Top down view - Zombies

I received a lot of feedback on the top down solider tutorial and a few requests for additions. This tutorial will cover one request for enemies to go with the soldier. What's better than a few zombies. I decided to make this tutorial a little different - rather than show a step by step on how to create things, I am going to take the zombie walk cycle apart and explain (or hope to explain) how it's done. 

The files for the zombies are here. 
You can use them for your presonal and commercial projects as long as you don't resell the art itself or in a bundle.

If you open the inkscape files you will find the zombies in eight layers (one layer per animation frame). 

After exporting the layers to bitmaps I made some animated sprites to show you the animation in action. 

Note:

One key to making the animations look good is finding the right speed to play your animations.  

This version is running too fast. The animation is clearly not a run but a walk. Slowing down the frames displayed per second will make it look more like a walk. 

This one runs at 1/2 the speed. It still feels rather slow.

This is another reduction of the frames to 1/3 of the top one. It looks okay.

One more slower version. Now he seems to walk too slow. 

Note:
Seeing it's zombies walking. You want to consider adjusting the animation to make it less smooth. Have him shuffle one leg, move the body/ head in an odd way, reach out with his arms, or just move one arm. 

This is a sample of the zombie2 animation showing more movement in the head and arms and turning the right foot outwards. You can surely exaggerate the animation even more - I will leave it up to you to play with the Topdown Zombies.

Enjoy! 

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Free!

TopDown Zombies

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Keeping busy... with a friendship book

Thanks for all the request for new tutorials and the great comments. To answer the main questions - yes... I am still alive and have to apologize for not posting for such a long time... and no... I neither ran out of motivation or ideas just out of time. 

A huge chunk of time was taken up by a project for my little sister. Do you know those questions "Can you draw me something really quick?" followed by the "It should be really easy for you." or "It doesn't have to be perfect."?
My little sister asked for a few images for a friendship book. You might be asking what's that. It's a book to keep memories of (your kid's) friends at kindergarten or school. 

They are highly popular in Germany but my sister (living in London) couldn't find anything quite like in the UK. Along with a friend she started the idea of making/ publishing her own book... and who would be a better choice for a 'few illustrations' than the dear brother. 

80 fully illustrated pages, the usual nightmares with the printers [getting the page count wrong twice, not working out the page order properly - as the book was printed inside book covers and eventually being a good two weeks late] and endless headaches with adobe's illustrator later, the book was finally out for the Christmas markets at schools in my sister's neighborhood, a few bookstores and for online ordering on the internet. 

Here's a sample page:

After doing the book's illustration, flyers, posters, business cards and the website design I am now happy it's out there (and I get some time to do game art again and write some new tutorials). Fay's and Finely's Friendship book is now available at fayfin.co.uk for GBP 9.99 plus postage. 

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