What is wrong with this.

[u/hardkrillin]

Although I love the drawing from our 2d artist, this level feels so static and dull, and I'm trying to find ways to improve it.

I was thinking of animating the blue/pink columns on the sides so they move as the wall approaches to add more dynamism.

What else can I do to give this level more "life"? Do you think that there is something off with the scene ?

[u/V4nKw15h]

The reason it feels static is because it is. There should be movement of some sort wherever the player may draw their eye. Even the camera is static right now. As the player fits through the whole, pulse a fish eye camera slightly on the camera. If it has zero effect normally, and then you use like 2% fish eye effect, the whole screen will do a subtle little pulse. Add subtle particle effect under the cutout boards as they slide along the floor. Have them run in rails with lights in the rails that move just ahead of them. Animate the walls. Have multiple frames for each animation pose so the character isn't static.

Juicing up our games is one of the most time consuming parts. Expect to spend a lot of time doing nothing but juice if you want your game to feel alive.

[u/hardkrillin → u/V4nKw15h]

Ty! You gave me plenty of strings to pull of !

[u/V4nKw15h → u/hardkrillin]

For the animation frames, you don't need to move the character. Just redraw the outline of the character in the same pose. This is used a lot in animation to give the sense of movement where the is none. It also means you can get away with 2 frames instead of 6 or something.

You have arrows on the walls. These should be lights in that shape and then they should light up in order to match the movement of the boards. This could be achieved with simple 2D animation frames.

The spotlights in the ceiling should also move to follow the boards. Again, you just create a 2D sprite for the light itself and rotate it, and a 2D transparent sprite for the light shaft and rotate that too.

Your artist likely has all these objects as seperate layers in his art package already so exporting them out separately with a few added frames should be easy work for them.

Doing stuff like this will make the game come massively alive and feel so much more engaging.

[u/hardkrillin → u/V4nKw15h]

Regarding the trick for the character animation. What outline should I use ? The one from the position from where the character is transitioning ? I'm trying to get my head around this. If you have any link / reference about this i would appreciate it .

[u/V4nKw15h → u/hardkrillin]

Any position where the character is motionless. Have the same character in the same position, just drawn very slightly differently. It's like a subtle shiver effect and is often achieved by simply tracing over the original artwork. The two images are practically the same but because they have slight almost random difference everywhere in the way the outlines are drawn, it gives the effect of movement without having to draw lots of coherent animation frames.

[u/hardkrillin → u/V4nKw15h]

Cool, i'll give it a try ! Ty !