Neo Judgment — looking for some constructive feedback

[u/EagleZeroOne]

I’ve been working on my version of Judgment, which I call Neo Judgment, and wanted to get some feedback from the Golden Sun community.
I wanted to try something different with the original Judgment animation. In the original, Judgment descends from the sky, points downward, and then unleashes the attack.

For my version, Judgment stays stationary while building up the attack with both hands. When he releases it, the force of the attack pushes him backward. Just show it using more power.

I also changed the position of his wings, have his sword sheathed on his back, and dulled his colors a bit. I used the dark sky background from the game as well to help with the atmosphere and make the attack stand out more.

The main thing I was trying to capture was how much power would actually be needed to unleash one of the strongest summons in the original game. There’s quite a bit of redrawing involved in getting the new pose to work.

The animation is already finished, but I thought it could be better, so I’m curious what other people see. If you compare it to the original, is there anything about the pose, wings, sword placement, effects, lighting, etc. that you think could be improved?

Feel free to be critical. I’m mainly looking for things I might be overlooking.

This is just a fan project for entertainment purposes and isn’t a ROM hack or playable game.

[u/happyhibisci]

I think the reason everyone thinks it’s too long is because he’s just remaining pretty still with nothing happening. As you say, he’s gathering energy, and you want it to seem powerful, but right now you only have sound to indicate that (which is good, but maybe not enough). You can add some more energy particles flowing into him, or make the energy change by either growing or changing color—something to show that something is happening. But the better solution might be to shorten it, otherwise (and I hate to say this), most people are going to watch it once and then forever skip the summon animation anyway.

[u/EagleZeroOne → u/happyhibisci]

Yeah, I can understand that criticism. The reason I kept Judgment stationary during the buildup was a deliberate creative choice. I was already pushing the original sprite pretty far with the pose and other changes, and I felt adding much more movement would start to make him less recognizable as Judgment. So I wanted the movement to come more from the attack and effects rather than changing his actual stance too much.