Week 6: Animations

Enough with the details already!! I got 2 animations done, one is the shooting sequence (both guard and player) And the other one is a strangling sequence. First of I started with a fast sketch just to see if it would look good (I learned from reading Mikaela Mobergs Blog). And yes, it was a helpful strategy! So first I had the sketch then I started to color it.

Here you have the sketch (its not going to be running this fast):

The thing here is that I wanted it to be like a strong blast when he shoots, so therefor I drew a circle before the actual shot. Making the gun “charge” power before shooting away a colored projectile. After I tested the theory and deciding on the length of the animation I started to add some color to it. I used this sketch as a build so that I could divide it into to different animations, one for the player and one for the enemy guard. Here you can see how the refined animation  for the “Spy” (player) looks like (i just noticed that i missed drawing the line on his right arm, oops!):

I then used the same technique to draw the strangling animation. This one was more tricky because I had to think of two movements at the same time, and adding the details together, I wanted to make them both wiggle a lot more but was advised not to (I am being over ambitious I guess ). This was the most tiring task because I had a bit of a struggle with Photoshop, and this is my first time animating characters, if I moved one thing wrong I had to redo everything! Here you go (wiggle for this fine… Reader):

We discussed the use of the gun before, as you can see, the animation for shooting above is put in a loop. This wont be how it would play out in the game, the thing is that we wont be using more than two charges for the gun (two rounds of fire), otherwise this wont be a stealth game and the player can just run around shooting everything  (we tried it and yes, there is no point in sneaking if you can shoot your way through). So in order to make the game balanced, we give the player limited resources for shooting and you also need to find the gun to be able to use it. There is more, if you choose to use the gun you will emit larger circles of sound and alert other guards and they will start looking for you, in this way you know that you should only use the gun in case of emergency.

For tomorrow I will be needing to finish the last animation, that is hitting with a baton, and color it.

I know that I shouldn’t write this but, I really don’t like animating this haha! Wish me good luck!