For week 7's challenge, we had to create at least two key animations for our game project, and integrate them into our game engine.
As usual, before starting the challenge, I studied the week's reading materials and lectures and looked through a variety of other suggested sources.
To ensure that my in-game sprite animation would 'pop' as I envisioned, I followed the 12 Principles of Animation by Thomas and Johnston (1995):
SQUASH AND STRETCH - This is where characters are squashed and stretched to emphasise specific movements, for example in a platform game it could be applied jumping and landing states.
I've used the squash and stretch here for the enemy pumpkin idle state.
ANTICIPATION - In game terms this is the preceding animation before the actual 'action' animation. For example a monster roaring before attacking
I've given this pumpkin a surprised state before going into the attack state.
STAGING - by showing characters from their best angles you can help to make their actions more readable, as well as more visually pleasing.
I've used staging here to show the Bat Goblin enemy at its best angle to create a recognisable silhouette as well as flying animation.
STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE - are two types of animation. Straight ahead is frame by frame, where as Pose to Pose is keyframes 'tweened' together usually by the game engine.
I've used the straight ahead method to create looping animations and then adjusted the sprite's bounding box and point of origin in Game Maker Studio 2 to make sure the separate combined animations look and feel consistent.
FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION - Used to make movement feel natural and believable, for example hair flow when walking, running and jumping.
I've tried to create a follow through and overlapping action with both the arm swing and bobbing hat.
SLOW IN AND SLOW OUT - is used to create realistic/believable motion, this can affect gameplay (un-responsive controls) so usually best handled through coding rather than animation.
ARCS -These are used for fast motions such as dashing and sword slashes to make the motion appear smoother.
SECONDARY ACTION - Secondary actions are extra or supporting animations to the main movement animation. In game terms they can be classed as a screenshake effect when an attack makes impact, flashing after damage has been taken or a change in facial expression when making an attack.
With this taking damage animation, I've added added additional facial expressions and dust movements. During gameplay the character's portrait also changes to a hurt state to further emphasise the damage.
TIMING - This is all about the frames per second, with pixel art it is usual to have lower framerates as they are usually animated frame by frame and the more frames you have, the more will draw and animate (increasing the workload).
In Game Maker, you can set the overall framerate of the game and then adjust individual sprites animation framerates. Both of these examples (idle and attacking states) use different framerates due to their varying frame usuage - with the idle animation using less frames and needing a much lower framerate to remain smooth.
EXAGGERATION - Exaggeration in animation very much depends on the style you are looking to achieve, for example if you are looking for a more cartoon like feel you will over exaggerate most movements, whereas if you are wanting to keep things looking realistic you will tone down the animation and keep the movements as close to real life as possible.
As the style I'm going for is more cartoon-like, I've made sure to over exaggerate the various movements where possible. With the animations above, I've attempted to give the scarecrow a friendly, happy go lucky walk to emphasise his un-awareness and happy character. Likewise, with the death animation I've over emphasised his brittleness with a leg break and straw spilling everywhere.
SOLID DRAWING - is the illusion of making 2D art look and feel 3D. There are various ways to achieve this in game development through the use of in-engine animation tools and 3rd party FX tools.
I've chosen to not go down this (3rd part FX tools) route, however, I've looked to give depth to the game world by layering up foreground and background sprites around the player and enemy layers. I've also added parallax scrolling to create additional depth.
APPEAL - What players find appealing is subjective, and varies greatly with game genre, but characters should have an interesting shape and silhouette, and an emotive face you can see during gameplay (Lobb, 2021).
I've tried to keep as close to my source material (8 and 16-bit platformers) as possible and create a unique and appealing player character alongside some unusual enemies. I'm happy with the results in general, but as already mentioned - this is subjective!
Reflection:
I've really enjoyed the challenge activity this week and I believe I've produced some of my best work so far and worked to the 12 principles pretty accurately.
Luckily, 2D animation is one of my main strengths and I have a good base knowledge as I have studied this previously and also had some reasonable experience with this when working on personal game projects in the past. This has definitely been advantageous and helped me save time with workflows and designs.
However, it's also been challenging adapting my designs and animations to fit around the 'pre-made' behaviours and states of the Game Maker Studio 2 tutorial that I've used to create the game.
Going forward, I hope to make adjustments to these to allow for additional animations.
References:
Week 7: Art Direction for Indie Games: Game Development IGD720 20/21 Part-Time Study Block S2. n.d. Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/921/pages/week-7-the-12-principles-of-animation?module_item_id=49630 [accessed 12 Mar 2021].
Lobb, I. (2021). THE 12 PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
IN GAMES
Video Game Animation Study (2018). The Importance of Keyframes / Run Cycles. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJosaT1sCfs [Accessed 12 Nov. 2020].
Williams, R. (2012). The animator’s survival kit. London: Faber And Faber.
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