That title couldn't be more accurate. I've been working on this basketball shot for a few hours. It is based off of a video of a great deke shot with this hilariously cocky exit from the guy with the ball. The blocking of the offensive player was easy, since he moved so dynamically. The defensive player was a little bit more subtle in their movement. All the same, it has a pretty good flow, though it still needs a bit of work:
So.... eventually I went on and did this. Yeah... running poops and toilet paper. Don't grow up, folks, life is way more fun that way.
The two Legion rigs are from the iAnimate rig libary
The poop rig (aptly named Shit rig) is from David O' Rilley's External World Character Rigs
This assignment was to do a run cycle. I've done a number of walk cycles already, of course, so I wanted to do something other than the standard humanoid I'm used to. This cute turtle ended up being an unexpected challenge. (Perfect!)
I knew I wanted to do multiple walks/runs from the beginning. I started with a walk, a run, and a sprint; which was more like a meander, a tired gallop, and a run. You can see the sprint in the progress reel, though I ended up taking it out before it went to far. Because of the size of his legs, it ended up being a little too similar to the run, and I had to do all of it in about 8 frames per step. I cut it out so I could focus on the longer walk and run, and get into all of the fun little details.
One thing that I am still not too sure if I made the right call, is the shell deformation. I had the option to leave it rigid, make it really soft and pliable, or what I ended up doing, hit somewhere in the middle. I did a number of tests just to see which one felt the most natural. Since he was not specifically a game model, I had some nice controls to make up for the fact that he isn't really designed to move in a full sprint.
Here's the scrapped WIP sprint, for good measure (of course, I didn't get too far):
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.
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.
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.
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.
FIEA was recently approached by the Make-A-Wish foundation to make a child's wish to create a video game. A number of the students volunteered to create a base for a game that we could work on. We put the framework together in about a week, while still working on our respective projects.
I decided to do a quick animation set for the character. A spell cast, a swing, a jump, and simple movement.
Also we got to eat lunch with him, shoot each other with our obligatory Nerf guns, and then we played a bit of League of Legends. He was a cool kid.
