Animation style.

Animation.



The character sprites are coming along nicely. Originally I wanted the characters to have a very realistic puppet movement with the individual sections of the characters being drawn on separate layers in Toon Boom then animated by rotating and moving the individual parts. This is the closest I could get to building a puppet in 2D.

After looking at the test animations done by the always wonderful debs I found that this style of animation was very boring and difficult to exaggerate, the characters stood out far too much from the background losing the overall effect I wanted. I deserted this flat animation style and will now animate the motions in individual drawn frames. deb will do the animations as roughs and I will draw the character out frame by frame over the top. This should preserve the free flowing style I want. The character will bend and move in ways his joints may not allow although hand drawn animation can bend these rules of physics.

Sam.

(For more of debs animation work look here)

The walking priest.

After cutting up my character and building it back as individual pieces (much like a real puppet is built) debs animated the character to my specification. Debs animation is fantastic and she picked this up really fast (kudos madam).

With the animating now in full swing I hope to get more of these up here soon. To see more of Debs beautiful work just look here.

Sam

The art team.

Tuesday!

Today has been fantastic and the game has really come together, I'll elaborate.

Today after a few leviathan team meetings the team all undertook individual roles, the team was picked with specific jobs in mind and there work has been fantastic. I while involved with every aspect of the games design and look have taken a more directorial position. Max is drawing the game backrounds and deborah is animating the characters.

Most of today I was redrawing the characters as individual pieces to put together and animate in toon boom. Toon boom gives a great cut out puppet effect animation that was exactly what I was looking for although I began animating using photoshop and then debs freehanded it. lots of experimenting to get the proper look.

The game Is now moving forward at a great pace and After a few sprites and backrounds are done I'll move on to game maker which will give a nice system of three.

Also today the game underwent yet another large iteration plotwise and puzzle wise that has really changed gameplay for the better, this is largely due to the team being able to build designs I would have found difficult and time consuming. Im now going to write out a full walk-through of the puzzles and what art pieces will need to be made then onwards! 

Animation work for in game.

This week the incredibly talented Deborah Jane Price put together the games opening animation sequence, this will play in game and visually communicate the narrative, Im not going to post the final animation but I will say its a fantastic little animation and I hope to see more of her work up here soon. - sam