Hello again!
This week I have been working on our melee enemy “the Bugger”. He is a flying mad bug who when he sees you will do anything to head-butt you. His A.I is pretty smart as he tries to see where you’re heading and charges towards that point to cut you off and smash you into little robot pieces which makes him a though opponent.
The main thing I have done this week is doing the moving animation for Buggers in four directions: up, down, and both profile directions (which are the same sprites but flipped vertically). First of I quickly sketched out the basic structure and pose of each of the three directions in Sketchbook Pro. Then I opened these sketches in Illustrator and started to transform the sketches in to coloured vector graphics. Illustrator is great tool mainly because it works in vector graphics, so I don’t have to care about resolution at all. But it is even greater as I can easily change individual shapes at any time in this part of the process and get very clean lines and work with only mouse and keyboard.
After I have transformed Bugger into vectors for the standard pose and his first frame of each direction, I start to pick out which body-parts that should be moving relative to the parts that they are attached too and copy them in to a new layer. In this case everything is mainly connected to his head and then reconnected throughout other body parts .When I have changed a body part a little to create a difference between two frames I copy the changed part to a new layer to change it for the next frame and repeat the process. This results in a smooth moving effect when played fast.
When all the basic frames are finished in Illustrator I export my files to Photoshop. Then in Photoshop I start a timeline and simply choose which layers that should be shown in which frames letting me use many layers more than once. When I can see that the basic animation flows well I add some glow to the bugger giving him his more dramatic and magical appearance. And for a final touch I move him up and down to give the optical illusion that he is flying or floating in mid-air.
There is still some last touches that needs to be done, but this is how he looks for now!
This character is using the same animation for his moving, idle and attacking so all that is left on the Bugger now is his death animation, which is low priority and will be done if time allows it. next week I will work on the other enemy… (feel free to read in dramatic voice, mohahahah!!! lulz) … the Grubling.
Guess that’s all! hare så länge!
-Ludwig Lindstål
This site is no longer maintained 
February 27th, 2014 at 10:57 pm
oh lord, you have found the glow button!
February 27th, 2014 at 11:10 pm
I know. It’s cool but it really starts to get a little to much xD
March 4th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Hello Ludwig! Signing in and saying Hi.
I really like your art as it is very clean and polished in its looks. Even though I personally dislike the small wings, but they look nice!
The description of your workflow is both clear and understandable and as I’m at least a little knowledgeable in the field of 2d-design I can understand the differences of the programs.
Looking on to the animations all of them look very nice, although I do not really see the point of the front and back animations, where are they going to be used? When the bugger is turning over to the other side? Doesn’t this mean that it requires frames from flipside to flipside?
Outside of this it flows well and they do feel very lively these little things. Also moving on to attack animations, you say that you are not going to use them, this feels very weird, as there will be no indications for the player to dodge or when to avoid what.
I guess that they attack by tackling the player. To do this they would need some kind of speed increase, such as a quick surge to movement. Otherwise the player will be able to easily kite them if there aren’t lots of them. This would lead to problem as they are only using one animation when moving, the player will feel they are monotonous.
I think adding something like a buzzing animation (they charge up before attacking) or a color change before charging would be nice, if they have a speed surge.
Otherwise, keep up the good job from a Van and a Game Designer!
March 4th, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Hello Ludwig!
I want to start out with saying that your post is well-structured, even if a bit on the facetious side of things. (IIt makes for easier reading but makes everything seem a bit more silly!)
You show your workflow in a way which makes it interesting to read about, and you reasoning as to why you chose to go from sketch – Illustrator – Photoshop makes total sense.
But I do have a few questions and thoughts.
Is the reason why he will not have an attack, hurt, moving and idle time constraints? If so, and you spent all week doing the movement animations, it would have been a better decision to make more crude scetches and still have different animations for all actions. If you barely get any graphical feedback, indicating you did damage, you will not be sure if you hit the target. This, in turn, will make the player confused as to when the monster will die.
The only thing I remember from the ALPHA was that the projectile dissappered when you hit the target. This, accompanied with some sound, might do the trick. But your projectiles will still look like they did no kind of damage what-so-ever.
Also, if you are going to have a creature charge at you, you will need some kind of buildup, giving the player a chance to get away (Unless he acts like a homing missile). Like how a Bull would stamp his feet.
One final thing that I thought about, both now and during the Alpha..
What is your perspective? Is it the “sidescroller” perspective? Because, if so, the sprite should just turn upward, not inward, so making a sprite which is looking towards and away from the player makes little sense. The only place where those kinds of sprite fit would be in a 2.5D First-person game (With a few exceptions; One of them being ‘Don’t Starve’).
Hopefully I don’t sound too harsh, but these are quite big concerns in my opinion.
Cheers,
-Henrik