Since launch, the one thing that's annoyed me about the Beast stance on characters (other than going bipedal after combat for a few seconds, as well as the strangely crouched female version) is the lack of other unique animations, such as jumping. Even when the Beast stance is used, the character's jumping, walking, and even flying animations still use a more bipedal approach. The only unqiue things Beast stance has going for it right now are the idle, running, and Superspeed/Acrobatics idle and running animations. It's a start, but it doesn't seem like enough.

Here, I will explain which animations would work better overall for Beast-stanced characters, and attempt to use images of real-world examples depicting them.


DISCLAIMER: Since I have very few female characters (and even then, none with the Beast stance), I am thus inexperienced with female animations overall. Certain animations may be similar or different (I'm looking at you, female Beast stance T_T), so for all intensive purposes, I'll be citing the male character model for this post. It's a bit more complete and versatile, IMO.



1. Walk Like the Animals

At the moment, the Beast stance's walking animation is shared with that of the Huge and Huge Beast stances' animations. My suggestion is to change the walk to a more canine walk cycle (seeing as how many "canines" there are in CO, among other things >_>).

Example


2. Jump, Jump, Jump

The current jumping animation (without a travel power active) for Beast pose is shared with the other stances' jumping animations. Bipedal jumping looks shabby here.

And the Superjump / Rocket Boots / Acrobatic / Super/Light Speed jumping animations look even worse. Superjump (regardless of stance) starts as a "Mario" jump, and goes down with some sort of free fall with the arms and legs flailing somewhat. Rocket Boots has too much of an "Iron Man" post still, and looks odd when a bestial character pulls it off (even if it's something like a quadrupedal, robotic lizard). And the Acrobatic and Suoer/Light Speed animations have a "Mega Man" feel to them, with the arms outstretched and having the legs hit the ground first.

I would suggest a more leap-like animation that ends with the "forelegs" brought forward before the character lands. I couldn't find a single cycle picture that wasn't on DeviantArt, so this example will have to do. :P

A Non-Cycle-y Example


3. Flight of the Bumbling Beast

The basic Flight animation is a simple headfirst flight pose with the arms and legs parallel with the body. It looks okay on a Beast character, but it can be improved.

For those of us with more draconic and/or insectoid characters (Dragonflies! :D), I would prefer a flight pose with the legs tucked under the body.

I was trying to find a good image example that wasn't from "that other game," but I just couldn't. D:

Example (The only good one I could find, hopefully your sales don't drop from this >_>)


Feel free to add your own suggestions, examples, and /signings. I would personally like to see more animation diversity for this stance!

At least, that's MY stance. /punintended

~Slapperfish >^)))>{

Reserved for moar stuff if needed. :3

This has really bothered me ever since beta. In fact, it's bothered me so much that I essentially gave up on using beast stance characters altogether, but I've just decided to make another one and I was surprised to find that absolutely nothing has changed. The bipedal combat stance has got to go. It just looks wrong, on so many levels. On top of looking wrong, it looks cheap, since it's just the regular combat animations slapped on a bestial character.

I realize why Cryptic did it, because it would look even weirder going straight from the idle beast stance into an attack animation and then back to beast, and it would take far too much time and money to create all-new attack animations just for beast characters. In that case, what we need is a crouched combat stance that's somewhere in-between the idle stance and most attack animations. Keep the arms up, ready to pounce, and have the character hunched over, though not quite as far as in the idle position. As long as our creature toons aren't suddenly standing ramrod-straight, the effect will be far less jarring. As for walking, we definitely need some kind of four-legged trot, even the default walking animation would work. A more wary, defensive posture would be ideal, but Cryptic seems unwilling to work on this issue, so the less they have to do, the more likely they are to do it.

That's all I've got to add, and I hope the animators take note of this issue. It's never too late, right? :D

Oh wow, I thought people would NEVER look at this post after letting it being buried by other threads! Thanks for replying (and subsequently bumping the thread)! :P

Some of the stuff I wrote about may be slightly off; I think I was having connection problems when I typed it.

We need to spread the word! :D

I'd be far more inclined to put my Bestial Martial Arts hero back to Bestial Stance instead of Vixen if they would change 2 things... 1 fix that rediculous idle stance for Acrobatics on Female... it looks like someone broke my neck... 2 give us a more bestial combat stance.

You know, I don't even remember how I found this thread. But I'm glad I did, 'cause this deserves a bump.

/signed

..more stances needed altogether.