Dev Log #24 | Animation Breakdown #1

In the past I've done a few smaller Devlogs briefly touching on the topic of animation, but I've never given you a full breakdown of how I actually animate MISTs scenes. Which is why I'm gonna be doing it this time, in full detail. This Devlog will be split into three parts that I will be posting every two weeks.

But before we dive in let me give you a little overview of my process, which we'll be referencing from now on.

• Writing, that's what I always start with.
• References, This might be the most important step.
• Light, or else things would look ugly.
• Animating, the bread and butter I'd say.
• Cleanup, getting rid of small errors, fixing shaders, applying physics.
• Compositing, making sure that everything looks nice.
• Rendering, we need those images after all.
• Sound, it has to be all squishy and gooey or it's no fun.
• Exporting, we want a video at the end

1. Writing the Scene/Animation

I'm firmly convinced that the situation in which a scene happens and the emotions at play, be it love, lust, anger or whatever, are more important than visual stimulation when trying to make a hot animation. Erotic novels are probably the best example for this. They don't need any pictures at all but can easily provide intense pleasure if you're open for it. The same way a game with shitty graphics can still be a lot more stimulating than one that looks gorgeous if the writers really know what they are doing. Lust and excitement are emotions after all and you don't need 1080p to get emotional. At least in my opinion.

Which is why the writing comes first. I'm a visual thinker. I like to close my eyes and imagine a scene and camera shots and only then do I start typing. I always try to go with the flow of the dialogue, do what feels natural in that moment and follow the imagines and sounds in my head. Meanwhile I'm always noting those impressions down in the script. The camera angles, positions and soundeffects or whatever I find important. Then, after I've written the entire script I go over it again. Smooth out weird parts, make sure that the dialogue fits the images in my head, correct spelling errors and edit everything in a way that I know works well in the final game. Like extending sections that feel too short or shortening sections that are too long or putting in sound effects etc.

My goal is to make a scene that escalates slowly and believably, letting the characters lose their inhibitions and building to a climax, while the players do the same thing. The keyword here is, in my opinion, control. And I don't mean control over someone else, but over yourself. The characters need to lose it and hopefully the players do too at the same time. I mean it's basically just control that keeps people from nutting everywhere they go so for an erotic game we want to get rid of it. But that is, as I've slowly started to realize over the past few months, a very big topic and one that I'm only just starting to grasp. I'm already looking forward to learning more about it and erotic writing in the future and I might do an entire Devlog about it someday.

But now that I've finished the script and have the images I want to animate in my head and in notes I move on to the next step.

2. Searching for Reference

Everyone knows that references are important, it has been said a thousand times. But the thing is, they really are incredibly important. They are everything, absolutely everything. My animations would look like absolute dogshit without references and I'm honestly not exaggerating, I swear.

Luckily finding references for sex is incredibly easy. You all know how easy it is. So I start gathering and looking for everything that fits the ideas in my head, then I download the videos I find and watch them with a video viewer that is called "Keyframe MP". A tool that makes it very easy to check a videos framerate and go through it frame by frame and so I analyze the videos. Look how things move and jiggle, how many frames it takes for a movement and how the bigger shapes differ from the smaller ones etc. Every piece of info I can get is helpful and looking for reference can also easily spark my creativity, giving me new ideas for camera positions, sounddesign or just random arousing details that I'd normally miss. A certain glance at the cam, a flick of the tongue, a giggle, whatever it is. I gather it all. 

But even then sometimes it is not enough. I only just recently started doing this, but it's now a must for me and part of every scene I animate. The absolute best refrence you can get is to act it out yourself. And yes, this looks and sounds incredibly silly. I feel stupid every time, but I also have to laugh every time, whis is a plus for me.
I literally undress, hop on my bed, use one of those foam rollers for your back as a "partner" and act it out. From the perspective of the guy if that is needed, or the perspective of the woman. I don't care. Consciously going through the motions and activelly analyzing how your muscles and bones move, how your joints move and restrict you, how fat and hair and everything behaves during the movement is a complete gamechanger for me. Just a few days ago I animated Lily's newest scene and I was stuck for hours unable to get her movement right. Then I acted it out and instantly understood what I was doing wrong. It's incredible and funny!

But enough of my sales pitch. The writing is prepared and now I have the references for the animation, so the next thing is to jump into Blender and start animating, well almost.

3. The Light has to be Right.

I open Blender and arrange the Models in the scene I want to animate. I start by posing them at the frame I want to loop, basically the start of the animation. This is pretty easy, just takes a few minutes. Basically as if I was going to make a still frame. But now I do something that others might be doing later on. I start arranging the light.

While I can always change the light later on and often do that too, I like to find the lighting before I start animating. From the pose the characters are already in, I have an idea of where the light reaches and where it doesn't and can start figuring out how I want to position it. My first goal is always to make things look pretty. Usually by using threepoint lighting. Meaning a strong keylight as the main light source, a weaker fill light to brighten the shadows a bit and a rimlight behind the characters. But I also like it when the light in the scene corresponds to the light that would realistically be there.

If there is a fireplace in the shot the main light should be coming from that. If the main sorce of light is a crack in a caves roof, the light should be coming from up top. Having those restrictions on the light can make it fiddly to find a good looking light setup, especially when working with the engine that I'm using right now, which isn't raytraced and needs a bunch of manual adjustments to look good. But once it is done and the shot looks good as a still frame I know that things will work out. I prefer to work on a scene that I know can look good and works, before I invest my time into an animation to get a rude awakening afterwards.

But once that is done, I move on to the next step, the animation. Which I'll be talking about in the next Devlog, this one is already long enough. I hope it was possible to follow my explanations and you'll hear from me again next week with the Monday Update.

Until then, stay safe and have a good week!