Advanced Animation

3rd Year Uni Module: Creating a series of frame-by-frame animation spritesheets for 2D fighter characters.

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Final submission~

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Just wanted to create some concept/promo images to be used as posters at the beginning of the showreel video. Hopefully this will both give the viewer more of a sense of the characters involved, as well as giving the showreel itself a bit more oomph, as I don’t want it simply just being a 6 second animation.

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This is essentially the first draft of the final showreel video. It contains no audio yet and is missing some art that has been placeholdered for now, but I thought it would be convenient for future-me if I had the basis of the Premiere file already made up and waiting for me to just put in the final effects.

I have everything playing twice really as, to be honest, there isn’t actually that much content. The cycles play very quickly and are easily missed, and I didn’t want you to be left with a “blink and miss it” feeling.

With the breakdown I went with a spelling bee approach of playing it regularly, then slowed down for frame inspection, then played regular again. I think it’s come out looking better than the other ways I was doing it before, albeit it is a bit jarring on some of the transitions. I might add a transitioning note over the 1/3 speed cycles for coherency.

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I didn’t want the showreel to look totally blank, at least for the compiled animation showing off all the moves. I thought a background behind them would add a bit more colour and visual interest.

I still would plan on leaving a plain background for the separate cyclical breakdowns for clarity’s sake.

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The death animation for the MK was a bit tricky, I found. The initial sketch pass looked alright, but once detail was added, the flaws started to glare pretty prominently.I wanted the bones to just drop to the ground with sudden weight, since the life in MK has just as suddenly vanished. I also didn’t want the death animation to be too long when the game it’s envisioned for would potentially have the player fighting multiple enemies at a time.

Taking my lecturers advice on running on 2s and then adding smoothness frames where needed (as I’ve been doing on all the cyclicals ever since), I kept noticing so many things that needed to be changed, one after the other. So while most of the other cyclicals are on 2s with some smooth frames here and there, this particular animation has a lot more smoothness frames scattered about, to the point where probably every frame is unique in at least one aspect.

I just wasn’t happy with it looking so blocky and jittery though, and feel that it has paid off to add so many small changes all over the place, as the animation is smoother and cleaner now, without actually extending the length of the animation longer than I’d have wanted to.

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Got a pass of the Murder King done (the idle animation). I went with a colour palette based on green and brown hues that should sit nicely next to the Frogsassin.

I also wanted to go for a very animatedly scratchy look of outlines, much more so than Frogsassin. I thought this would go well for the notion that, as a skeleton, he won’t move quite as much, but has more life than he should. The outlines being more lively than the actual character suited that, I felt.

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Updated cyclicals with changes suggested by my lecturer after a discussion about progress. She seemed mostly happy with the results so far, but suggested taking the animation to Twos at 24fps rather than Ones at 12fps, so that I could add some extra detail in certain problem sections, such as the upwards spin (in the smoke bomb) and the backwards flip (in the kick).

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After having decided on a style I’m fairly happy with and chosen to go through with, I’ve started creating some of the cyclicals out of the previous passes I made.

I chose this scratchy/sketchy style as it’s something I’m fairly comfortable with drawing anyway, but also think it would lend itself well to any inconsistencies I may make; as I’ve said before I’m still new and lack some confidence with getting each and every frame consistent. I think the scratchy style will....well, not “hide” it, but it won’t be as blatantly obvious.

I chose colours that look fairly soft and work well together, but should still help display form and tone. I went with light coming directly down on top of the characters, less for aesthetic reasons, and more for thinking about how the actual game would be played and lit. Having hand drawn animations for an action game wouldn’t work well with dynamic lighting at all, so a single, stationary light source makes more sense.

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I picked a pose and began making various style drawings of it, so I could start working on deciding a final design choice for the look of the animations. I wanted something fairly simple, so that I could do it comfortably across all the cyclicals, as well as not too inconsistent, which I thought would help me a lot since I’m still pretty new to frame by frame; I didn’t want to set the bar on a still too high and not be able to meet that standard consistently in every frame.

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Just wanted to get some off-work practice for frame by frame in and look at different styles and such, before deciding what I want my finals for Frogsassin and Murder King to actually look like.

Besides, figured it would be good to just get like a palette cleanser or sorts, and do something different between the roughs and finals.

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A series of further animatics sampling the different actions the two characters will be performing. This covers what was discussed with my lecturer and includes the changes suggested, primarily to the Murder King’s Idle and Block actions, and the Frogsassin’s tongue jab attack and smoke bomb animation.

It also includes a variation for blending animations for the Murder King’s block animation, such as when the player might choose to release the block key or if damage is dealt while blocking.

I don’t necessarily think I will actually fully draw and animate these variations as final pieces, but it seems like good and relevant practice to have at least considered them as I’m going through the process, since the intention is that these’d be used for game sprites.

I lost a lot of the tension in the Tongue Jab attack, and will need to create more force and impact with the Frog’s body during the attack. I think the smoke bomb came out ideally, and have taken to heart the suggestion of a touch of magic, so I’ve deliberately held her final position frozen in place as the smoke disappears her.

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Full series of animatics and character movements that will be involved.

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didn’Short animatic detailing some poses for the characters, and giving me a chance to further experiment with frame by frame animation. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get a high quality looking animatic this way on time, as I’m just too new to this particular skill and it’s taking a lot longer than I expected, although I probably could cut down on the detailing a bit, but it’s still messing with my head somewhat.

Anyhoo, timing still isn’t perfect as I’m getting used to different timelines used in 3D systems, but I think the actual animations are on track. 

It doesn’t contain all of them however, as I’d like to get an animation made for jumping/hopping as well (but just didn’t want to stretch out the image size to make it fit) and possibly the others listed, if I feel I can do them in time.

That said, I’m still deciding which 2D format to actually create the final piece in.

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Further animated thumbs displaying the more prominent actions required by the characters.

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Playback is a bit jumpy, possibly because the image size is quite large.

Anyhoo, a draw up of what I think it might include as actions. The timing is way off, but I was focussing on trying to quickly get together a series of actions the characters will perform.

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Created some thumbnail scripts to help select what the fight scene might look like, and what actions might be involved by the characters within it.

At first, I feel there was too many actions, and they were too one-sided towards the frog, letting the bipedal character do little other than stand around and die.

I tried again, compacting the fight slightly to the more relevant motions, and involving the biped more. I think this gives a more even mix of actions, as well as spreads them better between the two characters. It also has me with a couple of optional afterwards actions I could do if there’s time, but they would be more for prettifying the showreel than anything.

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Creating Context

After a discussion with my lecturer, and furthering my plan to develop concept and context for the game, I’ve decided to look at more specifically what I’ll be animating and why, to layer on top of what type of character will be doing the animations. I’ve also been told that we are allowed to do more than one character, so think my leaning towards 2D has become a full plan to do it in 2D instead, which will allow me to more easily animate two characters. This way, I think I’ll be able to create a more interesting showreel of animations, that actually has context behind them.

First, the kind of game it will be. In the name of keeping myself on point I’m not going to go full depth GDD plans, but keep it basic. I’m thinking it would be a 2D game somewhere between Shovel Knight and Smash Bros; a slight focus on platforming and travel, but with a large emphasis on combat with other characters as well.

For the showreel and animation pieces, I expect the video will show two characters in combat, fighting each other. I intend to keep it simple enough to be realistic to make all the animations and cyclicals for, but also enough to keep it looking complex and interesting. For the next step, I’ll look at all the possible animations and movements my characters might do, and try to select a reasonable list of what I should put into the fight scene.

- Idle Animation - Walk - Run - Jump (four directions) - Attack (including alternate attacks) - Guard/Defend - Grapple/Grab - Take Damage - KO/Die/Fall Over - Surrender

I’m planning to have the second character be a biped, to contrast Frogsassin who is mostly a quadruped. If I sequence the fight around the notion that one of them clearly wins and they take a mixture of movements each, I should get a good mixture of different types of animation poses included.