VERTICAL SLICE
During the group presentations Michael was looking at the animations I had completed for the week – that animation being the run cycle.
He brought it up to me that the torso of our character was too straight for someone who was meant to be running. This made sense to me, but I hadn’t seen it before it was pointed out to me, fresh eyes I guess!
He also told me that my animations so far all had our characters’ fists balled, and wouldn’t this be unrealistic as he couldn’t be tense the entire time through the narrative of the game. I talked to my group about this later on in the day and the unanimous decision was to keep it as is because it would be too much work for me as I’d finished multiple animations already and would have to go back and fix them all. Also they thought narratively the character would be tense the entire time, as they’re continuously stalked by a monster and are aware of the danger all of the time.
Over the week I fixed the animation by bringing the torso forward on my animation. This was quite finicky as I’d completed the animation already and had to go back, transform the animation and redo the lineart and colour from the torso down. I do agree with Michael’s critique though as it does look better than it did before.
BEFORE FIX:
AFTER FIX:
FRONT WALK:
I also started the front walk this week. It was quite challenging to draw a front walk cycle as I wasn’t sure if the legs were making it look like my character was walking forward – but I think by the end of it, it actually turned out quite good
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I did do a little bit of research into how to create a walk cycle by looking at real life references but I got a lot of help from this front walk cycle of Roger from 101 Dalmations.
I think the end product is good all in all, I believe I got good motion in the torso rotating as he’s walking, and I made his arms go back and forth in a way I think looks quite natural. There’s things I could have improved on, but I think this was a good job.
BACK WALK:
After I finished the front walk I started on the back walk. These are always easier to do because I use the tried and true trick where you use the same silhouette as the front for the motion – just mirror it and make it look like the back.
To create this I used the leg motions from the front walk in tandem with the back idle animation I looked at to get the back and head matching the rest of the animations I have created previously.
It was quite a simple animation to do all in all as the majority of it is taken up by our characters huge trench coat, so I don’t have much to say about it.
FRONT RUN:
With my run cycle, the main thing I struggled with was the legs as I struggled for a bit figuring out how to show the underside of the shoe in a way that looked good. I haven’t had much practice at all at drawing shoes from a bunch of different angles so that definitely gave me the most trouble – as well as figuring out how high the legs went.
I think the final outcome is decent though, the only thing bothering me about this is the arms – I should’ve made them go back and forth at the sides, I think it looks a little weird if you think about the arms too much. If I could go back and change them I would. I actually might if I have the time to re-do animations.
BACK RUN:
The back run is very similar to the front run, I have pretty much the same thoughts about this one!
MELEE ATTACK:
The melee attack animation was the final animation I needed to do in terms of our main detective! Once this was done all of the character animations could be implemented. This was fantastic timing on my part as the final playtest the lecturers will see is the next week after I created this.
It was the most complicated animation I had to do in a while, as the animations before were walk and run cycles from multiple angles.
Our detective has an agency issued baton he can use for self defence, so I wanted to do a one armed swing for his attack. To counter his weight in the animation I brought his leg up and down with his wind-up and attack. I wish I could’ve put more recoil weight at the end but this animation needs to be fast and snappy in game so some detail had to be lost over time just so it doesn’t take too long for the attack animation to play out. I tried to add some action smear frames with the baton in as well , I think they turned out good – I’ve never done it before now though so I’m not too sure.
Overall I think it’s a good animation and hope it’ll look good in game!