Project Haunted Light 14-02-20

Another week has passed, and it feels like the time is flying by. Our group have been working dedicatedly for the presentation tomorrow. It feels like it was just yesterday that we sat down and looked through the design documents for Bloody Badgers, realizing that we had a lot of tweaking to do. This week I’m focusing on animating the smaller critters that are to roam the corridors of the basement. The critters don’t hurt the player, but will slow the players’ movement speed.

The critter concepts have been many. The group quickly decided on making them insect or spider-esque, as insects and arachnids (spiders) are animals that are creepy or scary to most people. This is also a way to define the critters as smaller and less dangerous, not capable of inflicting damage, compared to the bigger monster with more humanoid features. I’m rather fond of insects and arachnids, and have long wanted to create an eight-legged walk cycle. The spiders’ walk cycle did, as expected, prove to be more difficult to grasp than the ordinary walk.

I watched and studied many images and videos of spiders in order to see how their legs moved. My first try at animating it wasn’t quite as successful as it could have been. The legs looked flat and upside-down, and changed in size in an odd way. Consulting Richard Williams “The Animators Survival Kit”, a book and a series of cd-lectures that I warmly recommend to any animator, old as new, I found some great tips and tricks to use.

For the second try I coloured the pairs of legs in different colours so that it would be easier to distinguish them from each other. Instead of moving each pair separately, the spider now move the first and third pair of legs in unison, whilst the second and fourth pair moved together, countering the first pair. This went a lot better, and the legs felt like they moved more realistically even though there were still things to fix and change.

The legs were changes and moved slightly to make the movement more believable. Looking at the test animation the group then decided on making the body a bit slimmer, as the roundness of the first test made the spider look softer and kinder than we wanted it to. The legs were made slimmer and pointier to further enhance the creepiness of the critter. Shadows were added beneath the spider to clarify which legs were touching the ground, and which were lifted.

The spider still felt a tad stiff, but that was quickly fixed by making the body move together with the legs.

I wish all of the groups’ good luck with their Alphas, and I look forward to seeing the presentations of the games!

Have a great weekend!

MPh out.