Starwolf
We first met with Vicky and talked with her about the projects, story and the design of the world. It was decided that this would be a 2.5D project, using a 3D background with 2D animations. The first thing we as a group began deciding was how the animation would be executed. This was a pre-production process which took a while to come to a consensus towards. Since not only did we have to consider the time constraints. But also the Game, and it’s capability of handling so many frames. With this in mind, we began creating a few concepts for the various characters.
Concept Work
These designs would end up going through many variations, but they were a good starting point for trying to find out what the project would look like. For instance would Wolfie be stood upright or 4 legged? Would the moon have a face or not?
Experimental Animations
I then put together an experimental walk cycle using one of the designs
Wolfie
I then ended up figuring out how to import this animation into unreal, utilising image sequencers and alpha masks. And also pu together a turtorial to better summarize how this was done for my team members. However, we didn’t end up utilising this method.
Experiment
Image Sequence Tutorial
Fairy
Emailing/getting feedback from Vicky
Katie and I both talked over emails and communications with Vicky, we ensured that we took in her feedback when given, and made changes to both our stylistic approach and our creative approach to best cater to her desired tweaks and fixes. These fixes included the Fairy designs which went through many variations. As well as the designs of other characters such as the fish and Wolfie himself.
Considering this feedback, I then started work on a few revised concepts and animations. For instance, Vicky wanted Wolfie to appear younger, she also wasn’t certain of the colours being used for him. She also seemed to lean towards liking the fairies wearing welly boots and wanted the Fairies to have overalls and to appear younger as well.
Revised Wolfie Concept
At this point we largely had our designs for the characters done. And the Game design team had almost finished roughly piecing together each scene. However, we had no idea how the story was going to be presented. The beats it would hit, the character moments that would be presented or the ark that the story follows. So with all of these essential pieces of the Project being a mystery. I decided to create an animatic to better visualize and add characters to the story we were telling. For the first few scenes I used Katies Storyboards.
Star Wolf Animatic
I feel this visualization of the story helped the team to recognize what they were making more story wise. A lot of the creative decisions made in my animatic, were used within the final game. For instance, in my animatic I had considered the fact that a hard cut in a piece of media that’s presented in a dome, would be rather jarring. So I decided to instead have the camera follow Wolfie, both down from the stars and back up again each time. Adding small character moments during each one. This was a decision that was later kept by the Game design team, as they have the transitions taking place in similar ways.
Tutorial for Team
Me and Katie had come to the decision at one point of development to use animate rigs to create the animation. I had agreed with her to create a tutorial so she could better understand how to begin with animate. This tutorials original recording was about 4 hours long, since it covers the entire creative process, and had to be heavily edited and condensed, so that it was more digestible. I also offered to meet and communicate with her in Uni.
Using Animate + Creating a character + Rigging in Animate – Condensed Tutorial
However, it was later decided that she would continue using after effects for her animations, as this allowed for more time to make and produce animations for the project. Ultimately probably a good decision. As it gave us more time to animate.
Fairy Rig
I put together 4 various Fairy rigs, all of which were fully rigged and animated. With flying and idle animations and transitions from both idle to flying. I’m really proud of how these rigs turned out, as it gave me an opportunity to utilise my 2D rigging skills which I hadn’t showcased yet.
Fairy Rig Animations
Putting these rigs together took a very long time, as it is a complex layer based system which utilises many aspects of animates software and tools.
Fish Animations
I also created two looping fish animations, both of which I feel turned out really well, and true to the style we had initially decided upon.
Computer Hard Drive Failure
About around this time in late development I had a hard drive failure. This failure set me back a long way in development. Erasing many files I hadn’t yet saved to OneDrive including all of the fairies but one, and both the fish which I had luckily already exported as an image sequence. I had also lost many test animations for the project including one for the arms and legs. As well as my start on the original 2D block out.
This not only affected my work, but also my computer, which took a while to fix and to get back up and running again. It took a lot of my drive for this project away, and admittedly I had began to prioritize other work above Starwolf for a very short while.
I learned from this however, to always have a back up save online and to always use the Onedrive space provided. I also put in hard work to redo my other fairies I had completed in time for them to be implemented into the game.
Blocking Out Story for 2D Reference
I then decided to begin redoing my Animation block out. This block out consisted of taking multiple screenshots from within the Unreal project, and placing them into animate as to better understand and animate with knowledge of the environment around the characters. I am very happy that I took this approach as I believe it allowed me to produce better animations. It was also around this time that me and Katie had decided upon utilising a mixture of hand drawn and cell based animation to create Wolfie. We had also decided upon the story taking on a more, first person type of narrative approach. Meaning we as an audience never see Wolfie fully, since we are Wolfie.
Wolfie Animations with Reference
Utilising this block out, I animated my half of Wolfie animations, the legs and the Tail.
Arms REF
Tail REF
I am really happy with how these animations turned out. I feel I had to adjust and clean my more ‘liney’ style to better fit the project filled with cell based type animations. And I think I pulled this off quite well considering the creative and time restraints.
Final Game
Since the game cannot be presented as a flat screen video. We only have these methods of showcasing it in video form.
Inside Dome Video (No Audio) – Provided by team member Josh
Amatras Rendered Dome Video (Audio) – Provided by team member Josh
Unfortunately, due to last minute time constraints. Some of my animations aren’t in these recordings. However they can be found within the final packaged game. Of which can be found within the link here!
Final Game Packaged:
Starwolf Project Zipped Up:
^ Password for this link is: password
Conclusion:
Overall I am very happy with the final product of this project, I feel that I have utilised and experimented with a wide range of 2D animation techniques, as well as manoeuvring how those techniques can be compatible with Unreal.
I feel I helped and encouraged my team mates, while remaining aware of the animation style and time constraints. I learned more than ever about managing and meeting professional deadlines, restructuring animations to meet client feedback and working on a challenging project in a team based environment. I am very proud of the work I have produced this year, and feel that I have learned more this year than ever before. Especially considering the unorthodox and unprecedented challenges we faced given a project of this type.