So coming from a runner, it looks like when Mega Man runs in 7, it looks like he stretches his legs out in front of him to strike the ground with his heel, where as in the NES games his legs seem to come down directly under his center of gravity, which would be consistent with more of a fore or midfoot strike. From a running standpoint, the fore/midfoot strike is currently considered to be a better, more efficient, less injury prone form than the heel stike. I think the legs swinging forward heel strike motion looks a little goofy to me and less natural. This is possibly due to that form theoretically resulting from modern day running shoes with thick padded heels, while the motion from MM 1-6, with his feet seeming to hit the ground underneath his body, looks more natural to me, being theoretically more similar to how people run in bare feet. From a gameplay standpoint, while I have not played 7 or beyond, it looks like, in that game, it would be harder to tell when his feet are reaching the end of a platform. As an admirer of animation, rather than a practitioner, perhaps it would be useful for animators to study great runners’ forms, such as that of Eliud Kipchoge, or those of the “pose” method of running. Forgive me it’s that’s something you all already do.
This is fantastic info, thank you. Generally if you're a researcher, which you have to be as an animator, we try use as much reference as possible to inform our movement choices and performances, but it's an ongoing process and we're always learning, so these are the sorts of things we keep a look out for! Merry Christmas!
Just to be extra clear, I'm totally down for this trend! :D Having watched both videos, they are both excellent! Well done! And thanks for the Pin!!! :O My first on youtube!
Also, to note, Mega Man & Bass IS internally called 8.5 and is a more direct sequel to 8 (it's even brought up in the ending of 9 when Mega Man retells the times Wily swore to never try to take the world again)
I dunno why people hate mega man and bass. It's no more difficult than any other mega man game. It had the same exact types of frustrating puzzles, that are nevertheless never impossible. You can always eventually beat them, they're just hard as balls. To be fair the GBA port is a lot more difficult than the original because of screen crunch. But if you play the original mega man and bass, the super famicom version, it's just another great classic NES style mega man game, with just 16 bit graphics. Maybe people were just too used to mega man x games, which have always been easier than classic mega man games, and so mega man and bass might have been the first classic mega man they'd ever played. And so they didn't realise how difficult the original series games were
I don't know if _hate_ is exactly right, but people certainly find it frustrating. I think most people's first and only exposure to the game, particularly in the West, will be the GBA port, which suffers from screen crunch, like you said. This makes the game significantly more difficult to play, I know I never finished it and put it down on the second King stage. I played it on the SNES and loved it, much easier to play, but still on the difficult side compared to others.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy Not really, the screen crunch is of about 64 pixels vertical and 16 pixels horizontal (which doesn't really matter, since in the past that was the overscan space). That's less than 30% of screen space loss. That's to say: the "screen crunch" hardly harms it. In addition to that, the screen pans when it's needed, and the "block size" is of 32x32, with often the top of a block visible at the edge of the screen when worse comes to worse... Compare that to Super Mario World for the GBA, where the block size is 16x16, meaning there are a LOT of situations where leap of faith can happen.
I still think this adds to the frustration of reduced vision, be it small. It's the only factor I can think of which gives the game its bad reputation. 🤷🏻♂️
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy I think the whole thing of it having a bad reputation is more that people were looking for something to blame other than the difficulty. That and they probably had some bad experience with Rockman & Forte on the SuFami. Mega Man Zero was met with the same complaint of "screen crunch" by most of the same people, while others pointed how hard the game was (mainly due to excessive grind and farming and Aztec Falcon)
Wait... Your telling me I'm 20 minutes into an hour long MegaMan video, talking about 7 and the rest of the video doesn't bring up the X or Zero series?!?!?! Many disappoint
I did the frames talked about for MMSD. I pushed to redo the animations when SD was initially going to use unedited recolored wily wars sprites. I'm glad the extra polish to the run cycle was appreciated!
In case it hasn't been said in the comments already: Henshin means "transform". A henshin pose would be the pose the character makes to start their transformation. The poses the robot masters make are just poses, no special name. Ultraman started the whole stock henshin sequence thing. Kamen Rider started the signature pose thing. They're unique to the character and supposed to showcase the personality or unique traits of the character. It's not so much to summon their power as they are to flex on their enemy and introduce themselves just before battle. Generally only the heroes get these, not the villains, so Mega Man actually went against the trend by giving poses to the robot masters instead of the hero.
If I had a pound for every hour long video dissecting the animation of a decades old video game franchise made by someone called Dan, I would have £2. It's not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
Did I just get a movie in my sub box? I’m not complaining. In all seriousness, nice job, haven’t even seen the video yet, it’s that the time is impressive on its own.
About the "Naruto Run"... Found something older than that: Arale Norimaki from Dr Slump. Perhaps a number of running animation sequences through Toriyama's creations. Another one is Goku in the OG Dragon Ball outrunning the Red Ribbon ninja.
Just for the record, "henshin" is more-or-less the Japanese word for "transform(ation)". While it therefore doesn't literally apply to many such poses throughout the series (the robot masters in particular), admittedly I wouldn't know a better way to describe the *inspiration* of where such poses came from.
Love to see that you tackled fangame animation as well, there's so many great looking megaman fangames out there, so it's always lovely to see them get the spotlight. Big thankies from another fellow (megaman) animator!
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy glad you asked, currently working on a complete sheet for a custom megaman x sprite, most of the animations are already done, though there's still a long way to go. My goal is to take the original psx animations and give them a bit more of that cartoony goodness I'm such a fan of lol
It's crazy to see how much thought has gone into this little blue boy's movements, spanning decades. Seeing how new artists show love to the previous iterations while adding their own style/ideas is something I love about creative works in general, so it's especially enchanting when analyzing my favorite video game character. I really appreciate the thorough work here, awesome content as always!
Thank you so much for shouting out MegaMan Slide in your video! I really enjoyed your analyses of the differences in animation throughout the games and can't wait for some more great content from your channel!
One thing that always bothered me about the Mega Man titles right after the NES was that Mega Man's bigger sprite played its animation too fast for the small distance it was traveling. Thankfully, the later titles fixed this and made his walking animation feel right again. ☺️👌
T h i s I find it particularly odd given that I don't feel this issue in the X, Zero or ZX series as much, despite their character designs being literally and stylistically taller It's just an odd choice to have him show up that big imo
Your university must have been fucking terrible then. Seeing that this video doesn't really teach much in way of applicable skills. It's just a recount of how a character has been animated. more in the area of trivia rather than learning.
@@VideoGameAnimationStudy Ofcourse, the comment wasn't meant with any I'll intent against you and hopefully no offense was taken. Entertainment is just as legitimate a purpose and goal as any.
I’m surprised you covered fan games and Megaman & Bass 2. Didn’t expect you to go that far. Nice work as always! But, give yourself a break after this one, you deserve it.
One of my favorite things about the low-health animation in Mega Man & Bass is that it actually does have an effect on gameplay. There's an equipable item called the Counter Attacker that boosts Mega Man or Bass' attack significantly when they're at low health (
Megaman, no matter which one, has always had good movement, but the og and x have always had a nice flow. Other things I like about rock is that his flow is right in the middle of movement speed, not as fast as say sonic, or even mario, and not as slow as the belmont strut, or even lance and bills commando like running(which gives off a wonderful amount of weight). Going to enjoy this video as I have not watched it yet, these are my thoughts and experiences playing megaman through the years.
Watched this video several times just for entertainment, then started teaching myself sprite animation and realized this would make an excellent study tool. Tons of stuff I hadn't even considered so thanks a lot for saving me a ton of trial and error figuring it out myself
Great video! I should mention that the concept of using "Blank Frames" is something that dates all the way back to the Golden Age of Animation, but as far as I know only one animator used it; Jim Tyer! He never used it to make characters flash to indicate damage as far as I know, but he'd use it to accentuate an action in an abstract way (i.e. the character disappears for a frame before delivering a punch, for example). A good example is in a Joe Oriolo Felix the Cat cartoon he animated in the late 50's, "Gold Fruit Tree"; in the ending, when Felix punches both Professor and Rock Bottom, all of the characters completely vanish before popping back to a frame of Felix comically socking both characters in the jaw! It sounds like something that wouldn't work, but in context the effect is really cool to see and gives the action a lot more impact that if it were just fully inbetweened. The Famous Studios and TerryToons cartoons he worked on used this trick a lot too.
The Megagods have blessed me on this fine morning. The Dragalia dance is so adorable, I never even knew this crossover happened let alone the dance so thanks for sharing! Also, I'd love to see you do the Zero series. I'm probably gonna look into the Power Fighters or whatever it's called
This a great in-depth view of the different aspects of the animation used in megaman games. I'm an animator myself, and sometimes it's easy to get stuck in a rut and do things by rote instead of thinking more about them. This video was inspirational as well as informative. new sub!
I literally have a learning disability where I can't comprehend shapes and objects properly. Yet somehow this entire video was captivating. Now if I looked away and tried to draw Megaman based off of what I learned here... it would look like a picasso. But this was super cool.
I used to think that all this was simple shenanigans until I became an animator myself and tried it out, turns out it was more complicated than I imagined lol
Interesting how reinterpretation can vary so much. On a similar note, would love to see a Kirby video, which does similar things. Notably the art begins to resemble the in game art more, which is the opposite of many other franchises.
I love the conversation with his kid at the end of the game. So precious! And great video too! I've always had an appreciation for classic megamans run animation, its such a simple 3 frame loop that depicts just enough to make megaman look unironically cool, and has stood the test of time. Here's to hoping we get Megaman 12 at some point!
I don't know much about animation so these videos are incredibly interesting and I learn a lot. I am really constantly surprised by how entertaining these videos are, even if I'm generally not the biggest fan of hour long videos, so I usually divide them into two halves, or something like that. Anyway, great video, as always, and I appreciate all the effort that goes into them. The hand drawn Mega Man 2 looks really great. This style is my personal favorite when it comes to 2D games. Pixel Animation is nice and I don't mind it but I just really love the appeal of hand drawn animation and it's also nice to see that you're playing a modern game, if that makes any sense. And while 3D animation can definetely work, it often feels a bit unnatural and I just think that 2D animation just fits 2D games better (there definetely are exceptions, though).
Your toddler is so cute. Lovely :D I love that little bit of time where they don't know what they're saying, or what they mean, and they just try out ridiculous phrases and stuff. It's the best.
Man I swear no game in that era had a better character intro than Mega Man! That blinking "Ready," always had me waiting for that beat (get it?) to drop! No game had that. It was soooooooo awesome!!!
I was going to write "I love you" as a joke, but thinking about it I realized that in a way, I truly do have so much love for you as a teacher. As an animation student these kinds of analyses are invaluable, I cannot stress how much your videos have opened my eyes to understanding the principles behind the before so confusing magic that makes an animation WORK. Thank you so so much for what you do.
Fun conversation with your kid, kids have often fun perspectives on things :D I haven't really played many Megaman games, but I find them fun to hear about because of their history and animation is a lot of fun anyway. By the way, if you want to, Ghost Trick on DS and iOS won an animation award and it's a very funny game. I hope you can cover it sometime without spoiling it for people who haven't played it yet..!
I think its good to bear in mind mega man's old anime influences. Less is more which is where i think megaman 8 falls short in, by packing in a bajillion frames in everything it tends to muddy the waters a bit. I like how megaman runs in those fangames you showed off, perfect blue in particular. By adding just one frame to the animation they made it look more lively and weighted while still keeping it simple dynamic and strong.
Wait a minute, i don't even do videogame design! Why am i here? Who are you? Who am i? How did i get so far in the video without noticing and how am i still interested in watching? Great video! It keeps my interest even though i have no game design experience, i'm still enjoying it!
Was all of this just to briefly advertise your own hand-drawn game project? Because I am way into that and would love to see more! Also, excellent and very thorough video, I love seeing this kind of deep dive into game animation and how a character can change (or stay the same) over the years!
thanks for that last tip on running animations, I knew there was something wrong with my running cycles and now i know what it was! amazing insight on the whole thing btw, an amazing video to be sure
I still have 50 minutes to go but this is surprisingly interesting to me! I've never really thought about the sprite animations before for any character and I'm loving this very in-depth examination of Mega Man. Really great job all around. Thank you for doing this :)
Wow that was a very brisk and entertaining one hour. Thank you for this. As an animator who literally learned the principles by studying these very sprites, this was a great watch. Brought me back to the Flash/Newgrounds sprite movie era.
I actually like how megaman 8 jumping takes a while. I mean, when you consider how his character is a heavy robot that wasn't meant to jump in the first place, it kinda feels like it's an appropriate frames to spend. Of course, the same game makes him swim for the first time so there's no way that weight was a conscious factor. I don't know, I like megaman 8 and bass animations the most. The colors are so bold and beautiful and everything looks vibrant and full of life because of how cartoonish its art direction is, while still keeping some coolness of the series. It's brilliant.
Wow! I’m a HUGE MegaMan fan and you did an amazing job with this! I learned a bit of something I thought I knew everything about! I look forward to seeing your game come to fruition. It looks great!
One of my favorite details of MegaMan 8 are the special effects the weapons you get from Robot Masters have. My favorite example being that if Rompers ( The Little Walking Soldiers in Clown Man's Stage.) Get caught in the gust of Tornado Hold, instead of destroying them, it will send them flying into the sky like Team Rocket, complete with a twinkle I kid you not.
This video makes me want to try my hand at animating Mega Man just for the fun of it. Maybe someday. Guess I'll go watch more Blender tutorials for what are now only _mostly_ unrelated reasons.
I've been playing Mega Man games for the past 15 years. Played all of them many times. And sir I've never heard someone call the shape on Mega Man's head an exclamation mark. And now I can't unsee it. Help....
I think I like everything about the overall animation of Mega Man in smash the best. I love that they were able to honor the original so closely and still make it look and feel so good
It's nice to hear someone talks about Dragalia Lost because I believe it's a very underrated game, and also I think a top down view mega man game would be the best way to translate classic megaman gameplay into 3D.
I really like Mega man 8 design better than the others . The cartoonish style and colorful background and character look waay better. Of course the animation need some work but that about it.
Sakurai: (recreates the 8-bit run cycle incredibly well with a 3D model without having to disable frame interrelation) Eguchi: "guess this run cycle will have to do, too bad there's no way to make the 8-bit run look good in 3D without disabling frame interrelation." (frame interrelation: from what I know from playing a fan-game on the DOOM engine with an OpenGL render option is the model transitioning between the key poses when movement is animated by keyframes like in Blender and not recorded like in Source Film Maker)
When you talked about the animations in the non 8-bit games, I was reminded how in Mega Man Maker stage elements from 7, 8, and 11 -- backgrounds, tilesets, enemies, weapons, and robot masters -- are fully included, even though the game itself is fully in the 8-bit style. As a result, everything from those games has been de-made into the 8-bit style, including Mega Man's weapon attacks for things like the Thunder Claw, Mega Ball, and Oil Slider. I know it's not a lot, but I'd be interested to hear you take on the demade animations from that game.
Fantastic review from a animation perspective. I love the series since NES and seeing evolving in this video really makes it feel appreciated. Thank you so much!
God speed to you and your Blue Bomber, I hope you can make some really fun stages, good stage design is hard Unlimited for example, for all its popularity, has terrible stage design, its overly long with lacking checkpoint placement and excessive instant death, instant death has a place, but overusage can inflict fatigue just from existing, even if its not difficult to avoid, thus why people are easily exhausted by Aerial themed stages, as they tend to have lots of pits and sometimes forced movement gimmicks like wind, Water and Ice stages have the same effect with modified movement generating mental fatigue when combined with hazards Other bad moves are things like overuse of hard or obnoxious enemies, nobody likes fighting multiple Big Eyes, one is already usually a rough moment, again, things have places, and hard hazards and foes are important, its about finding moderation Also find yourself some good play testers, preferably across multiple skill levels, testing your own levels is usually a poor measure, as you know the game decently already, and different skill levels can expose flaws you might never find on your own or with only expert or casual testers
Hooooly shit i can't wait for that Megaman GB remake, it looks fantastic. What i really wonder about is how will you (or more accurately - the hired musician) approach the 2's ost. As it had some of the best themes in the classic era, but unfortunately it was played on an awful hardware with wrong pitches. Either way, that was a great analysis and i wish you best of luck for your work on the remake.
Thanks! We've got someone on the music, and we'll purposefully steer away from those original hardware.....mishaps, I guess you could call them. The arrangements are fine, like you said it's just the unfortunate implementation of them which dragged them down.
