Genre Swap and the Anti-Grav Meteor Hammer Animation

I did a stream with Ryo again this week. The topic was genre swap, where you take one character, and remake them in a different genre. I decided to take my own spin on this, and redo a D&D character of mine as a sci-fi character.

My original idea was to do a meteor hammer animation. A meteor hammer is a Chinese weapon that is a weighted ball at the end of a long 6-foot, or so, chain. I had a D&D character that used a meteor hammer and I figured it might be a fun genre splash to bring it into a sci-fi setting.

I think this is a nice foundation for something, but this animation is just lacking punch.  My favorite part is the flow and the jump at the end.  The stationary swing could live on its own, and it's not very interesting.  The big swings are the cool part, but either the ball needs to stay on screen, or I need to change my camera.  I am going to revisit this one in the future, for sure, but the point now is that it's a one-evening animation, and I move on.

Check Ryoma's stream recap here (I'm in the top left corner): https://youtu.be/YDiwWek4zZE

And join him on Twitch, every Tuesday and Thursday, at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi.

Villainous Animation and Clip Studio Paint 1.54

My friend Ryoma Tazi streams twice a week, and he invited me to join him this Tuesday. While he streamed requests with the "Villain" theme, I animated my own villainous businessman who ends up putting out his cigar on a harmless fly. Goofy.

This was my first real test of Clip Studio Paint's new animation tools, just released this past week. I've been an avid CSP user since I started drawing on a Surface Pro 3, nearly two years ago. For the longest time, I have been looking for a good lightweight animation tool that works with multitouch, and also can handle the high pixel resolution of the Surface, at least with some sort of UI scaling.

I tried a number of animation softwares. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro had great tablet support, but it's animation tools were very limited. High end programs, like Toon Boom Harmony, have lovely features, but terrible resolution and multitouch support. So, I was pretty estatic when I found out CSP had animation tools coming, and they haven't left me at all disappointed.

Check out a sped up version of his four hour stream here: https://youtu.be/06ClbhcZfxY; and he was gracious enough to add sound and stick my animation to the end. I look forward to doing this again!

Also, check out his streams (currently Tuesdays and Thursdays) at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi

RR Character Animations in Unity 2D

This project is on hiatus for now, so I want to post the animations I had worked on in December.

Rifle Enemy attack/idle

Rifle Enemy kill (in progress)

Flamethrower Enemy attack/idle

Flamethrower Enemy kill

Commando Enemy idle

Commando Enemy kill (barely any progress)

Demolition Enemy attack/idle

Demolition Enemy kill

Hero attack

Hero death (in progress)

Hero run/idle

I still need to finish up the Hero death, Enemy001 kill, and the Enemy003 kill.  As you can see, the formers are partially blocked, but needs some cleanup, the latter is barely started.  I'll either update this post or make a new one if/when I finish those two up.

Faked Pixel Aesthetic for Unity

A buddy of mine was working on a game concept, and he wanted a pixel aesthetic.  I did a test over some existing animations to see how well Unity 2D could look for pixel art, and I was actually pretty impressed and how well the look carried over.

This is also a sneak peek of the RR four main enemy types (one more coming), and how their idles are turning out.

For a quick breakdown on how I set it up, click "Read more »"

2D Planning for Action Character Intros

I did these as planning for an action character-intro style animation, kind of showing off each character's fighting styles and abilities. I got inspired by Studio Mir's Road to the Cup League of Legends video.  I only really finished the first one, though I am work on finishing the other two, before doing them all in 3D

RR Hero Run Cycle

Just finished our hero's run, as well as the final Unity proof-of-concept.  Now I have to work on all of the enemies and the various interactions between the hero and these enemies.

This guy will constantly charges into enemies, just for your enjoyment.  What a nice guy.

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Unity 2D Animation Tests

I made a post on how to get started in Unity 2D sprite animation.  Check it out here.

I started with a test in Flash, separating the body parts out. I took inspiration from the artist, NCH, and the animation style of Shank. I drew up a character based on my last animation that ended up turning into League of Legends's Poppy (it was all because of the hair).

We decided on Unity so we could easily swap out pieces, in case we later wanted to do some sort of customization system.  While David was working on the programming and Ryoma was working on the concepts, I decided to figure out Unity's new 2D system with animation.

idle

run

attack

Late in the process, I realized I could group objects together (such as the head elements) so I could translate/rotate them together (which would have made the head animation cleaner).  I should have split the torso into two, so I could do bends there; the root of this problem is shown in the attack test.

Also, we had originally intended to keep the framerate low for style reasons (the attack and the idle look okay like this), but Unity doesn't handle stepped animation perfectly, sometimes tweening the frames in the wrong place, or just completely wonking out.

wonk wonk

Working on a Unity 2D Game

Today, I got started on a new prototype with Ryoma Tazi and David Brett.  We're using the new Unity 2D tools that just came out in the new package.  I did some Flash tests for what attacking and death could look like.  The game uses a mechanic that involves swiping to take down enemies in a sort of endless runner format.




Dis gon' be good. Stay tuned!

Grapple Locomotion Animation Pre-Vis

This is a locomotion test for the grappling hook in the game, Grapple.  Right now, the game is getting a bit of a rehaul, and part of that is the player locomotion.  We are shifting to a flowing movement using the grappling hook, and given a number of situations provided by the designers, I've been asked to depict how it should feel from a player's perspective.

It is all animated on twos and fours at 30 fps.  Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have the compression for accurate playback speed, but it is only an 'animated sketch' after all.

I drew out this simple environment, based on current concept art, and drew a path for the character to traverse.  I tried to include as many situations as possible; standing grapples, air grapples, swinging, enemy interaction, and most importantly, flowing movement.  I imagine it as parkour mixed with a grappling hook.

Walk Cycle Ball in Flash

The goal was to take the walk cycle from before and re-do it in Adobe Flash to learn how the Flash armatures worked.  It was a struggle, but I finally figured them out (after re-rigging my character numerous times) to the point where they functioned for me.  I added the bits and pieces to get a little more practice in.


I preferred the hand-drawn method better.  I had more control and could fudge more things, while this ended up feeling a little stiff.  The Flash armatures felt like they were just not quite there yet, but I feel like I could end up using them in the future and be happy.

Walk Cycle Ball Animation

We just had to do a walk cycle with just legs.  This just sort of evolved while I was working on the first part.  I wanted to do some run cycles, which is where the smaller leg balls came from.

Flour Sack and Squirrel Ball Animations

More animations!  I am loving 2D once again.  It's just feels so free.  The first is a flour sack, and again, I believe flour sacks are meant to be destroyed (and nearly our whole class' animations agreed.)




The second is just a simple character with appeal.  Originally, I was going to play up weight, but I instead wanted to focus on the movement and overlap on the squirrely tail and the hair.  I gave it some cartoon strength to push that massive rock, which ties in with my friend's character that gets hit by said rock.
 

More Bouncing Ball Animations

Here are my first two animations for FIEA.  It ended up being a bit of a review, so I tried to make it interesting.  The first one was a basic ball bounce.  On the second one, I wanted to play with overlapping action, so I did the quintessential tail ball.




I used a program called Plastic Animation Paper.  It is like a digital animation light table.  You can get it for free from their website.  I used it last year for planning out 3D animations, and I highly recommend it.

Walk Cycles

This assignment was to learn walk cycles, and apply the knowledge of arcs and overlapping action. We selected from several pre-modeled characters, so we could come back and animate them later. I decided to do a 3/4 view to make it more challenging.

Lipsync and Body Gesture Animation

The focus of this animation was on gesture, lipsync, and overlapping action. The sound is a clip from a sketch comedy TV show, and was drawn out of context for humor's sake.

Flour Sack Animation

The focus of this animation was on character. A flour sack, a emotionless, almost formless object, had to make a realistic jumping motions, and the animator had to visually give a reason to make the flour sack jump.

I was not the only person to 'kill' their flour sacks. For all, it proved to be an fun test of creativity to dispose of the flour sack in a humorous fashion on top of meeting the requirements of the assignment.

Suprise Teapot Animation

The point of this animation was to use a cycle (the pot shaking) and anticipation of the next action.  The ending was to be an unexpected event.  This project was interesting for me, as I generated a larger quantity of test frames than I used in my final shooting.

Though I fulfilled all of the requirements and received good marks, I was less content with the mundane and not-particularly-unique teapot in this project.

Bouncing Ball Animations

The bouncing ball, the quintessential first pencil-test for a beginning animation.  We had strict guidelines for our first bouncing ball, and then were given free reign to try different materials and bouncing surfaces.

 

Regular ball bounce on Ones, Twos, and Threes

Ball bounce off of a wall with contrasting materials

Ball bounce with more organic materials