Squashing and stretching a character without making it look like it grows

Scaling a character taller when it jumps and flatter when it lands gives life, but done by hand it swells, sinks into the floor or floats above it. A simple relation between the two directions and the right anchor point prevent that.

Why this works

A soft, living thing changes shape but not how much of it there is. Making it thinner exactly as much as it gets taller keeps the body believable, and fixing the feet in place keeps it standing on the ground while it bends.

When not to use it

Do not use it on rigid or realistic characters, such as robots, soldiers or pixel art with hand-drawn frames, where bending looks like a mistake. Use a small bob, a dust puff or a hand-drawn landing frame there.

In the full entry

• What to build, step by step
• Starting values and the reason for each
• 4 common mistakes and the fix
• 26 lines of example code with 4 checks that pass
• How your AI shows you that it works

Say this to your AI

Use the Spielerando entry "Squashing and stretching a character without making it look like it grows" (read_entry squash-and-stretch-keeps-the-same-size) in my game. Build it step by step, and show me how you checked that it works.

Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP