Animating the archer
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My by far biggest artefact for this week has been to create and animate the archer sprite for our game. The archer is a static enemy that shoots ranged projectiles at the player, so I was spared from animating a walk cycle. On the other hand, I have clearly underestimated how to animate from a top-down perspective. Making animations loop nicely, on top of that, also proved to be difficult even though it is an issue I have faced before. For this artefact I used Photoshop. The three different animations I made in the end were one idle, one attack and one reload animation.I animated the sprite using frame by frame animation, although differently than I have done in my previous animations. Instead of drawing each frame with new lineart, I drew the sprite in several different layers. The layers consisted of one separate object each, such as the hat, the shoulders, the arms, the crossbow etc. Each part had its own layer, making it possible for me to move them around separately. I grouped all of the layers into one folder in Photoshop, which would make it easier for me to keep track of every frame. When animating, I duplicated the group and moved all of the layers slightly within that new group, then repeated the process for each separate frame. This saved me a lot of time, as I did not have to animate each frame separately with new lineart and colors. The bad side of animating like this is that the animation looks stiff and lifeless. Nothing in the animation really changes except the position of every frame.
The reason for animating in this manner is, however, due to several reasons. One is that it saved me time. I wouldn’t have time to finish the archer sprite this week if every animation was to be animated with new lineart for each frame. Also, it would match up with the other enemy sprite, the farmer, that was also animated in this manner however not by me. It makes the style coherent and makes it seem as if the graphics of our game was drawn by one person instead of two. Regarding my design choices, I had to make it obvious that it was a ranged enemy. To do this, I made sure that the crossbow was large enough for the player to quickly identify it. The crossbow bolt, drawn by the other graphic artist on our team, was also enlarged in the reload animation so that it will not be too small and invisible to the player. I also gave the archer a Robin Hood-esque hat that typically would belong to an archer of some kind.
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