WIP Sketch: Priestess Boss & Update on Animating

Hey there, Halftilt here with a quick update (and some sketches for the new Fallen Vestal)!

TL;DR at the end.

So, as you may (or may not) know, animating things in Darkest Dungeon is kind of a pain in the butt. In order for the custom class that I've spoiled earlier to be done "perfectly" I have to get it drawn in such a way that all of her moving parts are separated into different layers. If you were to look at any .pngs for the idle, walk and combat animations of any hero, you'll see what I mean.

This way takes a good amount of time and turns out that it is a bit costly (hence why I've raised my pledge goal). There is another way that appears to be less costly, though there's a chance the animations may be less smooth.

This way involves getting a .png of the stances (idle, walk, combat, etc.) first, then cutting them after the fact and then animating the parts that were cut. 

For the character shown above, I'll be using the second more inexpensive method. 

On the Fallen Vestal Update:

You'll see that her style is a bit more anime than the custom class that was spoiled earlier -- the fact is that finding an artist to try to mimic the Darkest Dungeon style is a bit difficult and can be time consuming on their part; so, in order to give this new method a quick test, I commissioned this replacement as such.

If this new animation method shows promise, I'll try to commission the rest of the replacers to be in the Darkest-Dungeon-lite style (since I'd like more consistency in Lustiest Lair).

Other than that, I'm very happy with how the first draft came out!  The last two sprites are going to be a bit different from what you see here, so it fits in with the "lore" of the fight and the double-d!*#ed monster that they're teamed up with. But as you can see from this preview, she's going to be extremely lewd. :)

I'll post another update with the new sprites in a future post!

Stay tuned for more updates!

TL;DR:

I'm animating the Fallen Vestal Boss (shown above) using a quick and affordable method, unlike the custom class I've spoiled earlier. These sprites looks anime-ish because I want to test if this method is feasible first.

For this experimental animation method I'm holding my breath to see if the animations will be as smooth as the custom class' will be -- if I don't like how it turns out, I'll be sticking with the slower & less inexpensive method.