Sky slug on the move
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This week I’ve primarily been animating the first enemy for our game, Aetherial. The design idea for our version of the sky slug, an enemy that of course was a part of the original aetherial concept document, came from a mix between our lead artist’s original idea and then some alterations by me. The sky slug is meant to swarm the player but be fairly weak and easy to kill individually. I wanted to represent this in its design in several ways. Firstly, based on the original sketch by our previously mentioned lead artist, as well as the idea that it is a swarming and fast moving enemy, I knew I wanted to make it slim and pointy. Secondly, I wanted to show it in the way it moves. I gave it a very quick wing-flapping cycle to make it look more energetic and erratic. Here is a video showing the animation: The flying itself is supposed to look unnatural and is supposed to look like a combination between how a bat flies and how certain fish swim, the reason for this odd goal is pretty straight forward. First of all, again, it is supposed to be an erratic, swarming flyer, so at least for me, bats spring to mind. The swimming part is because it is a sky slug, which of course is a flying version of a sea slug. Animation-wise, there is some squashing and stretching going on with the tail, and I tried to have the head and wings moving in arcs. The tip of the tail also has a bit of follow-through going on, so does the mouth (or lower jaw). This week I also found a new way of working with animations in Photoshop that helped my flow (and more importantly, how quickly I can finish an animation) significantly. Basically, where I before had drawn every single line by hand and, me being fairly new to Photoshop, often did too much in the same layer, colouring and animating was a pain. Now I made the head shape, which I knew would stay the same throughout the animation, and copy-pasted it throughout my animation. I also learned how to quickly make outlines, a tool which proved very handy as our games art-style has a distinct outline and thickness to it. I actually had a slightly different version of the slug before, the one that some of you may have seen during the playtests and alpha presentation. The designs are basically the same, but the way I made the first one made it such a pain to colour and animate (as I previously mentioned) that when I found this new way of animating I finished this entire animation in less time than it had taken me to do the first 5 frames of the old one. Here is the old version of the slug, for comparison:  |
