Change of plan

Since I realised that there was a lot wrong with the run cycle and knowing I had to fix a lot of things with it, I began to make notes on what needed to be changed. The lack of motion on the upper body was restricting the run cycle and wasn’t giving it its full potential. So opening the previous Photoshop save I began to work on the arms and since the legs were already done, I hoped that it would be a quick process. 

Above is the full running cycle with the arms drawn and the cloak moving freely. I knew before I drew it that I would only have to really draw half the cycle since they move back and form in the same movement. 

Starting with the erase tool, I erased the upper body and drew the cloak and arms on the first stage. At this part I was worried since I lack the knowledge of how clothes move on the body. How different angles effect certain clothing and so forth. Once the first one was done I used the lasso tool to simple go around the upper body and duplicate it so I could use it for next step. I used the move tool and placed it over the existing upper body and erased the unused one. Of course I couldn’t keep the same shape as the previous one since the arm would be moving and this would affect the cloak. So I erased the arm and lower part of the cloak and re drew it again.

I did this for all the next movements and finally finished the running cycle. I had a feeling that this would run more smoothly since it wouldn’t look so stiff. I again decided to create a GIF so that I could see if there was any things that I needed to touch up. 

As you can see for yourself this came out a lot smoother and looks more realistic. I adjusted a few little things here and there but there were things like how I deleted two frames out of the run cycle so it didn’t look blocky. After deleting the two frames it ran a lot more smoothly and I was happy with it. 

Also at this point I was able to give the designer this much of the design to work with so he could adjust the layout of the game. It was a good thing I did since once imported in we realised that certain objects were too close for him to fit in and so forth. Also the designer requested that since I done all my drawings on different layers, I had to leave him on a white background so he could be seen. So I had to go back into Photoshop and erase all the white background on every layer up until the line work. This was a long process itself and I hadn’t even begun on colouring it in.

Creating a GIF

As I didn’t explain how I created the GIF previously I will now explain how I created this one. 

Since Photoshop doesn’t open the animation window for you I had to make sure it was showing. So following the procedures let me see the animation window for myself. Going to windows at the top of the page and then clicking on animation showed me a box at the bottom of my window, this is the animation window. As default there is already a frame there and if not then you can simply create your own by clicking on the paper icon next to the bin. It is the also the same icon as creating a new layer in the layer box

The use of animation in Photoshop can get quite complicating and it took me a few tries to figure it all out. When creating a new frame you have to keep in mind that whatever layers are showing will appear on the frame and the same goes for if the layers are hidden. If you create a frame with a layer then decide to create another one, you can move that layer on the second and it will move to where you move it. This is simply how you create a GIF. However if you create everything and you decide to add something later on with a new layer. The new layer will appear on every frame and you will have to go through all the layers and change it, so make sure you are prepared before creating the animation.

As for saving the animation you have to save it in a different way than you would normally save an image file such as JPG or PNG. Starting off going to file in the upper left corner then clicking on save for Web & Devices will bring up another box, this is the main screen upon saving a GIF. With settings on the right side you can adjust different settings on your save but it should automatically have settings that you can use straight away. Then all you are left to do is simply click the save button and save it to whatever location you desire.