VERTICLE SLICE / NO MEASLY FEAT – BLOG POSTS IN ORDER
No Measly Feat- STYLE GUIDE/COMMUNICATION/SPRITES/COMIC/ANIMATION
WORD COUNT INCLUDING HEADINGS- 2553
(throughout every post)
VERTICLE SLICE-NO MEASLEY FEAT REFLECTION
This project was very different to group work we have had before as we were working with a different course. I was in charge of most of the 2D assets, concepting and main character modelling. I found the work to be fine as I am very comfortable working on concepting and such but I found the lack of communication as a big problem. A lot of the group was never on the same page and our Game design students were not keeping the animation students in the loop leading to changes that nobody knew about. Most of the group didn’t upload updates and that kept me in the dark on our game progress until the team meetings on Wednesdays. Though I am not too happy with the Riley model herself, I am quite happy with some of the animations I created with her. Such as the Crouch animation and the death animation. I think those are my strongest animations in this project along side the Chat sprites of the characters Tammy and Riley.
If I were to do this project again I would be firmer with my concerns with communication and team work as to see better results.
QUICK FIXES
Henry contacted me asking me to fix 2 of my model’s pivots and re scale them for thee game design students to use as they were un-centered and very very tiny.
I worked on making them bigger, specifically making them scale with the Riley model’s hand rather than measure man who I have been using for scale.
Though on my computer they were centered they weren’t in unreal which was strange so on my second time exporting I tested them in unreal before I sent them off.The problem did seem to be that the models were not set on the grid so they wouldn’t export correctly with the pivot centered which was strange as these are the only models that this issue has happened to.
DESIGN CHANGES
I received some feedback during the project that i forgot to document at the time, which was Riley’s design changing slightly from the “Final Concept” She was given. Alec my tutor and The games tutor Owen pointed out that Riley’s hat blended in with her jacket too much in the sprites and asked me to change the color of the hat so that that problem would not occur.
I changed her hat from the same green as her coat to a Darker forest type green which game it a good contrast and i was given feedback by my group saying that that choice was better overall.
FIRST REFERENCE VS FIXED /EDITED REFERENCE
I removed her star hat dangles and her knee pad as they were a bit too complicated to add onto her model as well as the dangles being a bit of a pain to try and rig successfully.So i made the decision to remove them along with changing the hat colour as I was advised to .
I think the changes were for the best and I believe she is much more solid as a character now, those additions seemed to clutter her a bit.
NO MEASLY FEAT ANIMATIONS
ANIMATIONS IN GAME
All of Riley’s animations together, I think they’ve turned out very well and I’m happy that they were able to be transferred into Unreal easily!
The problem with the sprites not moving in game as been solved! I’m very happy with how they look with the UI design! I like how they look with the character model moving in the background as well. I think i did a good job on the animations for them and seeing them working with the dialogue is really exciting! And I think they are very cute.
COMIC INTRO
The comic book intro I created, the timing is a bit off as after effects kept having problems with that and also with the images cutting out, but overall I think that It does what it need to do for the intro.The intro comic does have some passing issues but my after effects would not let me change the timing for that specific part of the video no matter how many times I closed and re opened the project. I worked around this issue and though it may be a little bit too fast I think that overall the intro looks alright. I could have done better with the tweening but I am not as well versed in after effects as I’d like to be so my skills with it are on the less experienced side. Though it is a bit messy I still think it is a good intro for the game.
I also added audio and sound effect as I thought it would make it much more immersive for an intro cut scene.
LIP SYNC ANIMATION ASSAIGNMENT
REFERENCES
For this assaignment I looked over a lot of videos (linked below) on LIp syncs and character acting. They were all helpful but I would say that the video “How I approach DIALOGUE in Animation” by Toniko Pantoja helped me to understand using Dialogue in aniation the most! I watched that video more than once to revisit his tips.
VIDEO REFERENCE
I already had an idea of what I wanted to do for this animation and quickly went to block it out with a video reference. The characters I’m using are Xanax (Belongs to Ciara McGreevy) and Bonk who is my OC(My art below).
The audio I found on Tiktok from the “Two Princes” Podcast Season 1 Episode 4 at 18 minutes. I list
ened to the audio a bit and then recorded 2 videos for each character and then edited them together into the same room. I tried to make sure the scale was the same by setting up a pillow to look at and sit beside for the video so that was a placeholder so I knew where to put the second clip !
THE VIDEO
ANIMATION PROCESS
I started off my animation on krita and blocked out the most important poses, ignoring the characters muzzles for the moment as they weren’t important and id add them in later. I didnt have the Krita add on to create videos at this time so i exported the frames and put them together in capcut with the tik tok audio.
I also video recorded and synced it to the audio for the first passes.
I then added in betweens for Bonk to get the overall feeling for his movements while looking at my reference, I also added his head in for reference.
I then went over and blocked out again with stronger posing to help me along during the lining process, I worked with the lip sync
I heavily used freestyle lip-sync for this animation as I think that most lip sync references are unhelpful to me personally as they are usually all different. I work well using the Freestyle lip-sync techniques I think it works well with my style and my animation style as a whole. The video below explains more on how to do freestyle and I used a technique I learnt from Ciara where she underlined the word when it was said in the audio which is also shown in this video.
I asked my friend for feedback on my animation many times during making it, in person and online which helped me a lot. The feeback was that some things were jut a bit too late and to make them faster/snappier or just sooner which I worked on and sent back to him until it was fixed! I also showed Alec my work after the feedback and he didn’t have any feedback for me, he mentioned snout size in one frame but overall nothing to change
Bonks hair is a big part of him as a person so It was very important for me to get his hair bouncy and right for this animation, I tried my best to keep it the same size and to flow well while also being bouncy, I left his and Xanax’s hair to the end as it would be the most fun to secondary animate. I worked on their hair separately and then created a new file where it was combined so i could delete the lines under without losing anything
I filled in each boy with white so that they could sit in the background and the background would not be seen through them. I placed the blue behind them so it would be easier to see any mistakes. I can see tiny mistakes to do with lineart now after reviewing it but I tried to go back and fix it as well as I could. I decided against putting Xanax’s racoon tails and Bonk’s hair streaks as they were a bit too fiddly and I didn’t have a lot of time, hopefully after this project I can do back and add colour and their details to this animation and put it into my portfolio.
I had drawn the background for this animation during the blocking phase in the same brush size as the characters so that they would look like they’re in the same place. The room is Bonk’s bedroom wall, more specifically the wall beside his bunk bed (bottom bunk) showing his and his twin sisters pictures and posters. I then added the background colour as a cool grey, so that the characters at the front would stand out and not blend into the room.
FINISHED ANIMATION
REFLECTION
I had a strong idea of what I wanted to do for this project from the get go, once we were assigned I created a reference video with the audio I had chosen. I wanted this animation to turn out well as it is with characters I care a lot about and didn’t want the lip sync to be lazy or messy so I put a lot of time and care into this animation. If I were to do this animation again I would start it just a little bit earlier as to be able to colour it and add effects as I only had enough time to block in white, though I think it is still nice in white and grey I would have liked to see it in colour. Other than that I believe my animation turned out really well. Looking at my past lip sync and acting animations I can see that I’ve improved not only in animation but in my pipeline of creating animation, as I have been using key frames and poses a lot more than I used to and keeping my drawings detailed enough in the blocking phase that it’s easier to rough and line. Overall I’m very proud of this animation! I think it shows the characters personalities and their friendship dynamic very well and I’m so happy to see them interacting together in animation!
ANIMATION COMPLIATION AND SPRITE/ANIMATIONS IN GAME
Animations in unreal with sprites and dialogue. The sprites done seem to move in the game so far.
All of the animations I have created for the Riley Rig! I think that they are some of my better 3D animations though I can see where I can improve! I created this compilation video for my Portfolio YouTube as well as for Presentations as it would be easier to play this link than to upload the video onto a PowerPoint.
NO MEASLY FEAT- ANIMATIONS/COMIC
For the animations I created a to do list on google docs that can be ticked off with box when the animation was finished. I took on most of the Riley animations
Dan Animated the Slide and Mantle as well as the push( added after this screenshot)
FIRST PASS
This was the first pass of the idle with the older rig, the hand on this rig didn’t work so I created a short practice animation with it which helped me figure out what I wanted to do for this idle. I also had a reference video of myself that I loosely referenced for the looking around.
WALK/ IDLE/CROUCH/DEATH/ RUN ANIMATION
throughout these animations I manipulated the eyelids of the model so that she would blink and emote but as those things were not actually rigged on to the model they didn’t transfer over in the animation FBX’s which is very unfortunate but in these videos you can see the facial animations that I had done. Though unfortunate, I believe it is not too much of an issue in the grand scheme of the game.
I am very proud of the Idle animation as well for her facial animation and reaction, I think it adds a lot of character to Riley. I wanted to convey that she is laid back and a little bit silly while also nodding to the face she would be scared and jumpy. I tried to show that with her little kick and then her rapid looking around. Again loosely referenced from a video of myself.
I think the Crouch is one of the strongest animations I have done for this rig , I also followed a video reference of myself for the arm and head placements.
COMIC
The comic PNGs have been finished and coloured! All they need now is to be edited together!
HELPING OUT WITH THE RIG/NO MEASLEY FEAT
I moved Dan’s rig to the textured uved model.
I had accidentally binded the controllers onto the model along with the rig and Dan informed me of that i shouldn’t do that. Once i was told I unbinded it but it still seemed to have a problem on one of the Hands.
I then skin weighted the model and tried to fix any issues. 
