So, since our last session our group has begun expanding on the idea of Mad Lads in their respective areas. Tim and I are the animators/modellers for the team so we have been conducting some preliminary research into those areas and the styles we could use to fit with the ideas we have.
Animation ResearchInfluences- Plants vs. Zombies (The Zombies)- Alien Hominid (The enemy gangstas)- Castle Crashers- Battleblock Theater- Dad ‘n Me- Dr. Bosconovitch (Tekken Tag Tournament 2)Key Concepts- Comical Style- Emphasis/focus on the limbs
For the running animation of the inmates, we were thinking of a very loose comical/characteristic style, similar to the running style of that of the zombies in Plants vs. Zombies. The animation styled used will be simple 2D skeletal system; the emphasis of the animation will be on the motion of the limbs instead of the facial animation. As the animators we want one of the main focuses to be comedy style of the running and the silly stupid animations.
In the notes above you can see we were considering what games had a style that we thought was well-suited to Mad Lads. Given that the group had decided we would be using 2D characters we looked at more cartoony styles such as that in 'Plants vs Zombies'. Having decided what the style would be we then began to think about what specific animation events would be needed for the game.
Animation Events- Idle- Idle to Runningo Rigged differently to different build types- Runningo Styles§o Jump over Obstacleso Crashing into Obstacleo Falling over Obstacle§ Small, Medium and Big (Obstacles)- Vomito Subtleo Projectile- Attackingo Throwing Projectileso Dropping bombs/candy etc.- Hit/Impact Animationo From front§ Bomb§ Projectile§ Slip Up§ Stumbleo From Behind§ Projectile- Eating- Drinking- Relay Switch
We planned out as many different events that we could think of, adding to the list each week as we thought of more or new ideas were presented by the team, for example the idea of racers being able to attack eachother was not originally in our list. Once we were satisfied with this list we moved on to the next order of business, something we felt would be very useful: Reference videos.
Reference Video Needed- Runningo Small, Medium, Big- Hit Animationo Behindo Front- Vomito Different Variations- Attacking and Dropping- Idle- Obstacleso Jumpingo Crashingo Falling- Relay Switch
You can see above the list of reference videos is smaller than that of the animations we felt were needed, this is because we condensed some of the actions like the hit animations into single actions as it would be unnecessary for us to have a reference for each instance, one would be enough. Also of note is that at this point we decided we would be creating 3 character rigs for 3 different body types; Small, Medium and Large. With this list we then took a camera and began recording these reference videos, some of which i have uploaded below, please ignore any giggling on our parts, whilst still a serious process, trying to act like a cartoon character was pretty funny.
Small Character Obstacle Crash and Jump animation
Front Projectile Hit animation
Small Idle, Idle-to-Running and Running animations
From this point we began what would be the longest part of our pre-production: looking into the software we could use to actually create our animations. We focussed mainly on software that was implemented into Unity itself such as uMotion 2D and SmoothMoves Animation but sadly these particular examples while completely suited to our needs, would have required us actually purchasing the software which was out of the question.
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