Rough Stuff- Mace tests

Been prepping a lot of animation.   Drawing rough 'n dirty keyframes in pencil, then timing it out in Clipstudio where I can mess with adding in-betweens or editing frames that don't work well.   Then, cleanup on a vector layer, and boom!  We should be rolling.

Speaking of rolling...

These are the roughest of experiments- but give me guidance on timing and how many in-betweens a movement might need.   Animating in a video game is a bit of a different ballgame, because anticipation and tension is a key animation principle, but a player firing off a movement needs it to be virtually instantaneous.  The more anticipation, the more sluggish their play experience.  So it's a game of judicious use of smear frames and other techniques to provide a responsive action, that still *looks* like it's using traditional animation principles.

I'm considering tweaking the line style on the run cleanup.   Want to get my technique straight before I go nuts on the entire library of animation, wouldn't want to realize halfway through I need to redo half of it.

I'm tackling Mace solo because A) We haven't started recruiting animators yet, and B) When we bring in assistants, I'll to have a solid technique for them to replicate.

One character, in THIS game, is still a mountain of work.  Gotta do:

 
Playable Mace Animation Library

Run

Run Turn

Run Stop

Jump / Fall / Land

Idle Still

Idle Out of Breath

CrouchCrawl / Sneak

Roll

Idle Attack 1 2 3

Crouch Attack

Running ATtack

Jumping Attack Neutral

Jumping Attack Down

Box Push

Item Carry

Item Throw

Ladder Climb

Rope Climb

Rope Swing

Ledge Grab Dangle Pullup

Teetering / Sliding

Struck

Knocked Down

Getting Up from Knocked Down

Killed

Treading Water

Surface Swim

Underwater Swim 

It's a lotta work- but once done, we can start building some playtest modules for you.  Pencils up!