Green Warden: Week 8 – Life Tree animations
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This week I have been working on animations for the life tree, which serves as the base for the player character, the dryad. The life tree is the source of all life in the jungle and when it dies, the jungle dies with it. (Also you lose the game :P) The life tree itself was made by Eva a couple of weeks ago and since then she has been busy drawing and animating enemies, so I got the task of animating the life tree. The life tree was made to reflect the dryad, with the same colors and similar patterns. It also has the same pink flowers that the dryad wears as decorations. I had two different animations that needed to be done this week; the idle animation and the seed spawning animation. I made the idle animation first, since I was honestly uncertain of how to make the seed spawning animation.
The idle animation is simple and is basically just the tree swaying back and forth, as if it is windy. I exaggerated the swaying a bit to make the animation more dynamic and also to signal that maybe the tree is moving on its own, and that it is not just the wind. For the seed spawn animation I decided to work more with the glow that surrounds the dryad. I felt like if it appears around the life tree as well as it is spawning seeds, that would make sense. The glow is a symbol of the life force of the forest, and making it more visible as a seed is spawning would feel natural.
So I made a glowing circle that surrounds the tree and moves up as the seed is being produced. The glow is fainter in the beginning, then grows stronger and then fades again. It almost looks like a progress bar! For now, I do not know how long it will take for a seed to spawn, but I think the animation could be modified if it needs to be faster or slower. I could simply add or remove some frames until it has the right speed. I have also begun working on the life tree dying animation, though I do not have anything to show so far. Much like the dryad, when the life tree dies it is supposed to wilt and its colors get desaturated. Eva made a dead version of the life tree as well, and I will try to make it the final frames of the dying animation.
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