The last week was spent really developing the core of our game in all aspects. My work mainly lay in the art section, but my team worked hard to develop the core structure of our game in other sections as well.
Since we had more or less finished the design of our main character the week prior, I spent the last week animating this character and giving him some motion. After discussing with Herman, I decided to take on the movement related animations and leave the attack related animations to him. This meant that I was in charge of the basic run cycle, as well as all the aerial movements include three different jumps. I definitely had (and still have) my work cut out for me, but nonetheless I pressed on.
Jump Cycle
The meat of my work this week was spent creating the main jump cycle to be used for jumps made from the ground. The gif above shows the whole cycle, but it is actually three different animations stitched together. This is to accommodate for the three different states of the character it represents: the initial jump, the fall state, and the landing. Notably, some parts of the animation are made so they can loop. The last few frames of the fall state loop for the obvious reason of accounting for longer fall durations. Less noticeable however, is the last two frames of the jump. Theses frames can be used not just as an initial jump, but after the fall state as a sort of double jump. This is to make any and all other jumping movement in the game easier to animate, as for the startup of it I can simply reuse the last frames of the jump animation and loop it into the fall state again.
Run Cycle
I also spent some of this week creating a preliminary version of the basic run cycle used for ground movement. This preliminary version lacks motion in the head flame, as well as the sword and cape entirely but more or less functions to show what the movement of the character will look like for the most part. The animation loops after the first two startup frames and can do so indefinitely. This would be required, because it is indeed a run cycle.
Reflection
To be completely honest, I was kind of slacking this week and ended up producing less complete animations then I should have. The preliminary run cycle is proof of this, and something I'm going to have to pick up on in the coming week. I also know that Jonathan will be finalizing the design of the final boss soon, which is a character I expect I will need to take the lead on animating as Herman gets busier with level design.
My plan for next week is:
Complete all movement animations for the player required for a playable demo
Start creating sprites and animations for the final boss as soon as the design is finalized
That's all from me for this week, til next time.
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