[Kde-games-devel] SVGization

[Ian Wadham]

On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 09:16 am, Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> Ian wrote:
> > Sounds great ... :-)  Could we fit Konqui and the knights inside
> > there Mauricio?
>
> I am having some fun with the runner animation, but it is still a few
> steps from finished. I had these ideas of using Konqi as the runner, and
> some knights chasing it, and we talked about it a couple of months ago.
> But at this time I am not sure it will look good in the small sprite
> size at which KGoldrunner is rendered.
Yes, it's difficult to show much detail when you are working with
28x28 or 32x32 pixels, which is about what you get for each runner
when you put KGoldrunner on a 1024x768 screen.  I must fire up
my old Amiga 500 and see how they rendered the knights and
heroes in Populous I and II.  Those guys at Bullfrog were amazing
in what they could achieve at quite low resolution.  I also have a
working Apple II packed away in a box BTW ... :-)

> The Konqi we have (with skeleton) is fully 3D, very nice, but one
> would have to adapt it to look good in vectorial format, frame by
> frame. I am afraid it is a bit too much for my artistic capabilities
> as a first draft, and Konqi is controversial as well.
A few months ago I was looking at Blender, which has good
facilities for jointing 3D figures, "posing" them at a few positions
in the stride and then letting Blender work out the intermediate
frames ... if you can figure out how to work Blender.  As I remarked
earlier, the tutorial left me struggling.

Also I believe Inkscape is going to come up with something like
that, but maybe not in our timeframe.

A slow-motion video of a person running might be helpful too.
I found one of a person walking, on the net, but not a runner.

> But still, I was sketching up the runner animation, and now I am
> beginning to feel happy with it. It is difficult to run in 4 frame
> cycles (8 if you count both legs), but check a screen capture (required
> Flash) at
>
> http://www.tabuleiro.com/mauricio/runnertest.html
>
That's an *excellent*  effort ... :-)

> Please notice that the frames in camera view are a bit too spaced
> compared with what they will be in the final composition (no overlap),
> and of course it is a sketch. But in the preview window you can see how
> the movement is shaping up nicely, imo. It still needs some adjustments
> as it is too bumpy, but the basic positions are there.
>
May I offer just a few observations?
 - Maybe the arms are proportionally a bit too long.
 - I think runners tend to move with arms bent at the elbow, fists at about
   chest level and almost all arm motion from the shoulder joints only.
 - Leg motion may be just a bit too extended, forward and backward.
   I believe runners spend quite a bit of time in mid-air, to lengthen
   their stride, though your runner is quite lean and lanky, like those
   Olympic runners from Kenya and Tanzania, so he could have a
   long stride too.

> To make it work in SVG I am thinking about dismembering the runner, (leg
> parts, head, three sections for each arm) and animating the pieces with
> rotation and some stretching to match this layout.
Sort of like those jointed paper dolls and skeletons we had when we
were kids?  Artists could paint or clothe the bits in different ways?

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Another_World_1.PNG
>
Never came across him ...

> Let me know how you feel about this route, Ian. I believe having a good
> running cycle and the first runner will also open up the space for other
> people to produce variations ...
>
Right on!  This stuff is fundamental to the effort IMO, Mauricio.

> ... and maybe even the Konqi one ...
Six limbs ... four legs and two wings ... now that *would* be ambitious!

All the best, Ian W.