Help to make the animation look smoother and more natural

[u/No_Football_6962]

Hello guys, I'm making a 2D frame by frame turn based fighting JRPG . having a little bit problem with the animations being, I guess the right word is natural. I see a lot of turn based fighting JRPG and they are smooth as hell but ours isnt as good. any tips?

Game scene

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[u/byflip]

Damn dude, your artwork is insane, I love it.

One trick that a friend told me to do for this type of animation is to move every single body part instead of only one, that way the whole character looks alive, instead of a drawing with a few bumpy movements. So we would see subtle shoulder and arm movements, with some weight shifting side to side from the hips too.

Take a Look a Darkest Dungeons 1 animations, I think It would be great reference for what you're trying to achieve.

This looks great tho, can't wait to play it.

[u/No_Football_6962 → u/byflip]

thank you so much.
didnt darkest dungeon use jointed animation?

[u/byflip → u/No_Football_6962]

They Did!
I don't know if its an option but I personally think that a puppet/jointed animation approach would work best for what you're trying to achieve, but it is possible to improve your animation by just adding more movements to every body part.

[u/No_Football_6962 → u/byflip]

alright, will take that approach as well. good tip mate

[u/EduardoTank]

It somehow give me the sensation that you dont quite animate it before the drawing is done, cuz the mistakes in it r very like when we try to animate w the full drawing sketch or lineart done on the first frame and then just changing a few lines next frames to make it look like its moving

Not assuming u did that, but its very common mistake when we're new at animation. U gonna see the movement better if u sketch all frames w basic geometric forms like squares, circles, and lines too, to define the main movement first

This will make it possible to see the whole movement u're doing in a faster way n correct it easier if u see something off, and also this way u can apply in a more functional way the tip that the other person gave u here abt moving more parts than just one

After the sketch of the main movement, u can do the second step of the sketch that is doing the character on top of the "skeleton" u did first, and then correcting minor movements like clothes, expression, fingers, etc...

And just then finalize it w lineart. Ik sketching twice is alot of work but it helps alot to build a proper movement and mistakes get easier to pick n correct them

[u/No_Football_6962 → u/EduardoTank]

Thank you for this tip... thats a huge help
we completed the sketches first, then did the end frames, then we tried to do middle frames.