Serfs

The serfs required even less time and work than the wedding guests. For the actual animation, at least. More sprites had to be organized, rescaled and cropped in Photoshop before being implemented but not as much work was necessary in order to animate them. The scene consisted of three serfs working a huge bellow for Ilmarinen’s smithy. They only needed one animation: The serfs had to hold a rod for the bellow, going up and down with it. This animation […]

Wedding guests

As planned from the moment of animating Väinämöinen the sprites of the wedding guests were assigned to a previously existing skeleton. However, they were assigned to the skeleton used to animate Ilmarinen, not Väinämöinen, since Ilmarinen’s skeleton was more sophisticated than Väinämöinen’s. Väinämöinen, for example, lacked a neck, since it would not be visible behind his beard. Rather, the male wedding guests were assigned to Ilmarinen’s skeleton. For the female ones I created a new skeleton exclusively for their models, […]

Wolf

One of the first enemies the players would encounter were wild wolves. I managed to acquire template images for running and jumping canines and based my animations on those templates for those specific animations. For the attack, heavy attack, idle, knockback and death animations I was forced to improvise based on the shape and size of the sprites in comparison to the skeleton of the wolf and references consisting of video materials depicting wolves in sanctuaries. I took some liberties […]

Frog Boss

After having studied the movements and the anatomy of frogs jumping I began animating the frog boss. Because the anatomy of the wolf had not been as correct as it could have been the Character Designer and I worked together to make sure that the frog enemies would be able to be animated properly. The frog boss was the final enemy the players would have to defeat in order to complete the vertical slice. Given that, he had to be […]

Frog Minion

With the frog minion I had the exact opposite task as with the wolf. In this case the smaller frog enemy had to become lighter than its sibling. Since all animations that were needed for the minion was already created for the boss I merely had to refer to the animations of the latter. Because the anatomy of the two frogs, in terms of the size, scale and shape of the sprites, was different enough to require two separate skeletons […]

Väinämöinen

The first character I provided animations for was Väinämöinen. In the Finnish national epic Väinämöinen is the bard immortal. He is birthed, already an old and wise man, from a celestial being laying in the ocean and washed ashore, where he proceeds to use his magical voice to sing trees and vegetation to the world. Väinämöinen is inherently magical and he uses song to shape the world or summon objects or beings into existence.
He was one of the playable characters […]

Ilmarinen

When all animations for Väinämöinen were completed I duplicated the file I was working in and deleted the sprites used for him. I then replaced them with the sprites created for Ilmarinen. In the Finnish national epic Ilmarinen is the master smith. He is the one who forged the sky, so masterfully that there are no seems or traces of nippers nor hammer, among other magical items. He is also a very close friend of Väinämöinen.
Due to some minor differences […]

Learning Spriter

The first task that was assigned to me was to learn how to properly use Spriter as a tool for animation. For previous projects I had been using both Adobe Flash as well as Adobe Photoshop for animation. Even though neither of said programs provide tools for animating exclusively frame-by-frame, that was how I had primarily operated. What this means is that I had worked by drawing a figure in one frame and then had to draw the same figure […]

Serfs

The serfs required even less time and work than the wedding guests. For the actual animation, at least. More sprites had to be organized, rescaled and cropped in Photoshop before being implemented but not as much work was necessary in order to animate them. The scene consisted of three serfs working a huge bellow for Ilmarinen’s smithy. They only needed one animation: The serfs had to hold a rod for the bellow, going up and down with it. This animation […]

”In a [alien tongue] ravaged by [plant tables] our only solace is [different colored tiles]”

Okay so for this week I finished up Alien02 by giving it a tongue.

The tongue comes in two parts: the body and the head. The body is supposed to be stretched out while the head will just look menacing as it is extruded towards the player. There are barely any details on either the head or the body of the tongue simply because they need to be so small that details really does not fit on them. […]

Kill your darlings

So for this week I animated the death animation for Alien 02. The animation shows how the alien either melts, vanishes into thin air, or is simply vaporized by the player. We can also see how the alien’s metallic spine strains together, into what looks like a liquid ball of whatever material the spine is made out, and is violently split into four projectiles that are launched away from the remains of the alien.
When I looked at the blog post […]

Open wide

This week I finished Alien 02’s primary attack animation.
The alien, unlike its predecessor, will not fire projectiles but will instead extrude its tongue in an attempt to latch on to the player character. The tongue will do damage over time and paralyze the player, making them unable to react; move or fire for a certain period of time. The tongue will also pull the player character towards the alien’s mouth and if the player character is close enough to the […]