Tubthumping with the Chumbawambas

This week, the main focus for me has been the doubling of the frames of a bunch of sprite sheets, since we accidentally finished making all the core sheets that we needed, and of course since we can’t be seen just twiddling our thumbs, it’s polishing time!

This artifact in particular is the sheet depicting the almost phoenixian rise from the proverbial ashes of unconsciousness that can befall any unwary guard, should he fail to notice our intrepid player character creeping up behind him, sap in hand and violence in mind, striking quick and running away quicker.

And thus does the guard awaken after his long slumber, with aching head and wounded pride, but luckily for him his trusty flashlight never rolls away too far for him to grab, letting him return to his standard standing frame without too much hassle, ‘course afterwards he’ll become properly activated by the strange and arcane rituals of coding leading to him drawing his weapon, but that’s a story for another time.

Now then, the doubling of frames has been a foreign concept to me, but then again so has 2d animation in been general so once again I turned to the harsh but fair powers of ”learn by doing”, trusting in its benevolence and the fact that even if it’d turn out bloody awful at least I would learn something from the experience.

The actual work process was mainly copying and pasting parts of neighboring frames to make them fit the squiggly black lines added on the layer above denoting how things should be placed before mending the gaps and adding details with the brush in order to try and achieve the illusion of a smooth, sleek and dare one say breathing human being.

Now obviously I failed at that, with our revived friend still being more of a Mr. Roboto than Mr. Guard, but it’s getting there, slowly and surely.

At least the arm isn’t making that odd jerky motion it did in its previous incarnation, now that was creepy.

As for the giving of some sort of justification as to why this particular artifact and its unmentioned brethren was given my chaotic yet undivided attention this week, without blowing it off with an silly comment about thumb-twiddling or going on an as yet thought of rant in the middle of the night, one would have to be a better word-smith than me, that’s for sure.

But anyway, it has been somewhat made, although looking closer at it some more work is needed at the feet, however there are plenty of days left in the week for finishing that as well as the rest of the batch in good time, so stop worrying about it Stig!

No one was Kung-Fu Fighting

Sometimes nothing goes well, this is one of those times.

Imagine thus, like thunder from a clear sky comes the command – “Gosh, the main character should like totally be able to attack the guards or something like that, you know! You there, you look unoccupied, go make an animation for it, chop chop!”

Which leads us to the matter of the artifact of the day, namely today’s attempt at making the male main character’s attack animation.

And once again all that is given on this blog is a sprite sheet, partly because of time constraints but mainly because this version simply isn’t good enough to be GIF’d and would cause grievous harm to the brain’s cerebral cortex.

But I digress, the command had been given so there was nothing to it but to start working.

The first notion was to try and simulate some sort of bare-handed technique, with strangling being thrown out of the window straight away because of a multitude of reasons which I won’t name, but I assure you they were all good ones.

After a good half-hour of karate-chopping in front of the mirror the animation was well on it’s way. The problem that was happened upon then was of course that nasty smelling thieving hobbit of a top-down camera, which lead to plenty of hair pulling trying to make said karate-chop look even somewhat believable from above.

In the end, it was discarded in favor of some sort of armed attack, preferably from the side as overhead attacks are simply too unfashionable for a graphics artist such as myself to be seen doing and not at all because I’m not good enough at this wonky top-down business yet.

While getting out of the Nile, I instead started researching for some sort of weapon or blunt object that would fit the whole espionage-in-the-60s-noir feel, instead of something fun like a bronze mace or a war-hammer.

Ultimately, the flat-profiled, leather-covered lead rod called a “sap” was chosen for it’s sleek design and unconscious-rendering capabilities, enabling the attempts at making graphics to resume.

Until the eyes were accidentally drawn to the clock and one discovered that by Jove, it is blog-time!

Which leaves one with this, a stiff and yet at the same time almost lava-lamp-like creation that shakily draws forth a giant black spoon and carefully dusts one off with it before jerking it back lest someone somehow would steal it from him.

But eh, every animation has to start somewhere.

The Death of a Main Character

This week I have been working on the sprite sheet depicting the death of our main character, having him going through the stages of joining the choir invisible as one mights say.

Starting with him in his regular sneaky pose that everybody in the team have grown to know and love and then having him suddenly jerking up, clutching his chest in confusion and pain before finally falling over and ruining the carpeting of the office or corridor where he has been gunned down in.

 

Like most sprite sheet attempts, the actual work process starts with yours truly acting out the scene in front of the mirror while desperately trying to imagine how it looks from above.

An endeavor that one would advocate doing after one has made sure no one else is inside the house at the time.

Afterwards, it goes to the stick-man phase, with focus on getting the lengths and widths right and getting the poses to look probable, which means a lot of drawing and re-drawing in order to make it seem like it is an actual person that is portrayed and not a robot.

Eventually the frames graduate from being stick-men and leaves their homes to try and find themselves, seeking new opportunities as full-fledged silhouettes.

Once again measurements and straight lines are needed to avoid the lava-lamp look that made itself known in the first version of the primary sprite sheet, but then we are not to acknowledge that irksome version anymore and any surviving copies of it are to be purged at sight.

After much hard work and the occasional mishap the silhouettes are given their rightful colourations as well as getting their hands and a hat taken from the spare-parts-image pasted onto them, so that they can go forth in the world as proper, responsible adults and do their part to make the great machine called society move forward.

It was originally planned to add nifty things like shading and other things to further emphasize the differences between the lower legs and the thighs as well as lower and upper arms, but it was decided that for the alpha and beta such things are not necessary, with the question being put on the shelf until it has been made clear just exactly how many sprite sheets we end up with before doing any further deliberation as to how much care is to be taken on the matter of shading.

 

As to the whyness of the notion, one would have to extensively question the very understanding of the conception of death in video games, which would be a botheration of some magnitude.

One can instead surmise to say that in a game that is meant to profusely pound into the player’s mind the idea that it is bad to be seen, along with the mechanics and dynamics that ensue from said playorial visibility, it is only applicable that the aesthetics follows suit, and as such, when the controlled entity is indeed being seen and is gunned down without mercy the blood is to flow freely, signaling with its characteristic redness and lack of further feasible control of said entity that the course of events that just happened is on the undesirable side of things and is to be avoided in future play-throughs.