Huge Update (Pt.2 : Characters)

Character updates! (Part 2 of huge update series)

So today I'll be talking about the characters I've designed and their animations! :D

First up I'll talk about Ray (that's our main character)

Firstly, when I designed Ray, I wanted Ray to be a very simple character in contrast to the other characters the player will encounter throughout the game. The main reason was because I wanted Ray to stand out as a character and he had to be different from everyone else. So in order to do that, I decided to give Ray a monochrome look. (B&W) 

Right after designing Ray, I realised that he was really PLAIN. There was nothing worth remembering about him. I actually liked that for a moment but I decided that he needed something on him to make him look iconic. Yeah. Iconic.

So I added a red scarf :D

And... I guess it was perfect. He looked much more iconic in my own opinion and I felt it added a certain touch to the character itself. After designing his look, I went straight down into his animations (He would have a running animation and a command(!) animation)

So firstly, I decided to do the running animation for him.

.......

I had no freaking idea on how to start for his animation.

So I went to find my best friend (Google) and googled run cycles. And hey I found this!

It seemed pretty cool, so I decided to follow that run cycle and did a 12 frame animation for Ray's running.

Here it is! :D

So yeap! That's what I did for Ray's running animation. So let's move on to his command! animation :D

Basically, Ray is the main leader of the crew and so whenever the crew encounters an enemy, Ray would be there giving the orders. I decided to add a short animation for that as it will be used quite often in the game (Players will encounter many enemies and bosses)

So I went to watch one character that I know will do this action very often. Phoenix Wright. :D 

I searched around for his animations and I realised the closest there is would be the Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom game. Before every fight, Phoenix Wright will point towards the enemy and taunt the enemy. I loved that animation so... I decided to follow it. :D

So here it is! :D

So yup! that's it for now for Ray and his animations :D 

Next up, I'll talk about his crew member, Squiddy! 

The trusty squid

Armored Up!

Ready to kill!

So here it is! :D Squiddy! Squiddy will be Ray's first and most trustworthy ally. I remember talking quite a bit about his design on a post before so right now I'll jump into his animation instead :D

So.. Firstly I wanted to do a cool idle animation for squiddy. But there was one problem. He's a freaking squid. 

I DON'T KNOW HOW SQUIDS IDLE. (gosh)

So i just went to watch a couple of weird squid videos (which proved to be quite useless)

So i just went straight down into animating the idle.

An idling squid!

So yeap! I tried animating it and boy was I surprised when it looked pretty good :D

I was pretty happy with the result but it had some problems regarding the corresponding movement of the tail and the body. 

Apparently I had tunnel vision and I couldn't see the problem that was right there. Squiddy was bouncing and moving his tail at the same pace! He looked so mechanic. I asked Puvan to look at it and he pointed out that the tail was moving in sync with the body. So I mixed up the frames of the tail and so I ended up with the gif above. :D so yeap! it looked so much better than before :)

One bigger challenge than this was the moving animation. oh god the moving animation is really abysmal. :(

Yup. 

Yeah. 

It looks pretty crappy .__.

But man, after sending it to Puvan for him to integrate it into the game. it looked pretty rad :D

So we went with it :) but I'll definitely come back to this animation and fix it in the future :(

That's pretty much it for Squiddy! :D a more detailed explanation about the design of squiddy can be found in older posts :D

Next up! Enemy #1! 

(yes, he doesn't have a name yet. But everyone calls it a squirrel. *sigh*)

Just idling around~

Attacking with his saliva!

Aww, it's dead :(

Yup! so here is... yeah... uhm. Squirrel. (sounds better than enemy #1) 

Well, the idle animation is pretty normal, so I won't talk much about it :/

When i first created... Squirrel, I wanted him to resemble a form of mutated whale. (a whale with legs)

I wanted this really lazy and giant-y look on it so that explains his really slow gaping mouth. I feel the animation for his tail was pretty weird though, but I just went with it (for now) 

More importantly, enemies are for combat! so let's move on to his attack animation!

So this is the attack animation for... Squirrel. :D

(ignore the static Squirrel after the attack animation, he'll move back to idle while the goo moves)

When I begun animating the attack, I already had this idea in my mind where the the enemies attack would not be direct. It would have this really lazy and haphazard attack which would look less menacing but just as deadly when it strikes :D

SO, I made use of Squirrel's gaping mouth and made it spit out this luminous blue-ish goo/saliva stuff that will eventually evolve into a whale and crash down upon the crew.

What I had in mind was that, the enemy's attack was actually a older version of itself. His old whale form before he mutated and eventually became land bound and... became a squirrel. .__.

Well, no time to lose! i'll move onto the next animation! his (unfortunately) death animation :(

So here it is. Time to say goodbye to the Squirrel :(

What inspired me to do this animation was basically Kill la kill (yes an anime). One of the main "losing animation" in the series was that whenever someone loses a fight, their clothing would fade away and there would be this life thread kind of thing that will flow away and be absorbed by the main character. 

(yes, my explanation is bad)

So basically I liked that idea and I added that to Squirrel's death. The squirrel will glow white and will deconstruct via losing pixels. And these pixels will form into a swirl which will then flow into nothingness as a small thread. :'( a sad death but I have to say I the idea :D

Next up! Boss # 1 !

(yeah no name for it yet too :O)

Yup! So this is Bossy (for now) :D

For bossy, I just wanted him to look like the alpha. the huge guy that controls the others. So I went back to it's roots. A WHALE. >:( (no more "OMG IT'S A SQUIRREL!" stuff!)

Bossy a way way way larger mouth (yup gaping mouth) and yup. TO ME, he just looks pretty freaking badass. XD

As for bossy's attack animation. I wanted to show he was the king, the alpha. I decided to go for the "indirect but still deadly" attack style that Squirrel had. Bossy initially shoots out a small whale (yup really small one) and also a small little thread. This thread that will circle the top of the whale for a few seconds before becoming a HUGE ASS SHARK that will devour the small whale and crash into the crew. How badass is that XD

Next up would be the death animation. (pretty sad IMO)

So apparently I had this idea in mind where all bosses are actually small little pets XD heheheh.

Yup, I wanted to add this mechanic whereby the crew actually gets to collect them whenever the crew defeats any of the bosses. 

SO there would be this inventory system whereby the player can access this screen where the "bosses" are bouncing around and just doing their own stuff, all in a small portable tank XD

But yeah, that system isn't in yet. Still, I hope to see it come to life one day :D

That's pretty much it for the death animation D:

Next up! Crew actions during combat!

For both actions, I wanted to show the feedback of their actions to feel like they have an impact so I opted for a larger animation. For the attack, I animated this huge sword that will swing backwards and strike down on the enemy. For the defending animation, I just added a huge shield that will break open the ground in front of the crew and fly up before crashing down on the ground. This shield will be pretty huge so it will convince the player that they can block whatever that is coming :D

That's pretty much it for the characters part of my update! :D

Next up! Interactive objects!! :D