I have completed three different cycles for the game. The first cycle was the most important one, the walkcycle. This cycle will be most looped, and I found that i needed to spend most time on this cycle. when it came to the character, I really wanted the character to feel loose, and bring forth his characteristics as much as possible. Thats why i have created several limbs through his body, and add one extra limb in his waistarea. This gives me more control when I animate the character, although it requires alot more work.
I am happy with the outcome on the runcycle, and his way of moving shows that this character is something not so ordinary.
Picture of runcycle
The idlecycle shouws the character touching his head and breathing heavily up and down. I had an idea about moving the character's head left to right to give away that he is mentally unstable, but it required alot more effort and didnt have enough time.
The jumpcycle is the one I rushed through. Not having any idea how a jumpcyckle should be animated, if I should animate him with a jump? let him have air? and so forth. I just gave it a try.
Problems I had during the animation, was to get familiar with Flash's way of keying. We have the options between three keying methods, which is classic keeying, classic tween. or motion tween. I chose the one I had least problems with, and that was classic tween and classical keying (frame by frame). I especially had problems trying to mirror the runcycle from left to right, as it only screwed up the keys i had put in, although it eventually worked out.
As for the character, I tested out using bone tools, and although it required less effort to animate with, I found that I lost way too much control of the character.
Next I will convert these to sprites and start with the coding of the game :) gl hf
