Quick Tip (Patreon)

Here's a quick tip on attack animations, answering a question made by Cam

"How would you approach the sword animation if the sword was held in front of the character? Any differently? The arc reads nicely from a resting behind position but I wonder how it would work if the sword was held in a forward resting position."

Great question, if you have the sword in front of you and you just move it down it won't feel very strong.Sometimes the sword, fist or something is not where you want it to be, so it feels that you need an anticipation frame. Well, that's true, but you can fake it. I usually use the "wind slash" or some other blur to simulate that. Just assume that the hit is coming from where you want it to be and really exaggerate the motion. The player won't really notice that the anticipation frame is missing. Another thing that helps is a long return animation.

Also, just a disclaimer, I haven't said this in my last tutorial, but we are making player animations here, an enemy can and probably should have anticipation frames.Also, some games have the player with anticipation frames (like Castlevania). I'll cover that in more detail on some advanced tutorial on attack animations, but in general you want to follow that rule, unless  you want to make the player feel helpless, or make enemies unpredictable, that kind of stuff.