VERTICLE SLICE GROUP PROJECT – Assignment 1
(COMPILATION POST OF ALL WORK AND REFERENCES DURING ASSIGNMENT 1 – 14 weeks)
For this semester, animation students were told we would have to complete a Verticle Slice project with the 2nd year Games Design students where we were tasked with working together in groups to create a game prototype.
Each of us filled out a form in order to choose what our preferred role in the groups would be to keep the groups balanced. I had decided that I wanted to do Art Direction/Modelling as well as Animation, Character Design and Environment/Background Design.
In our groups, we had to create a story driven vertical slice with the animation students focusing on developing the artistic elements of the game.
For the first week of the project, I was sorted into Group D, which we changed our group name to Big Teeth. Our group had decided that we were going to make a 2.5D game that, after a lot of brainstorming together, was going to be loosely based on the Grimm Brother’s folk tale Red Riding Hood.
Our group created a Discord server and had its first meeting call to get roles, where we voted and I was assigned the role of lead animator for the project.
Our group agreed on having a Verticle Slice Project call every Thursday at 2pm so we could discuss what work we had each done, figure out any complications and then agree on what needed to be done for the coming weeks. We were also able to create our weekly presentations together on these calls.
The group also created a Miro board, where we all put our ideas and influences for the game and later discuss what work and tasks everyone was going to have.
Miro Board Link: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOTar3mo=/
Jamie Stewart came up with the idea of a Red Riding Hood themed game, and wrote the original story.
We each sorted out what roles and work everyone had to aim to complete for the coming weeks.
GAME INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES:
As the lead animator for the project and I started researching animators and 2.5D games that could be similar to ours. I wanted to see how some of these games performed and operated to see if we could take any inspiration from them.
The Wild At Heart –
Knights on Bikes –
Mineko’s Night Market –
I found the art style of these games very charming and influential, however they were far too influenced by 2D animation and we wanted a game that could give the 3D modellers and animators something to work on also.
HADES:
I personally love the art style and game design of Hades and feel that it influenced a lot of my work. The 2D sprites and menu details alongside the beautifully rendered 3D game made it very inspiring for me.
I also looked at Camilo Vanegas, the Animator, and rigger for Hades: http://camilovanegas.com/
Paper Mario:
Alice: The Madness Returns –
DEMON TURF:
Our group settled on a game that resembles Paper Mario and DEMON TURF in that they have a 2D animated character running around a 3D modelled world.
This design worked well for everyone on the team as we had an equal amount of members who specialised in 3D and 2D animation techniques. This also gave more depth to the game as the character stands out and is noticably different from her surroundings. She does not match the 3D world as everything seems to be going wrong.
The creator for Demon Turf also created this way to render planes for a settlement and I thought it would be cool to look at this within our game.
Would you believe me if I told you NOTHING in here is a 3D mesh?
They're billboarded flat planes projecting pictures of the 3D models taken at different angles and switching between them.
From a distance (+ DoF blur) you can't tell and it costs way less to render out! #gamedev pic.twitter.com/Kf0IW8dOzU
— Fabraz: Demon Turf (@Fabrazz) November 17, 2020
I have also looked at how Spencer Wan, (https://twitter.com/SpencerWan?s=20), animator and owner of Studio Grackle, animates on top of 3d environments:
https://twitter.com/SpencerWan/status/1058431222039232512?s=20&t=3R1OxVkOSjwpMMyy0pbrpA
After researching, I was able to start creating concept art and possible designs for the game.
CHARACTER AND CONCEPT DESIGN:
The Wolves –
In the second week of the project, I was tasked with creating concept art for Red’s wolf companions. Jamie took on the design for Yang, the White wolf, and I took on the design of Yin, the black wolf. I started by looking at photographs of real wolves and began sketching their shapes and forms.
I looked a lot at wolf character design such as from the Cartoon Saloon’s Film Wolfwalkers where I studied the ways the artists designed the wolves for the main characters to be both distinct but also still look like wolves.
I tried to replicate Tomm Moore’s wolf art to understand the shape language he uses for the wolves and how to make them distinct.
Then I started colouring my wolf studies to give an idea of what the wolves could look like. As Jamie said the wolves were to be based off of Yin and Yang, one was white and one was black primarily. He said that he imagined them with patterns, similar to the game Okami, so I decide to try to see if I could do something similar.
I looked at using the red markings in a similar way to the Yin and Yang symbol with the contrast coloured circle in the wolves chests and foreheads. I also wanted to see if it could be effective by only having markings on the wolves’ heads/faces.
Then I began focusing more on character and body shape. I wanted each of the wolves designs to be distinct, and decided to go with Yin’s design being more sharp, sleek and angular, in contrast with Yang’s design that would be more rounded and fluffy. This coincides with the actual contrasts of Yin and Yang.
Myself and the tutors felt these designs would be too similar to the wolf designs in Okami and so I tried to think of alternatives so the wolves would be more unique yet still distinct and powerful beings.
I also wanted to look at ways to make the wolves otherworldly such as making the black wolf have a smoke tail.
I created an experimental animation of Yin with a smoking tail to make the wolves seem more other worldly, and although my team members liked it, it was never used in the final design as it would have been too much unnecessary work for the characters.
We decided to make the wolves original we would keep Jamie’s red chest design at the front of the wolves and my designs for the sharp and curved contrasting bodies.
In the coming weeks, I was able to combine Jamie’s design for Yang (as seen above) and my own designs for Yin in order to create icons for the wolves when talking to pop up with the text boxes.
The wolf icons needed to be of a similar style to Tish’s character icons of Red. To do this I used the same colour palette and technique as Tish and attempted to create similar expressions.
Tish’s Character Expression Icons for Red
Final Icons:
I thought the character icons turned out really well, although in the end they were never used in the actual game. The dialogue boxes were kept the same as they were originally.
Main Character Design Red –
Although this was not my main task, I also explored the Red’s character design at the beginning of the project to try to help get a better understanding of her design and her character.
I started by doing some rough drawings of how Red could look. I started by looking at Diana/Artemis art and sculptures as references for Red as she was going to be a hunter herself in order to be able to attack. We intially wanted her to have a bow and arrow but thought this would not be as effective as a hitting or slashing attack for players.
I also wanted to look at Red’s potentially changing appearance when in and out of the Night World. This colour swap was eventually saved only for the world environment instead of Red herself as we felt it would be too confusing for the player and take too much work and explaining.
Influenced by talk icons from games such as Doom, Hiveswap Friendsim and Hades, our group wanted to create talk icons for the dialogue for Red and the wolves. I am really inspired by the art style of Hades and decided to draw a similar styled icon for Red in the Hades art style myself.
Although for the final icons in the game was Tish’s role, and these were never used, I still really liked how the icons turned out!
Half-way through the project we realised we had not thought of a name for our final game, and so in a poll on the Miro board our group chose Red Moon as our collective favourite.
In my spare time, I started looking up Grimm’s fairytales and book covers to maybe deisgn a cover for our game.
I created these rough drafts of designs and potential fonts, however I scrapped them. However, in the final week, Tish mentioned that she was wanting to create the cover and had an art design in mind. I refined the title font and fairytale border design and sent them to her in case they wouuld be of use. In the end the designs were used in the final cover where Tish combined the two!
Final Game Cover Art by Leticia “Tish” Liggett.
ANIMATION REFERENCE AND INSPIRATION:
As I am the Lead animator in this project, most of my time and work came from animating the main character. Firstly, I began looking a the work of game animator Mariel Cartwright, who had worked on fighting games such as the Scott Pilgrim vs the World game and Skullgirls. I found the animations in these games really effective and expressive, showing two styles I am hoping to explore.
The Scott Pilgrim vs the World game is a side-scrolling beat ’em up game inspired by the comic book series and movie. The animation and art style follows the same style of the comic book and older pixel arcade video games.
Skullgirls is a 2D fighter
Skullgirls animation Tutorial: https://youtu.be/z-5djm1pRpU
My biggest influence and animator reference was Oscar Mardones Ruiz the main animator for the 2.5D game DEMON TURF:
Ruiz’s animations were exactly what I wanted to replicate with our group’s character of a 2D animated character in a 3D world. On his ArtStation I was able to find his animations of DEMON TURF’s main character movements and fighting, and from this I could understand where to begin starting my own animations: https://daeron.artstation.com/projects/L32krR
To begin animating Red’s run, I began by looking at simple 2D video game animations to see how fewer simple frames could convey the action effectively. I loved to simplicity of pixel animation run cycle’s as they clearly show the characters body movement in each frame and made it simple for me to follow and create my own run cycle.
Finally finished my 8-directional animation of running. I want to say a big thank you to my mentor @arthur_vista who corrects my work and helps me to get better. Also I would like to thank @Skaz_ for awakening love for smooth animation in me. #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev pic.twitter.com/PkE7WHYpSw
— h4rd3r /.🐤/ (@h4rd3rzxc) April 5, 2021
https://cyangmou.itch.io/pixel-rpg-character-template
The fighting animation work from animator, Charly Park, really helped as inspiration and a reference for animating Red’s fighting moves.I felt the way he animates the character’s slashes and movements was really effective and would look good for our game.
https://www.deviantart.com/windship/art/Attack-Combo-186590903 :
In the first few weeks of the project, I decided to make a little test run cycle animation using Tish’s character design at the time:
These were effective for the motion, and had a nice illustrative style that could have suited the theme of a fairytale game, but it also made me realise that I needed to give the character much more solid outline if she was to stand out from the environment more and the props/art that my other group members had made.
Tish was the other main character animator and because we had slightly different art and animation styles I decided to create a character animation reference sheet turnaround for us both to use to make sure the character stayed proportionate and consistent throughout both of our animations. I used Tish’s character design below as my reference.
I am really happy with my final reference sheet as it made drawing and animating Red so much easier throughout the rest of the project as well as allowing me to see the character’s main shapes, colours and small details that would be needed to stay consistent throughout.
I also set up an animation guide on the group Miro board for the animation students to know who was doing what as well as what animations were the most important at the time.
CHARACTER ANIMATION –
With the character turnaround sheet, I was able to start animating. I began by sketching out the roughs for the idle and run animations, looking at Oscar Mardones Ruiz’s character animations and decide that roughly 8 frames for the run would work and 7 frames for the idle.
IDLE
Rough Animation:
Lines:
Final Animation:
Although I like my idle animation’s vague movements, I think I over-animated the character and was less attentive to keeping the details consistent. The tutors agreed and although I did not have enough time in this project to fix it, I will know for any further projects to have less frames and make the character move less.
RUN
Rough Animation:
Lines:
Block Colours:
Final Animations:
For this I wanted to try Red with Tish’s concept art to see how Red would be seen against backgrounds. I was glad to see she now stood out much better than the original run cycle I had made.
I am very happy with the run animations for the character in this project as I think each animation shows the movement clearly. I would maybe want to focus on the secondary animations in the hair a bit more but aside from that I am happy with the weight distribution and motions.
ATTACK
The attack was one of the most important animations for the game so I spent a lot of time drawing rough animations to make sure it would look right. The hardest part was getting the swing and posing right – especially from the front perspective.
Rough Animation:
Lines:
Final Animation:
I am actually very happy with how the attack animations ended up looking. This was a very different style of animation and body mechanics compared to what I have previously made, so I was very nervous. I asked a lot of my friends, group member and flatmates for advice with how the motions were looking. I was told to maybe bring the swing back further than I had it to give it more of an impact, which I then did and it really helped!
GitHub:
Github was helpful to learn and have as part of a group project. I made my account and was able to upload all of the animations I had made onto the group GitHub, which then Holly was able to implement into the game.
IN-GAME FOOTAGE OF ANIMATION:
The animations looked really cool in game, and even made the less than perfect idle animation look decent. I was great to actually see the animations against the 3D background and textures.
FINAL PROJECT OUTCOME
Overall, I’m very happy with what we have achieved with the game!
For our groups final game outcome, I think we created a very good Verticle Slice demo game and produced some really effective work!
I was able to include my Idle, Run and Attack animations however, the Red and wolf icons were not added to the character text boxes in time for the completed game, which I am sad about. If I had more time to work on the project and no other assignments/priorities, I would have loved to have made a special third attack swipe and a ‘Pet the dog’ animation for my group members. I would have also liked to try helping more by having created more 3D objects and props for the background.
At the beginning of the project I felt quite overwhelmed and not fully sure what I was doing, so I would have liked to have had more of a pre-production plan and more time to figure out the game story, characters and concept art, however this is something I must work on myself. I had issues with work planning and prioritising what needed done first in the group so in future I understand now what to focus on first as well as what is most important in the game.
This project has helped me expand on my skills and planning so I can now understand better how to apply more professional practices to my workflow and communications with my team members. I think as a group, myself and my team members worked well together, however sometimes shared visions such as the art style and consistent themes did not always get across. This assignment has given me an insight into how a professional studios’ process works towards a project, and what I must do from concept to development and then the final polish.
Final Game File OneDrive: https://ulster-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/maciver-u_ulster_ac_uk/EiXYkjLCk9hIktGf9zapPKkByClMbeMZEvfODkNh03nD1w?e=sAFfVt
Final Project File OneDrive: https://ulster-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/maciver-u_ulster_ac_uk/EscFdiJ8NXxEov3MbA8RMzEBeUJ7DUz0b8MWEbu1MvZWlA?e=o4HVTo