looks decent. I still need to animate it, but at least I have a good place to start. Now what I need to do is find a falling pose that I like, which I've been struggling with. Then I can start doing intermediate poses.

[qoxolg]

Thats looking like its going in the right direction!

[Zorafim]

I swear I got the same feeling one gets when their crush tells them that they're cute.

I got the fall animation done too. Surprisingly, almost all of it is unique. And I got it done quick, too. Relatively. Only a few hours.
Anyway!



There's a little bit of a style difference between jumping and falling. Hopefully I can smooth that out in the intermediate animation.

What do you think of that arm? Does that look okay? I haven't learned perspective yet.

[Zorafim]

I went ahead with the animation. Looks a bit better, but you can't really see it well ingame.

[qoxolg]

Between the rising and falling animation I would put one frame where the knees are switched to create this cycling motion near the summit of the jump.

for the foreshortening of the arm. This could work, though it’s probably more natural if the arms face a bit more forward. Just try to move your own arms backwards. It’s not very comfortable (I hate that exercise in the gym).

[Zorafim]

That's how I got the pose, actually. I tried to figure out what my legs would do if I was in that position, and started falling. In-game, the transition from jumping to falling is pretty awkward, so it definitely needs that animation. I guess I'm working on that next.

*moves my arms backwards*
*does so easily*

I, uh, guess I've never told you guys that I've been doing flexibility training for 17 years, huh?
I want to show that Levia does have some flexibility, but at the same time the more things I do that's difficult for a human to do, the less human she looks. So striking that balance is going to be tough.
I'll keep an eye on it. Something tells me I'll be seeing a lot of this animation.

Speaking of animation!



I got a criticism that the hair looked too rectangular. I'm not sure how to fix that at the moment, so I think I'll save it for when I have less art to worry about. I still need to do that transition animation (probably 3 frames?) and attacks to worry about... I can't wait to get to more programming. It's always done too quickly.