New mage animations

[xer]

Based on Maks' mage redesign

v1_0.gif (16 KiB) Viewed 3045 times

[doofus-01]

The attention to detail is great, that really is well done.

However, there are a few bigger-picture issues:
1. What is this animation for? A victory animation?
2. It's hard to tell how this will look in context. Frame timing matters, repetition matters, background matters. There are a lot of things that are difficult to judge in a scaled-up GIF.
3. Most important is that we're putting the cart before the horse; the linked images aren't mainlined. The push for the new mages, as I understand it from maksiu, is to bring the mage sprite art in line with the revised Silver Mage he is working on. Maksiu needs to get that new sprite done first (including some basic animations from the larger team), then we can think about overhauling the others.

I'll leave this here for now, because I agree maksiu's project deserves some advertisement, but let's be clear on the situation.

[xer]

Thanks for sharing your concerns
I made this post in a rush, so I hope the lack of context didn't mislead anyone into thinking this was already approved for mainline.

Now, I don't know what you and maksiu have been discussing, but from what I understand the goal is to update all the mages and the current situation is that the level 1 mages (and only the level 1 mages) are done and approved for animation. You're right that while victory animations would be nice, the main animations should be done first. As such I started with the magic attack and want to work on the melee attack and defense animation next, while maksiu has expressed intent to work on walking and breathing animations.

Hopefully this helps convey the idea I was going for with that animation:

mage_lvl1_magic_v1_0.mp4

(5.19 MiB) Downloaded 38 times

Please ignore that the magic missile is not updated to match the new attack animation.

[doofus-01]

Thanks for the clarification, and I share your concern about misleading anyone - animations take time and effort, it's really frustrating and demoralizing to have those efforts wasted. The silver lining to any animation effort is that an animated sprite will be used in UMC, and UMC is really one of the best parts of Wesnoth. (Just in case it needs saying, I don't mean that condescendingly - I'm a UMC author myself and wouldn't be here if I wasn't.)

Now, I don't know what you and maksiu have been discussing, but from what I understand the goal is to update all the mages and the current situation is that the level 1 mages (and only the level 1 mages) are done and approved for animation.

It hasn't been much of a discussion, and if that's maksiu's understanding (that level 1 are good to go into mainline) we may be veering into an unfortunate situation. The level 1 are great, but so are the existing ones, so by themselves they are a lateral move. The Silver Mage needs work, and maksiu had some interesting ideas - that is where the effort should go. Once maksiu has planted his/her style on the Silver Mage and some of the other upper levels, then it makes sense to overhaul the entire line. But we aren't there yet.