As always, the animation looks pretty great overall. Aside from the things mentioned, when it comes to where on the block his hand is striking, the only thing that matters really is that it's consistent between where the characters strike and where the blocks are struck. I mean as long as the sprites for the blocks line up, him hitting off center itself isn't necessarily an issue.
It made me think of something though - wouldn't it make sense to have different animations for succeeding and failing? I mean when the characters succeed in destroying the block, their hands should realistically go through the it to some degree, whereas the animation you've posted looks a lot like when you fail a TYM in the original game. I suppose I'd need to see what it looks like with the complete animations, blocks, "particle" effects and so on before being able to tell if it looks good or not, but it was just a thought.
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Liu Kang looks pretty great, he is definitely very recognisable. Some crits: I do think his pants could be a bit baggier though, and the waistband should probably not jut out so much from the body. Instinctively I feel like his hair should be a bit bigger, but i'm not entirely positive... I do think though that the parting of the hair, basically the amount of forehead you see and the size of the hair in relation to that, does add to that impression of him looking older than he did in the original game. I think getting the hair just right will definitely help push the likeness even further.
His body seems a little bulky overall, but it's hard to tell without comparing to other characters or seeing what an actual in-game sprite would look like. For the shoes, definitely go with sneakers. I think we should strive for accuracy to the actual original sprites as far as it's possible.
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I did manage to get a tiny bit of work done last night, but nothing worth showing really, just some adjustment to the basemesh I'm planning to use for sculpting Kano's body (the topology was pretty wonky before). I will definitely try to get some actual progress done today and during the rest of the week. I would really like to be able to complete Kano, partly to help the project of course, but also get some much needed practice creating modern-spec character models and perhaps even something for my portfolio. If I feel like I'm not making progress and/or the quality isn't to the standard I would like I'll let you know and Mortal Gojira or someone else could take over the reigns.
In the case I don't finish Kano (or even if I do) I would still be happy to help out with animation. Bleed is clearly doing a great job already but doing the animation 8 characters plus whatever else is obviously a huge workload, and, well, it's kind of the same thing there - I would definitely love to help out the project, but I also enjoy doing animation and would really like to get more practice doing it. If you would allow it, Bleed, I feel like I could learn a lot by working with and studying the rig you've created for Scorpion.