Animations or a greater focus on art?

[ParadiseLofts]

Hey folks. I'm a developer that commissions art, so budgets are a thing. I enjoy animations, but without question, I keep them rather "simple" to contain costs. My artist could spend an equal amount of time, doing either one frame (or many fewer frames), in place of these animations. I would be sacrificing animations for higher-quality art. Proper shading and the finer details take considerable time, unfortunately.

If some of you have played my game, you're familiar with the current style. An example, I posted here, and this is probably one of the better ones:

You must be registered to see the links

My question is simple. What floats your boat? A higher quality art style or animations? My dream would be to have the support to commission Disney-quality-esque animations, but since that likely won't ever happen, which is the better option to sacrifice? I'd like to keep pushing my project, but as it hasn't really taken off, of course, I'm second guessing almost every decision I've made. hah! Thanks for any input.

 

[Kinderalpha]

Below is my opinion <- which means take it as you please and I'm not always correct.

I think your art style is perfect. I wouldn't change anything really. This is coming from a consumer, not an artist, but I find your art very unique and fitting. The proportions, shading, and colors you use I think blend really well in the scenery of your game and the environment you have. I wouldn't change anything to be honest.

On the topic of animation, and animation in your video linked. One thing I always express as importance is smoothness. You could have a ten minute animation with the most realistic renders possible. If my brain picks up any kind of error, buffer, or frame skip, it immediately becomes exponentially less attractive. Why? Couldn't tell you. Is it like this for other people? No idea. This applies to your example because I feel the animations are gapped. It's not a smooth transition from one from to the next. It's choppy, gapped, skips, jumps, idk what word best describes what I'm trying to emphasis but I'm sure you get my point.

Why is this important to me? Because it immediately emphasis human error or technical limitations. The sort of emphasis ruins my focus while consuming pornography. If a video buffers, skips, or even the audio is off sync, I immediately move on. Brains recognize patterns and patterns that are consistent and predictable or patterns that our brain can figure out are the most rewarding and satisfying to consume. If your animation pattern for example, is comprised of frame skips and jumps then suddenly something feels off. An internal switch is immediately turns on, saying that the visuals which I'm looking at aren't right. Your forcing my brain to do the work of filling the gap or the jump from one frame to the next.

My answer would be to apply a method of motion interpolation to your animations. If you're doing vector art, then you have the benefit of being able to apply interpolation to vectors based on constraints and such. If you're doing frame by frame art, I would suggest looking into software that helps the animation process. This interpolation is what fills in the gaps of your animation. Hopefully this makes sense. I'm not sure how you're doing your animation so hard to recommend any techniques. Don't take this as a negative criticism though, I'm trying to be constructive. Your animations are good, just not smooth. You don't need to change how your animations look, just need to smooth the transitions or frame jumps.

Hope this helps.

 

[ParadiseLofts]

Below is my opinion <- which means take it as you please and I'm not always correct.

I think your art style is perfect. I wouldn't change anything really. This is coming from a consumer, not an artist, but I find your art very unique and fitting. The proportions, shading, and colors you use I think blend really well in the scenery of your game and the environment you have. I wouldn't change anything to be honest.

On the topic of animation, and animation in your video linked. One thing I always express as importance is smoothness. You could have a ten minute animation with the most realistic renders possible. If my brain picks up any kind of error, buffer, or frame skip, it immediately becomes exponentially less attractive. Why? Couldn't tell you. Is it like this for other people? No idea. This applies to your example because I feel the animations are gapped. It's not a smooth transition from one from to the next. It's choppy, gapped, skips, jumps, idk what word best describes what I'm trying to emphasis but I'm sure you get my point.

Why is this important to me? Because it immediately emphasis human error or technical limitations. The sort of emphasis ruins my focus while consuming pornography. If a video buffers, skips, or even the audio is off sync, I immediately move on. Brains recognize patterns and patterns that are consistent and predictable or patterns that our brain can figure out are the most rewarding and satisfying to consume. If your animation pattern for example, is comprised of frame skips and jumps then suddenly something feels off. An internal switch is immediately turns on, saying that the visuals which I'm looking at aren't right. Your forcing my brain to do the work of filling the gap or the jump from one frame to the next.

My answer would be to apply a method of motion interpolation to your animations. If you're doing vector art, then you have the benefit of being able to apply interpolation to vectors based on constraints and such. If you're doing frame by frame art, I would suggest looking into software that helps the animation process. This interpolation is what fills in the gaps of your animation. Hopefully this makes sense. I'm not sure how you're doing your animation so hard to recommend any techniques. Don't take this as a negative criticism though, I'm trying to be constructive. Your animations are good, just not smooth. You don't need to change how your animations look, just need to smooth the transitions or frame jumps.

Hope this helps.

Don't apologize for anything. That's exactly the kind of criticism I need. It is so easy to get tunnel vision working on this, so other's perspectives are invaluable. You already gave me an idea on what I can do to tweak the animations better, and I will check to see if there are tools out there that can assist. I didn't even think of that. Honestly, I've been winging it from the get-go with this project. Hah! But yeah, thank you for the input. It matters.

 

[Kinderalpha]

Don't apologize for anything. That's exactly the kind of criticism I need. It is so easy to get tunnel vision working on this, so other's perspectives are invaluable. You already gave me an idea on what I can do to tweak the animations better, and I will check to see if there are tools out there that can assist. I didn't even think of that. Honestly, I've been winging it from the get-go with this project. Hah! But yeah, thank you for the input. It matters.

The tech I was referring to is using bone animation over frame by frame. So you rig a 2D drawing with bones and animate by manipulating the bones. Glad I could help, good luck!

 

[baloneysammich]

I think I have a similar opinion to Kinderalpha. Most of the animation seemed excessively choppy. At certain points (like 1:21 & 1:32) it looked acceptibly fluid to me. Same with the whip animation at 1:18 which seemed like a sped up version of those beginning at around 1:02. Even if all those were just because of increased speed, it doesn't matter IMO. At other points (like the entire blowjob beginning around 1:50) the choppiness was apparent but not quite so jarring.

All that being said, I know I've played some games with fairly choppy animations and I don't have bad feelings about them*. It may be that because I was watching it as a video, I was in "watching a video" state of mind and interpreted the choppiness as buffering, whereas if I were in "playing a game" state of mind I might have been more forgiving. It's hard to say honestly.

As far as art style, the voyeurism scene at the very beginning was pretty poor IMO, but the rest was good. From what I've seen I can't say one way or the other if I would find it arousing TBH.

Hope you find this helpful.

* But I also can't name them which may be just as bad.

 

[ParadiseLofts]

I think I have a similar opinion to Kinderalpha. Most of the animation seemed excessively choppy. At certain points (like 1:21 & 1:32) it looked acceptibly fluid to me. Same with the whip animation at 1:18 which seemed like a sped up version of those beginning at around 1:02. Even if all those were just because of increased speed, it doesn't matter IMO. At other points (like the entire blowjob beginning around 1:50) the choppiness was apparent but not quite so jarring.

All that being said, I know I've played some games with fairly choppy animations and I don't have bad feelings about them*. It may be that because I was watching it as a video, I was in "watching a video" state of mind and interpreted the choppiness as buffering, whereas if I were in "playing a game" state of mind I might have been more forgiving. It's hard to say honestly.

As far as art style, the voyeurism scene at the very beginning was pretty poor IMO, but the rest was good. From what I've seen I can't say one way or the other if I would find it arousing TBH.

Hope you find this helpful.

* But I also can't name them which may be just as bad.

After looking into it, I can definitely smooth the animations here, and I'll do it for the next update. I've actually already commissioned the next art, so it's inevitably coming. Thanks for the input!

 

[kytee]

What Kinder is talking about, I imagine looks very similar to

You must be registered to see the links

. You can probably have your artist draw each piece of a character in a new layer, then animate each separate layer (rotate the arm layer to move arms, etc) to put in some movement. When it comes to sex animations in a 2D game, realism doesn't matter to me. Having the girl's tits bounce and her crotch moving to simulate penetration is good enough for me. How difficult this is, I am unsure of as I'm not an artist, but it does look a lot easier than drawing each frame of an animation by hand.

 

[polywog]

 

[God3333]

Hey folks. I'm a developer that commissions art, so budgets are a thing. I enjoy animations, but without question, I keep them rather "simple" to contain costs. My artist could spend an equal amount of time, doing either one frame (or many fewer frames), in place of these animations. I would be sacrificing animations for higher-quality art. Proper shading and the finer details take considerable time, unfortunately.

If some of you have played my game, you're familiar with the current style. An example, I posted here, and this is probably one of the better ones:

You must be registered to see the links

My question is simple. What floats your boat? A higher quality art style or animations? My dream would be to have the support to commission Disney-quality-esque animations, but since that likely won't ever happen, which is the better option to sacrifice? I'd like to keep pushing my project, but as it hasn't really taken off, of course, I'm second guessing almost every decision I've made. hah! Thanks for any input.

Below I will outline my opinion on animations and renders:

I'm someone who finds it hard to get hard(pardon the pun) to still images. I prefer something moving a video of sorts. Now, many games have these animations. However, there's a plethora of different pot holes you can fall into when using animations. Some games show 1-3 images back and forth and call this an animation. Sure, it's an animation: in the sense that it's a moving picture, but it's really low effort and not worth it. Another big issue with animations is the fluidity of them. Animations need to be crisp and smooth. If not it really just looks like a dumpster fire tbh. Another annoying thing (which doesn't seem to apply to your game) is when animated body parts clip into each other. This is most common in honeyselect games.
To just interject with the past point: If you're going to make those 1-3 frame back and forth animations... don't bother because they're shit!

Renders in themselves carry a game. Renders are what you will see most of. You only really need animated sex scenes. Renders are important because they are what everyone sees. If your renders are shit then having good animations won't make up for that. Art is art at the end of the day, it's subjective. Certain people may like or dislike your current art or even future art. I'll be 100% honest with you: the animations seen in the link you provided are smooth at certain bits, but clunky at others. However, the art is pretty good. I don't play 2dcg games much so don't know how hard they are to render etc. But I would say that your art is very good!
I believe that a good game has both renders and animations. I believe a great game has both good renders and animations.
At the moment I would say your game has good renders,but somewhat lack-luster animations.
If you wanted to improve your animations I would be all for it, as long as the quality of the renders didn't decrease.

Not all games have to have animations, however, for me to play a game without animations it would have to have good renders or a really well written story.

In my opinion I would advise you to perhaps look at improving your animations.
If you can balance your animations and artwork then you're golden.

Good luck on your game.
Kami.

 

[ParadiseLofts]

Below I will outline my opinion on animations and renders:

I'm someone who finds it hard to get hard(pardon the pun) to still images. I prefer something moving a video of sorts. Now, many games have these animations. However, there's a plethora of different pot holes you can fall into when using animations. Some games show 1-3 images back and forth and call this an animation. Sure, it's an animation: in the sense that it's a moving picture, but it's really low effort and not worth it. Another big issue with animations is the fluidity of them. Animations need to be crisp and smooth. If not it really just looks like a dumpster fire tbh. Another annoying thing (which doesn't seem to apply to your game) is when animated body parts clip into each other. This is most common in honeyselect games.
To just interject with the past point: If you're going to make those 1-3 frame back and forth animations... don't bother because they're shit!

Renders in themselves carry a game. Renders are what you will see most of. You only really need animated sex scenes. Renders are important because they are what everyone sees. If your renders are shit then having good animations won't make up for that. Art is art at the end of the day, it's subjective. Certain people may like or dislike your current art or even future art. I'll be 100% honest with you: the animations seen in the link you provided are smooth at certain bits, but clunky at others. However, the art is pretty good. I don't play 2dcg games much so don't know how hard they are to render etc. But I would say that your art is very good!
I believe that a good game has both renders and animations. I believe a great game has both good renders and animations.
At the moment I would say your game has good renders,but somewhat lack-luster animations.
If you wanted to improve your animations I would be all for it, as long as the quality of the renders didn't decrease.

Not all games have to have animations, however, for me to play a game without animations it would have to have good renders or a really well written story.

In my opinion I would advise you to perhaps look at improving your animations.
If you can balance your animations and artwork then you're golden.

Good luck on your game.
Kami.

Just before I read your post last night, I was finishing up tweaking the framerate on several sequences, and already discussed using more frames for animations with the artist going forward, especially with the more intricate games/animations. It's often difficult to find constructive criticism, and this is the kind of feedback I'm always looking for. I sent your notes to the artist, as well. Thank you for the insight, sincerely. We'll keep hacking at it!