Archive for the ‘Illustrations’ Category

Broken Bones

I’m kind of all over the place lately. Sorry about that.

 

 

 

I think I can get away with any level of paintery-ness I’m comfortable with if I just use my dark outlines properly. I’m not sure about the map mock up, but I’m thinking it probably is best to cut down on the painted style for the characater animations. Makes the mesh tweaking look better. The cel-shaded is also nice contrast on a slightly more painted background/map.

 

I guess the answer I came up with is basically cartoony with wiggle room style wise to get as close to serious as we want or need to at the drop of a hat with no.. real set backs. We can pretty much be whatever. always.

 

Tell a Friend

I’ve been gone for a bit, but I’d never desert you. Let’s talk mood and tone.

 

The development cycle of this game has been pretty stupid, in that we have done things in a terrible order. Or rather, I have done things in a terrible order. Hawk tries to blame himself for a lot of this, and that’s fine. He can have all the blame he wants. <3   Ideally, I would have made several usable style mock-ups for this game. In reality, I've made next to none. This is a huge blow to my credibility, I should definitely known better. In that spirit, it's never too late to start, especially since uh. How the game functions keeps shifting in ways that will require me to redo certain things.. functionally. Maybe this is all Hawk’s fault!

 

Okay, let’s tackle this problem like adults and start from the top with a simple question: Do we have anything that is definitely locked-in and can’t be changed because it would be a monumental waste of time? The short answer (dontyellatme) is no, not really, not from a tone perspective anyway. YES, the art for the animation is pretty locked-in and I ain’t redoin’ it. However, recoloring the body pieces or adjusting the way the heads looks if need be is not a big deal. So, with the answer of “no” in place, let’s explore a bit. I don’t think this is a game that can have a super serious art style or tone. We’re all basically agreed on that.

 

 

 

 

 

Surprise!

While my cohorts won’t admit it (at least not to my face (but probably more as a tool to keep me moving)), the way the base animation looked needed some love. Both structure-wise and painting-wise. Since I was faced with the task of basically redoing my Spine project, I figured now was the perfect time to kill some birds.

 

The first step was to adjust my default standing position. The old one was just the first frame of the only animation that existed at the time, but it’s kind of a bitch to work with. A much better idea would be to draw the character standing a little more normally. So let’s do that real quick!

 

 
Balls for hands and feet – The #1 sign of a lazy artist

 

What’s this?! Surprise, women! And surprise, all pieces completely redrawn and proportioned better! Ho-Ho. They are also drawn a lot larger than the old version. Yeah, I know, even my old version was way bigger than we’re putting them in game. I think Hawk said he was resizing the old one by around 80%. Yikes. So why would I take the time and trouble to make full version even larger? It’s just easier to work with, get off my back old man. Here’s the back view, ’cause I’m generous.

 


Butts & Ammo

 

Okay, so now what? After some quick alignment tests in Spine to make sure I drew all the pieces the right sizes to prevent overlapping, it’s time to do some paintin’. Oh boy, my favorite. Oh, and actually drawing the hands and feet. Lazy, lazy.

 

 
Some of the lines on the male chest have been erased and edited ’cause I forgot too before saving this. Also, the female torso is a different size than the male so doesn’t line up perfectly right here. Pretend it does! (’cause it does)

 

Now everything looks good again! Excite! From here, I do a heavy amount of work in Spine. I convert several of the body pieces into meshes to help remove gaps in the animation. I’ve also gone ahead and properly set up the skins in spine, so switching from male to female during any of the animations is as easy as clickin’ a button. After all the meshes are made, it’s time to recreate all the animations again. This is probably the easiest and hardest part of this process.

 

 
boing. This are 50% of sketch size

 

Keep in mind these are nowhere near finished animations. I did this animations super fast just to kind of get a feel that I was on the right track and that my meshes were working properly. The left upper arm still need some tweaking, just a little too bulky at the top and I can’t mesh that away.

 

I have a few things left to do here that I was hoping I’d have enough time to finish before this blog went up, but I guess I don’t. I still have to paint the North set and mesh it, then do the the animations proper again. None of these are the daunting task that I thought redrawing everything was though, so I’m very pleased with the speed and quality I managed to do this at.

 

 

I did in less than a week what took me more than a year to do the first time. I’ll just let that sink in.