Game Two & the Indefinite Hiatus

Idle

Run Cycle

So, I guess the game I was working on has been put on indefinite hiatus. It was way too large in scope for a first game, which is a shame because I think it had the potential to be a unique, narrative-driven action platformer.

Loop-based animation was a new experience for me and it was not uncommon for me to scrap weeks worth of finished animation and redo everything.

Here are a couple cycles I did for the Player character. Almost all of her actions were animated and implemented.

I think I got the run cycle right on the first try (although I did small revisions) which was a pleasant surprise because although I did a very rough pencil test, the final animation was done in pieces, with the head, hair and gun on seperate pages without proper registration. I probably should have animated everything Flash, but I couldn't deal with its drawing tools.  

The idle animation took two tries; the first take was a really busy bounce with a jerky left and right motion. In the end, a simple up and down looked much better. I spent a day in Photoshop doing the final lines only to discover that the secondary actions were seriously mis-timed. The rest of the night was a frantic nightmare, replanning the timing on post-it notes and redrawing the elements over and over. The hair and the zipper could be animated better but I'm happy with the result, especially at the final size on the iPod/iPhone screen.

Animation revisions in Photoshop are a serious mindfuck, digging through hundreds of layers with masks to make minute changes and the PS animation tool is kinda quirky, with changes in later frames affecting earlier frames.

Aggro - Exploded View

This enemy character still hasn't been implemented in game so I don't know if it needs revisions. I suspect that it may...