Wolf
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One of the first enemies the players would encounter were wild wolves. I managed to acquire template images for running and jumping canines and based my animations on those templates for those specific animations. For the attack, heavy attack, idle, knockback and death animations I was forced to improvise based on the shape and size of the sprites in comparison to the skeleton of the wolf and references consisting of video materials depicting wolves in sanctuaries. I took some liberties when it came to these animations because of the fact that every animation was required to be able to loop. Wolves in the wild and in sanctuaries rarely repeat their movements and almost never stay in the same spot. One problem I encountered while animating the wolf was this: The wolves in the game were meant to be huge monster versions of wolves, almost as tall as the player characters. Because of the canine in the reference I had used to create the animations, particularly its size and weight, the wolves felt too light. Their walking animation resembled an animal that held its body in roughly the same place as it ran, something that would be impossible due to the proportions of the wolves in the game. As a result I had to take more liberties and revisit the animations in order to visualize the weight the wolves of that size would realistically have. The body of the wolf was lowered and the forelegs primarily were bent further, supporting it. To show that pushing the body up and forward was a strain to the legs of the wolf I let the legs linger bent and close to the ground as the body was raised, delaying the legs straightening and following the body upward. Because there were only four sprites assigned to four bones (canines anatomically have six bones in their fore legs and seven in their hind legs) they had to be animated as best they could to give the illusion of a natural movement while showing the weight of the beast.  |