Yet again another week on our Project of Day of the Piñata. We are moving steadily forward to an unknown future. This week I am working on the Piñata’s melee attack animation as well as their idle animations. What I will present to you is the Large piñata’s idle animation. Here it is in a poor quality gif!
The large Piñata differ from the small Piñata in color and design. It is because in our team we decided that we wanted that the largest piñata were going to have a bigger impact. It is bigger, it can destroy larger objects, it is more threatening! It’s appearance should communicate that as well. That is why the large piñata is a bull, because it is associated to be dangerous and trample things in it’s way. Bulls are typically associated with mexico as well as our game is taking place in. Moving on, the bull piñata was given sharp horns jutting forward making it dangerous for anyone in front of it. Overall it has more carper edges than the previous piñatas. And it has glowing eyes to illustrate that the evil spirit possessing the piñata is at it’s strongest.
Even when standing still I wanted the piñata to be threatening. A bull threatening to charge. Yet, I am limited to just be able to move certain parts of the piñata without bending them. It is the huge drawback of animating on a rig. So I did what I could.
Still working with animating with a rig in flash I made the middle folds of the piñata to move as if it was breathing. I added movement to the tail tassel and the trim to increase the “life” of the piñata since stretch and squash can’t be used in this. The head is moving up and down giving slight movement to the tassels on the sides of its head to increase the illusion of breathing. It made the piñata look rather alive and active, but it needed something more. In the group we have already early discussed the large piñata’s aesthetics, and making it have a flame-like inside illustrating the angry spirit within. So embers was added coming out of it’s nostrils when exhaling. It was made very simple in flash using motion tween. I made the ember glows follow a curvy line, growing and shrinking in size.
So there we have it. The idle animation of the Large Piñata.
Hejsan Emma! :D
ReplyDeleteIntressant läsning, du har ett väldigt bra språk tycker jag!
Jag gillar verkligen tjuren, du har lyckas få den att se scary ut! Om du vill jobba vidare med den har jag några förslag. Dels kan du göra så att den ibland blinkar, men inte för ofta. Då kommer den se mer levande ut men det kanske är meningen att den inte ska se för levande ut eftersom den är en piñata. Du kan också göra någonting med munnen, gör så att mungiporna rör sig lite för att få in liv :D
Sen är jag tveksam med eldbollarna, för för mig ser dom lite ut som fairys. Jag tror att en bra ide vore att göra moln från näsborrarna som krockar mot marken. Något i stil med detta fast kanske mindre överdrivet och snyggare: (och eftersom den inte gick att ladda upp här så skickar jag bilden till dig ;D)
Detta skulle göra tjuren ännu läskigare, för eldbollarna dödar lite den hostile feeling som jag förstår att du vill bygga upp. Så skippa bollarna. Jag tycker dock att den är snygg och läskig redan och jag börjar bli väldigt nyfiken på hur ert spel kommer att se ut, jag har sett väldigt mycket tjusig grafik från er grupp.
Blir spännande att se vad du gör nästa vecka! :D
First of all: I love this. I think it's absolutely awesome and it suits your games style and theme very well but as you said it looks a bit more frightening and mean.
ReplyDeleteI like that you describe why it looks different from the smaller piñata, knowing that a artist really thinks through everything as design, color, size and all small details(like the glowing eyes) is amazing and makes me really happy. I haven't seen much from your groups game but from what I have seen it feels like all the design decisions you have made have been really thought-through and seeing this blog post proves it.
There is a few things you could have added to this post, for example, how many frames is it? You could have added the sprite sheet to give us an overlook, and as a programmer I'm interested in how many sprites it is to make it look like in your gif. I'm also wondering if you encounter any problems with making this piñata, was it more difficult than anything else in the game? How long did it take to make it? Did you have to remake it a lot of times?
And of course I would have loved to see a screenshot of the piñata implied in the game to see how it looks in the right environment and see what the player is going to see in the final version.
But over all this is a very good blog post, good luck in the future to make the game!