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Project Annie...In Motion!

Well, It's been said in a Lab Zero stream she's slightly taller than Umbrella.
CaButler4f8b587db263c.jpg


So... Maybe this?

jHtzwOR.jpg
 
Well, It's been said in a Lab Zero stream she's slightly taller than Umbrella.
CaButler4f8b587db263c.jpg


So... Maybe this?

jHtzwOR.jpg

Actually I found a pretty good comparison, if you match up the size of her head with the others in the cast that would be about right, I had a much more rough version using the only piece of close to official art we had, that was similar to Eliza's. Keep in mind this is very rough but to make a standard guide for anyone, all you'd need to do is repeat what I did or use my image and make a traced outline of Annie in that pose, then save it so that you can pull it up at any time to use for setting up guidelines while animating and your proportions should always pretty much be spot on! :D

Height Comparison Annie.png
 
I just realized... Eliza is a behemoth in terms of height.
 
I just realized... Eliza is a behemoth in terms of height.
Eliza's probably the tallest of the humanoid characters, but keep in mind that she's in heels and her outfit makes her look even taller than she really is.

I'm guessing that her natural height is around 6'2''.
 
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Alright well I'm working on an empty outline of that pose I used for Annie's height comparison to the rest of the cast. But I'm wondering what resolution I should make it at exactly since some people like to work at higher resolutions to get all the details they can without worrying about it being wrong when the size of the image is reduced. And since making a higher resolution image is infinitely easy to downsize rather than up-size a smaller resolution one.
 
Eliza's probably the tallest of the humanoid characters, but keep in mind that she's in heels and her outfit makes her look even taller than she really is.

I'm guessing that her natural height is around 6'2''.

AND.. She is standing upright I guess someone how could compete on height with her could be Mrs. Victoria.
 
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I asked Persona on Twitter if he could help out with an accurate size.

*snip*

Figures that a Girl of the Stars' scale can only be comprehended from orbit.

Of course! Why did I not realize that sooner! :D
 
If the intent is to stay accurate to how they develop the in-game frames then I would NOT suggest working in an extremely large scale like I often do. My Annie frames obviously aren't accurately to scale since I was originally working without any references or knowledge regarding the in-house process.

throw04amiss_lines.png

I've provided one of the frames I illustrated for Filia's/Fukua's grab recovery above. The image is 1922 x 968. The canvas size doesn't matter at all, what matters is Annie's size in relation to the other characters. Feel free to use this image as a reference for developing standards for Annie. If you can figure out Annie's relative height to Filia's , then you should be able to create a standard for Annie. Just keep in mind that Filia is both bending at the knees AND on her heels in this frame, not to mention the irregularity of her hair.
 
If the intent is to stay accurate to how they develop the in-game frames then I would NOT suggest working in an extremely large scale like I often do. My Annie frames obviously aren't accurately to scale since I was originally working without any references or knowledge regarding the in-house process.


I've provided one of the frames I illustrated for Filia's/Fukua's grab recovery above. The image is 1922 x 968. The canvas size doesn't matter at all, what matters is Annie's size in relation to the other characters. Feel free to use this image as a reference for developing standards for Annie. If you can figure out Annie's relative height to Filia's , then you should be able to create a standard for Annie. Just keep in mind that Filia is both bending at the knees AND on her heels in this frame, not to mention the irregularity of her hair.

The beauty of proportion is that as long as I match Annie's face/head size to Filia's it should be roughly accurate to Annie's height relative to her's and yes thank you very very much, that's immensely helpful for developing the standard guide for Annie actually. I was trying with the reference I had earlier but it's too small, you lose so much detail with her eyepatch and her face in general with a lot of things meshing together. I'll try my hand at putting something together that can be freely distributed to anyone that wishes to use it. :D
 
I asked Persona on Twitter if he could help out with an accurate size.



Figures that a Girl of the Stars' scale can only be comprehended from orbit.
dat umbrella watching
 
The beauty of proportion is that as long as I match Annie's face/head size to Filia's it should be roughly accurate to Annie's height relative to her's and yes thank you very very much, that's immensely helpful for developing the standard guide for Annie actually. I was trying with the reference I had earlier but it's too small, you lose so much detail with her eyepatch and her face in general with a lot of things meshing together. I'll try my hand at putting something together that can be freely distributed to anyone that wishes to use it. :D

Awesome, sounds like you know what to do. Maybe I'll finally get around to updating the OP with relevant info myself. You know, that thing I said I'd do about a month ago but never did.
 
Awesome, sounds like you know what to do. Maybe I'll finally get around to updating the OP with relevant info myself. You know, that thing I said I'd do about a month ago but never did.

Sounds good to me, should definitely keep it updated as I love this idea personally. :D

EDIT: (Update I hope this looks alright for a standard but any issues with it please let me know and I'll see about making the appropriate changes, if you'd like the file with layers in PSD format just let me know and I'll set that up for you as well though for now I'll just post the PNG file with how I ended up with it.

Annie_Stand_Idle.png


And compare that with Filia...

throw04amiss_lines.png
 
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Hey, that looks good! The scale and proportions all seem appropriate as well.

It's hard to comment on the details since, again, there's no official character sheet and the only official illustrations we have to work off of aren't quite enough. I'm talking about qualities such as the roundness and edges of her knees, face, hair, etc. There are things that we simply have to assume at this point in order to move forward.

That being said there are a few simple things that I do feel comfortable commenting on, for example; eyebrows are typically filled in black and not outlined. I would give her chin a softer curve rather than a small yet notable chisel as the younger characters in this game tend to have softer qualities, especially in the face. The fingers should be defined rather than implied as they are in the igg reference. Lastly, i would revisit the curve near the tip of the sword. Right now there's a harsh difference between the straight edge and curved portion of the sword, but based on the igg image it seems like there's a relatively smooth but cornered transition between the two.

That's all the critique I have for now, feel free to agree/disagree. I'll give you time to post any changes you choose to make before coming around for another bout of opinionated criticism :P

Edit: I forgot to mention...Keep up the good work! It's nice having more people around to help keep things going!
 
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Hey, that looks good! The scale and proportions all seem appropriate as well.

It's hard to comment on the details since, again, there's no official character sheet and the only official illustrations we have to work off of aren't quite enough. I'm talking about qualities such as the roundness and edges of her knees, face, hair, etc. There are things that we simply have to assume at this point in order to move forward.

That being said there are a few simple things that I do feel comfortable commenting on, for example; eyebrows are typically filled in black and not outlined. I would give her chin a softer curve rather than a small yet notable chisel as the younger characters in this game tend to have softer qualities, especially in the face. The fingers should be defined rather than implied as they are in the igg reference. Lastly, i would revisit the curve near the tip of the sword. Right now there's a harsh difference between the straight edge and curved portion of the sword, but based on the igg image it seems like there's a relatively smooth but cornered transition between the two.

That's all the critique I have for now, feel free to agree/disagree. I'll give you time to post any changes you choose to make before coming around for another bout of opinionated criticism :P

Edit: I forgot to mention...Keep up the good work! It's nice having more people around to help keep things going!

Thanks for the really awesome feedback, much appreciated, after looking at some of the concept work for her moves I got a somewhat better idea of how her hands should look and it seems to have a somewhat "Simpsons" physics that were intended with her hand, mainly it being more rounded and bubble-y when it's a closed fist. If you watch the Simpsons or ever have you kinda know what I mean by that. But when her hand is open and outstretched it looks a little more normal. Even if that is Alex's style keep in mind that Peacocks hands also have a more amorphous and cartoon look to them also yet look a little more normal when the fingers are outstretched and spread apart. I'll let you look at my changes and see if I addressed most of your concerns with it. :D

Annie_Stand_Idle_new.png
 
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Yeah dude, that looks really good! All the changes feel appropriate and well done. But I do still have a few more things to say :P

*All left/right references are from the perspective of the character unless stated otherwise.

The cuff on her right arm seems to be missing a line by the handle of the sword. I'd also like to suggest adding in a tiny bit of detail around the eyepatch. Right now it looks somewhat flat, when I would expect it to wrap around her face a bit. All I think it needs is a soft shadow between the lines of the nose and the top/bottom corner of the patch to imply the curved edges of the patch itself. I also wouldn't be afraid to stray from the reference when it comes to the buns at the end of her braids, particularly with her left braid. I imagine that they would be more uniform in shape if Alex were to come in and give an official standard.

Other than that, this is lookin' mighty fine. Let me know if any of my feedback is unclear at all.
 
Thanks for the really awesome feedback, much appreciated, after looking at some of the concept work for her moves I got a somewhat better idea of how her hands should look and it seems to have a somewhat "Simpsons" physics that were intended with her hand, mainly it being more rounded and bubble-y when it's a closed fist. If you watch the Simpsons or ever have you kinda know what I mean by that. But when her hand is open and outstretched it looks a little more normal. Even if that is Alex's style keep in mind that Peacocks hands also have a more amorphous and cartoon look to them also yet look a little more normal when the fingers are outstretched and spread apart. I'll let you look at my changes and see if I addressed most of your concerns with it. :D

View attachment 2624
I love this, it looks like something we'd see in game.

EDIT: I LOVE IT SO MUCH
 
Yeah dude, that looks really good! All the changes feel appropriate and well done. But I do still have a few more things to say :P

*All left/right references are from the perspective of the character unless stated otherwise.

The cuff on her right arm seems to be missing a line by the handle of the sword. I'd also like to suggest adding in a tiny bit of detail around the eyepatch. Right now it looks somewhat flat, when I would expect it to wrap around her face a bit. All I think it needs is a soft shadow between the lines of the nose and the top/bottom corner of the patch to imply the curved edges of the patch itself. I also wouldn't be afraid to stray from the reference when it comes to the buns at the end of her braids, particularly with her left braid. I imagine that they would be more uniform in shape if Alex were to come in and give an official standard.

Other than that, this is lookin' mighty fine. Let me know if any of my feedback is unclear at all.

Alright I did what I could with the eye-patch, I adjusted the curve on the bottom string for it to hopefully help bring out more of the curved shape you wanted since light shading isn't really something you could do on a basic black and white outline like this, though I did add some slight shadows along the top and bottom corner of the bridge of her nose, maybe that helped? As for the cuff I went ahead and closed it, though I also assumed her cuffs were the not entirely closed kind myself. Last but not least I made the ends of her braids a little more uniformed and just did some general line clean up on some of the rough places.

Annie_stand_idle_revision_2.png
 
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Like it! Is it just me or do the knot folds in the braids feel... somewhat disoriented? Maybe it really is just me though.
 
Like it! Is it just me or do the knot folds in the braids feel... somewhat disoriented? Maybe it really is just me though.

What do you mean exactly by disoriented? If you mean they seem misaligned then yeah I could probably straighten them out a bit more to line them up better.
 
Yeah basicly what you said.

Also if it's because the braids on the left have 3 and the ones on the right have 4 that's only because the 4th braid on her left side is hidden behind her face.
 
Nope. I was just concerned about the the misalignment.
 
Yup! You've covered everything I mentioned. This looks really good as is. Any other changes you make are up to you. Let me know when you've decided to stop making changes and I'll update the OP with some details once I have the time.
 
Yup! You've covered everything I mentioned. This looks really good as is. Any other changes you make are up to you. Let me know when you've decided to stop making changes and I'll update the OP with some details once I have the time.

Mkay, I'll give it a little bit to look over everything and make sure I'm happy with it before I give you the word but I'll send you a message to let you know once I've completely finished making any revisions. :D

EDIT: I was going to see what people might think of these little revisions I did, taking in the misalignment issue that was mentioned with her braids I tried to even them up a little bit and clean them up a little more from the IGG image. I haven't saved these changes as permanent yet just in case they weren't well received and if people would prefer the previous revision to be the final, then I'll just go with that instead.

Annie_stand_idle_revision3.png
 
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Looks good n' clean ta me. I'd say this is a good place to call it done.
 
Mkay, I'll give it a little bit to look over everything and make sure I'm happy with it before I give you the word but I'll send you a message to let you know once I've completely finished making any revisions. :D

EDIT: I was going to see what people might think of these little revisions I did, taking in the misalignment issue that was mentioned with her braids I tried to even them up a little bit and clean them up a little more from the IGG image. I haven't saved these changes as permanent yet just in case they weren't well received and if people would prefer the previous revision to be the final, then I'll just go with that instead.

View attachment 2626
It just gets better and better...
 
Looks good n' clean ta me. I'd say this is a good place to call it done.

I think I would have to agree, I can't see too much more tampering being a good idea. Doing too much can be just as bad as not doing enough in some cases so I think I'll have to agree and say either the second or third revisions are fine to use as the final, though 3 I think would be fine to me. Glad that I have that done so that now when any of us animates something it'll go much smoother. Still have to design a lot of moves for her though that aren't covered in her IGG concept list.
 
I'll set your last version as the final version when I edit the OP to have some standards to work by.
 
I've updated the OP with some relevant info. There's still a lot that could go into the post (references, guides, summary of our discussions and decisions, etc.), but for now I'll just continue to update it in little bits at a time.
 
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Thanks for the credit and update, really appreciate it. :D Also I'd like to say I'd love to see a detailed guide on the animation process via Photoshop as I'm still relatively new to it myself and would love to see something that is very instructional and informative on the process.
 
Not exactly on Photoshop, but anyone looking into animation, especially in relation to Skullgirls, might find this interesting: https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/59254/Rantala_Tuula.pdf

It is helpful from a theory stand point and explains a lot of the concepts behind animation very well. But I also need a lot of help with the technical side of things, specifically the things needed to make the animation line up with what would really be used in-game. Especially since there's so many animations to do for Annie and I'm not even sure where to start from. XD
 
I'd like to give @Skullmageddon a ridiculously large shout out for being incredibly awesome for not only starting the whole "Let's animate the characters we want!" movement with Annie (I'm excited to see Minette and Black Dahlia in current progress!) but for also contributing to Fukua having some new and pretty badass frames.


THANK YOU SKULLMAGEDDON!!!!