Research

We were sorted into groups to research an article from the Animation Interdisciplinary Journal. After reading through the articles we decided to look at Animating for Interactivity: The Walk Cycles of Prince of Persia (1989) and Ninja Gaiden (1988) – Byron Fong, 2023 (openathens.net) in Volume 18, Issue 2, July 2023.

My group and I made a shared word document to compile all of our research. In the document we highlighted our research with our chosen colour of choice so we knew who researched what. Below I’ve compiled my contribution to the document:

Origins of walk cycle

walk cycle is a series of frames or illustrations drawn in sequence that loop to create an animation of a walking character. The walk cycle is looped over and over, thus having to avoid animating each step again.
Walk cycles can be broken up into four key frames: the forward contact point, the first passing pose, the back contact point, and the second passing pose. Frames that are drawn between these key poses (traditionally known as in-betweens) are either hand-drawn or interpolated using computer software.
The cycle then repeats with the right leg extended again, and so on. This loop indicates the basic movements of an animated character. It establishes – aside from the character’s visual design – the nature of the character’s movement
development of a character often begins with the walk cycle. For this reason, the walk cycle has traditionally been important both for teaching animation techniques to new animators and for developing characters in an animation project. This article defines the walk cycle in a limited way: (1) the walk cycle beginning and ending frames must match so that it can be looped; (2) as a loop, the walk cycle can therefore be repeated indefinitely; and (3) the walk cycle, as a modular bit of animation, can be transposed into various settings and contexts.
Walk cycles encapsulate all of the principles of animation. They also deal with complex issues of weight and timing, in order to be convincing. Offsets, Overlap and Follow Through on every joint are what will keep the motion natural
Walking involves all the joints of the lower limb and is characterized by an ‘inverted pendulum’ motion, in which the body vaults over the non-moving limb.

Prince of Persia

Creator Jordan Mechner started working on what would become Prince of Persia in 1985, shortly after graduating from Yale University. With one game – Karateka – already under his belt, distributor Brøderbund gave him their blessing to develop an original title.
Using a home video camera, Mechner recorded footage of his brother running, jumping and performing other moves in a parking lot across the street from their high school. He then took the footage, played it back on a TV in a darkened room and used a 35mm film camera set up on a tripod to snap photos of the screen, frame by frame. After developing the film at a one-hour photo facility, he then taped the snapshots together and used a Sharpie and Wite-Out to highlight the outlines of each character.
Mechner’s entire approach to video games changed in an instant, and he decided he wanted to develop titles with a cinematic quality. As a film student at Yale University, he was influenced by the movies of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, in particular the epic 1954 drama, Seven Samurai.
echner also enjoyed kung-fu movies, which led to the development of Karateka – a martial arts action game which earned itself a Guinness World Record for being the first video game to make use of motion-capture animation. The technique Mechner used was called rotoscoping, which involves filming real-life movement and tracing over the footage to copy it to a computer.
Karateka was the first time I’d used rotoscoping,” Mechner says. “I used a Super 8 camera to film my karate teacher doing the punches and kicks that would be needed for the game, and I filmed my dad running and climbing onto the hood of a car to simulate climbing up a cliff.”
For Mechner, it was a way of exploring a new medium in a manner that hadn’t been seen since the early days of film. “I was watching early silent films, and I realised how the cinematic language that we take for granted with the close-ups and camera movements had to have been invented,” he says.
Rotoscoping dates back to 1915, when animator Max Fleischer first used it in the silent era series, Out of the Inkwell, which featured a highly realistic moving character, Koko the Clown
“It was a step up, but it was still a very slow, manual, step-by-step process,” says Mechner. “The big advance between 1982 and 1985 was that a company in England called Compu-Tech had created a digitiser card, which you plugged a video camera into. I just needed to create sheets in which each animation frame was clearly silhouetted in white against a black background.”
To create a sheet with eight to twelve frames of animation on it, Mechner would videotape a model wearing white clothes – in this case, his brother Dave again, who would run, jump, and climb, creating the movement that would translate into the character of the Prince.
It was unlike any other game that had come before. Karateka inspired a generation of game designers, including the people behind Wolfenstein 3-D, Mortal Kombat, and Doom
By February 1985, the game cracked the top 20 best-selling computer games in Billboard’s rankings. By that May, just before his graduation, Mechner’s game, Karateka, was No. 1.
Karateka inspired a generation of game designers, including the people behind Wolfenstein 3-D, Mortal Kombat, and Doom.
“To me the magic of games was that they gave you exactly what you needed and then as a player you fill in the blanks, you use your imagination,” said John Tobias, creator of Mortal Kombat. “That had a big impact on me with Karateka, and that’s something I carried with me into Mortal Kombat.”
Most of the animation in Karateka was developed using a technique called rotoscoping, where images of filmed actors are traced and translated into animation. Mechner’s actors were his father, sister, and karate teacher. Their movements are immortalized in the animation.
The original footage, viewable in the documentary, was shot on Super 8 film in the woods of Chappaqua, N.Y. where the family lived. Mechner would often travel back and forth between New Haven and Chappaqua by train during his college years.
While Mechner often cut class to work on Karateka, he’s not like the “dropout founders” that would come to dominate the Silicon Valley mythos. Mechner’s interviews and journal entries featured in the documentary reveal a young, passionate kid who wanted to study, wanted to graduate, and wanted to participate in student life at Yale.
“Just having that four year degree makes him very unique among the breakout game developers of the early 80s,” said Kohler. “Most of them either dropped out or did not go to college at all.”
Mechner was obsessed with film and literature and engorged himself on campus. He constantly attended Yale Film Society screenings. His film interest would eventually land him on the set of then-student George Hickenlooper’s student film “Norwalk Needs Insurance.”