Game Development –Introduction: Week 7
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So this week…This week I had the impeccable timing to get sick, which lines up perfectly with the Beta-deadline this Friday . That means there is not as much to talk about as I would like but I have worked on the second enemy type. So, the second enemy type is the Ranged type. While designing this enemy type I applied the principles we learned about creating a distinct silhouettes and adjusting function to form. So where the Melee enemy is thick and stout with a lot of muscle and a hammer, the Ranged enemy is lanky and tall with a rifle. Compare the two linearts (the melee enemy is intended to be more “compressed” in-game):
Next up came deciding the color-scheme. The enemy types both wear grey-toned armor (albeit with slightly different patterns) to keep them looking cohesive but where the melee enemy is lilac and red (to make it look more fierce), the ranged enemy is more turqoise and brown, colors that contrast well both against the other enemy type and against the more saturated forest-green and olive hues of the plants and background. Still arts of both for comparison:
Since we had previously decided that the enemies would have “automatonic” details on them the melee enemy received the metal jaw. With that in mind it was pretty close to hand to draft the rifle of the Ranged type onto the arm, which would also give them a more distinct walking style that would end up being slower than that of the Melee enemy. Below is a very rough concept of what that walk cycle could look like and the melee enemy’s walk cycle for comparison:
The idea is that the character would walk similarly to someone using one crutch. I want to re-work that sketch before cleaning it up, exaggerating the lean toward the side with the firearm (pun intended) and generally making it more sluggish to contrast against the melee enemy’s purposeful, energetic walking style. I would also exaggerate the squash and stretch, making the character lean more into the steps. As a skill animation, the ranged type will lift the arm with the weapon, supporting it with the other hand and fire straight forward. I want to re-cap a little bit to the previous blog post about the skill animation for the melee enemy (which is now finished, although not re-worked based on the feedback we received yesterday and can be seen below:
The skill animation (drawn frame by frame) turned out a lot better than the walk animation where I mostly dragged around body-parts to create the walk-cycle. Since we’re working with such a low number of frames (6 for most animations), drawing the frames by hand did take more time, but not as much as you’d expect, especially not when working with layers where color effects, light and shadow can be reproduced fairly quickly. So that is the method I’ll be using for the skill animation of the ranged enemy type as well. What that means for the project in general however is that, since I focus on completing one enemy at a time (still art, walk animation, skill animation), it will not be done and implemented for the Beta-presentation. Hopefully it can be achieved for the final hand-in and that’s something we’ll need to address next week. Live long and prosper!  |
