Update - 30th Jan:
Finished my fifth pass (yes! Fifth!) at the wolf's run cycle. I'm posting this progress on the forums of the engine I'm using too, for some broader feedback, and there are some animation pros over there. With their advice, the animation has been significantly improved. I'll update it once more when I know exactly how I want the wolf to look, and when I've finalized how the physics will work in-game (run speed, acceleration, jump height, falling speed, etc). I'll also add more frames to the animation at that point to smooth out the tail and legs further.

For now though, this is how he looks:



Update - 17th Jan:
Finished my first pass at the wolf's basic run cycle. Animation is completely new to me, so I'd love feedback on this one! Anything that stands out, looks odd, let me know. The design of the wolf is still WIP, especially his head. Animated GIF in the spoilers below, followed by original post about the concept art:



Been working with an engine called Construct recently on an open-world RPG with hand-painted high-rez textures, dynamic wind blowing leaves and grasses, butterflies fluttering around meadows, and leaves drifting down streams. The game was so intensive that it crashed to desktop before I could even add NPCs and scripts...

So I'm going to work on something smaller. An artistic platformer about a wolf with the power of the elements, traveling across the land to find an ancient oracle who may hold the key to discovering a way to save his pack, and the whole world, from a nameless corruption spreading across the world. I'm not aiming for anything revolutionary. I'm aiming for fun! I want a handful of levels, that allow the player to use the elements (focusing on and upgrading his favourites) to get through each level in various ways. Wind for speed, water for defence, fire for offence, earth to call upon the land to open up new paths. I want two stages within each level - one in the day, and one at night - to highlight the ongoing journey.

That's the synopsis! Below is some concept art for the first two levels, the second one at night. I'd like some thoughts on the art style since they're designed as basic mock-ups of gameplay, and if anyone has any suggestions on engines I'd love to hear them. I have zero coding experience and would sooner hire someone else to code than learn myself. I'm all about the visuals :P

Thanks for reading ^^

Concept Art in spoilers below. Large images.

Wow! Now that is quite pretty.

I would like to mention, however, on the daylight scene: more contrast! I understand trying to deliver a soft look, but the foreground has the exact same depth in tonal values as the background, which makes it look unfinished.

Also, on the daytime scene, the little bush behind one of the rocky hill deals looks like resized pixel art -- whatever it actually is, its contrast and lack of aliasing makes it HUGELY stick out like a sore thumb.

man i really wanted to say something like this when i first saw this but i couldnt find the words, thanks ven.

p.s. i really like what you got so far, keep working, id love to see more

Thanks, great points! That bush in the midground is just a resized version of the bush on the far right, and skewed a little bit. I completely neglected to smooth it out, so thanks for that :P

And you're right about the contrast. That's something I picked up on fairly quickly too, and I'm addressing it with deeper greens for the actual game. I'm also playing around with various simple flowers to add a bit more colour variety to the foreground, and hopefully catch and hold the eye a little better.

I've been quite busy recently and haven't had much time to work on this for the past week (read: I'm playing obscene amounts of Skyrim), but have almost finished up my first pass at the wolf's run animation. I'll post here when it's done, and would really appreciate feedback - I'm very new to animating.

Quick question: While making these, are you simply using Photoshop, or are you using Flash? The tree in the night scene really makes me think Flash.

Not that it's a bad thing, far from it--I was just wondering. I often use the paint tool in Flash when I'm trying to save time ... "painting" in vectors makes things so much simpler than organizing photoshop layers sometimes :) (though it produces a totally different look ... it is so much more of a time-saver)

Nope, I just went with a quick and simple style for the tree in Photoshop. Does it work?

I want a style that's pleasing on the eye, but without excessive detail. It's a fast-moving platformer, so detail would be unnoticed for the most part. It also means less effort on my part :P

Makes total sense. and yeah, it works just fine. I certainly can't argue with exerting less effort when it comes to producing game graphics ;P

Updated my OP with the wolf's animated run cycle! I already want to redo his tail and smoothen out the front leg transitions. My idea is to fill in the animation with triple the amount of frames, one more either side of each current frame, to get the whole thing to look silky smooth. It's going to be the most common animation you see, so it has to be perfect. I want to get as much as feedback on this first pass as possible though so I can iron out the issues before starting to polish.

Thanks for reading ^^

HOLY SHIT THIS LOOKS SO AWESOME
YOU ROCK

Thanks DJ!

Updated OP with my latest and penultimate running animation. Would love to hear what you think, and if there's anything that jumps out to you guys as problematic.

Been working a lot on one of the levels recently too, and I'm really excited about the level of detail I can put in. I'm trying to hold back on that, since it's essentially what killed my other game :P, but I get far too much joy out of watching grass blow in the wind or react to the player's touch to leave it out of this game! Hopefully I can upload a short video in the coming months. All depends on how long these animations take really, since I still have jumping, falling, climbing, and skidding to do before I've got the basics complete...

Madness. But at least it's fun

seems like the wolf's back end rises too much, it looks more like a small jump than a run... here's a breakdown of a wolf's run cycle http://nekonotaishou.deviantart.com/art ... -246690351

But besides that the animation looks really smooth, i like how his hair moves :)

I think it looks great! However, you could probably make it look more fluid if you a couple of extra frames. Can you tell us more about your game?

@Butteryart - Indeed, that was the main criticism I received, along with the tail. Compared to the first pass you can see his back end doesn't rise as high as it used to. I'm still considering re-doing that area to make it look more 'wavy', but I also think it works quite well atm with how I've designed and set the fur into segments. The animation you linked to is awesome, but is a much slower run, so the movement is less exaggerated. The game I'm creating has a fast pace, very much inspired by Sonic, and so a longer stride was needed in his animation. I found this video very useful as a guide, along with other references of wolves instead of dogs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdikR_mxp6I&feature=player_embedded

Sorry for the cheesy music But yeah, depending on the feedback I get, and how it all works in-game, I'd be more than happy to rework his rear. Thanks for the critique!

@Juan - Thanks! I plan on adding more frames once I've finalized his design. The rear legs and tail really bother me at the moment, but I think the base movement is fine now. Just needs some extra frames to smooth it out, as you say.

As for the game itself: It's a fast-paced platformer akin to Sonic, but with the wolf having the power of the elements. I'd love to get it working with a 360 controller - A for Earth, X for Water, Y for Wind, B for Fire. Those buttons can be pressed or held down, for different abilities, and you unlock more abilities as you discover key items hidden through the levels. Finding an item allows you to 'spend' it on a new ability of your choice. So at first you only have access to one ability from each element, by tapping the corresponding button. I'm thinking tapping Y will make the wolf do a quick dash to the right, usable in mid-air to cover longer distances with a jump, or along the ground to dash across pitfalls or small bodies of water. Other abilities to unlock within the wind element would be sprinting - by holding down Y you run faster for as long as it's held but it drains spirit energy continuously (used for all abilities, and recharged by collecting spirit motes - this game's equivalent of gold coins or rings), and a double-jump ability that could also be used in conjunction with the dash ability, to cover really long jump distances (jump, double jump, dash).

So wind is for fast movement. I want fire for powerful offense, killing enemies really fast. Water for defence, and to allow you to run across water. Earth to call on nature to attack enemies for you, and to open up hidden paths. So ideally, each player would find his own preferred element, and utilize it to get through each level in his own way. It's all work in progress, and VERY likely to change at this stage. I'll update here whenever I can though, probably starting a new topic for it in the Project Discussion section when I have enough to show off. Thanks for your feedback and interest