No animations, just me talking craPP

Hey faggots!

Kinda debating whether or not I should keep uploading stand alone animations on a daily basis (ok, somewhat daily basis) or go for less updates with ingame videos instead. I finished up the bee dude the other day, beating the shit out of my fatigue and unfocusness (is that even a word?) that I've been struggling with, and he turned out pretty cool! I love posting often and showing all the shit I do here, but I think it's a better way to showcase my work when it's actually in the game. It looks a lot better when it's all put together.
We'll see.

Speaking of videos and shit, we're getting close to the point when we can actually record a half decent video of the game. I mean there's still a lot of features missing and it needs a few more layers of polish, but it's getting there! I'm just gonna clean up a few of the earlier animations I did, adding shadows and shit to them. So expect a early preview of the game in the next few days or something!

Also, we're getting a site for Grindea, and a devblog. Don't know when it will be up, since it's not really super high priority at the moment, but it's in the making at least. I'll post a link once we get it up and running!

On another note, my Street Fighter career is moving forward! I got the game in the mail a few days ago and I've been playing quite a bit! Since this is the first fighting game I'm not approaching with the button mash mentality, it's actually a lot of fun. Really hard, but I'm getting there! So far I've mainly been focusing on learning to executing shit, but I'll soon take my first baby steps to becoming a pro on the PSN! I'll keep you posted!

Now, I'm going to bed. It's like 6 in the morning. Bye ma'machis!

BZZzzZzZzZzzzzz

Last couple of days have been pretty weird. Been feeling super tired and unfocused. I think it's because I've been just sitting around here for so long.
Also, I've been stuck watching Evo 2011. It's like the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Got so hooked that I actually ordered Street Fighter 4 the other day. I absolutely and totally SUCK at fighting games. But I love competing. E-sports is probably the best thing I know, ever. So I figured I'd give it a try. I'll report back on how my journey to becoming a pro street fighter player pans out!

Oh, and besides that, me and Jochen celebrated Arnold Schwarzeneggers birthday the other day. It was great. Alcohol, bunch of Arnold movies and some Super Nintendo. Hercules in New York was definitely the highlight of the evening!



Anyway. Been animating the bee dude. I have started the attack animation as well and it's turning out pretty sweet. We had to rework the mechanics of how the enemy behaves a bit, which ended up with us adding some extra animations. A bit more work, but it's gonna turn out much more awesome!

I'll try to make the next update a video. Either of me doing some animations or just some gameplay from what we've got so far! Now, sleep. Bye mother fuuckaaaas!

Mistah Bii incoming!

Hey fuckers!

Just a small update with a full turn around of the bee-dude I did yesterday:



Been a really unproductive day though. Bought Scott Pilgrim vs the World for my PS3, so I've been grinding the shit out of that game most of the day.

I must say I really, really hated the game at first. The pacing was super off to me, felt like the entire game was limping with really long knock down time and enemies taking forever to take down. Once you get a grip of it all though, learn a few new moves and get better stats, it's a pretty cool game. It's obvious it was designed for more than one player, but it works none the less!

The game looks fucking amazing aswell, but what else would you expect from a game with Paul Robertson as lead art? Also, it probably has the best soundtrack any game has had since like the SNES days. Entirely made by the super amazing band Anamanaguchi.


Anyway, I'm slowly but surely trying to correct my totally fucked up sleeping habits. I work better during the day, so it feels kinda stupid to wake up at around 4 in the afternoon. So with that, I'm off to bed. Talk to you later suckerrrsss!

Step by step: Sprit3zzzZZZ

Ok, so I figured that instead of posting an animation today, I'm gonna show you guys my work process when it comes to creating sprites.

So first I would just like to point out that this is not meant to be somekind of a tutorial or "LOL DO LIKE THIS AND UR GONNA BE PRO DUDE!"-post. This is just my way of doing things. It works great for me, might not work all that great for you. Just a heads up.


So! I always tend to start out with finding a nice shape a like. For this particular sprite, I know I want to create some bee-like insect dude. He's going to hang around in the first area of the game, so I don't want to make him to intimidating or scary.

So I basically just draw shapes until I find something a like. Sometimes a do a bit of research before I take this step, finding references and stuff like that. For this one I felt like I didn't need to cause I had a pretty clear picture in my head of what I wanted to go for.

When I've chosen one of the sketches (i chose to go with the middle one) I'll clean it up and refine the lines until I've got a clean outline to work with. When I'm doing pixelart, I go by the rule to try always keep the outline one pixel wide. You don't need to do this, it's just how I've been taught to do it.

After that, I just color block it to get a quick feel of the colors I'm going for. Nothing fancy.
Now, what I'm doing next is probably the most important step of my work process. I show my shit to the people I'm working with and ask for input. Do they like the shape, does it fit the enemy we're going for, what do I need to change etc.

So, I showed my sketch to Vilya, the other artist I'm working with. She said she liked the overall shape of it, but that she though it would be a tad too big. With the sprite now being almost as big as the Rabbi enemy, I totally agreed and reworked it.

Since we both liked the shape I tried to keep it as close to my first version as possible. When working with pixelart on such a small scale as this, keeping smooth shapes can be a bit tricky. It turns more into a puzzle of placing all the pixels perfectly then using your artistic skills.
But anyway! I show the new version to Vilya and she gives it thumbs up. Which leads us to the next step!

Coloring! I'm not gonna get to deep with this step, cause it's such a huge topic.
I try to keep such a low color count as possible. Mainly because within the pixelart community, you always strive to keep the amount of colors as low as possible, so this is something I've been taught to always go for. But also because I think it looks much more crisp and clean when you don't go balls out and add 200 shades of the same green.

Once again I show my shit to Vilya and we both agree that the colors are a bit dull and brownish.

I do a few color changes in photoshop and ta-daa! The sprite is finished. Only thing left is a bunch of animations and this sucker will be good to go ingame!


And that's pretty much how I do it. Hope you guys enjoyed this mini walk through of mine. If it's something you guys want to see more of, you let me know! Might do something similar, but on how I tackle 2D animations. That's probably gonna end up as a video though. But yeah!

Now, I got some crappy movies and sleeping to attend to. See you later mother fuckers!

As promised, more frequent updates!

So yeah, been sitting inside my apartment for the last week or so. Working on Grindea, watching a bunch of movies/series and playing Mega man 10. Giving it one play through everday, not gonna stop til I can beat the game without dying once!
Anyway, I'm pretty much aching to get out of my apartment and do shit. If anyone wanna grab a beer (or a couple) let me know! If not, I'll just have to wait for the return of my beloved roomate to get shit started around here!




On a work related note, here's what I've been busy with. This is one of the early enemies you'll come across in Grindea, the super feared Rabbi! This is the attack animation for the sucker, but I've got a bunch more stuff for him aswell. Figured I'll post those in a video or something later on as soon as Teddys got him properly implanted into the game!

Now, I'm gonna start some crappy movie and fall asleep. 07:00 in the morning. Summer sleeping schedule at it's finest!

Ok, so. I'm gonna turn this blog back into what it used to be. Which basically was me posting my graphic stuff and talking a bunch of crap. I'm gonna keep the English though, to keep things a bit more international. With a new project in the making, I figured I might as well try to reach out to a bigger crowd!

So, anyway. New project? Yep, that's right. New team making it? Totally.
After GGC, we (me, Vilya and Teddy) decided to do our own thing and split up with Trashtalk. We don't have any official name yet, still working on that part, but we've been working on a new project since the start of the summer!
I took a few weeks off (as did the rest of the team) to go visit home, so the last month haven't been super productive really. But now I'm back on my beloved island, ready to get back in the mix!

So about the new project. I'm not gonna go that much into detail, but it's basically an action rpg done in pixel art (fuck yes). We've drawn inspiration from a lot of old classics, like the earlier zelda games (A Link to the Past especially) and the Secret of Mana games. We all have a soft spot for Korean MMO's aswell and the focus on farming/grinding gear, so that also plays a big role in our game. Oh, and it has co-op support!

We're calling the game "Secret of Grindea" at the moment. Might change in the future, but I think it sums up the game perfectly!

Not gonna ramble on about it, I'll go more into detail as we add more stuff. Gonna post a screenshot though for all of you to enjoy! This is just a few weeks of work, so there's a lot of more stuff to be added and changed.

I'm basically doing all the animations, character/monster sprites as well effects and such. Vilya is responsible for all the environments, the GUI/HUD, menus and all that. Teddy is the Rambo-programmer and been doing a pretty kick ass job so far! I'll be posting videos and stuff later to show of more of the game, as well as my animation work.

And, yeah. That's that I guess. I'm gonna try to keep this thing updated to the best of my ability. Probably won't be once every day, but once or twice every week is my aim!
Now, back to work. See you fags around!

Final Overkill entry

This will be my final post regarding my work on our project Overkill. It's going to cover my role within the project, how the game turned out in the end and what I would recommend other people to do if they end up in my seat. Enjoy!

Recap

Our vision for the concept was a co-op hack and slash type of game, with over the top cute graphics mixed with extreme amounts of Violence. We had envisioned an overload of epic gears and achievements which the players would collect as they played through different levels, using a variety of skills as well as a “free-flow combo system”.

Early mockup of Overkill, made by me.

The scheduled time for the project was 10 weeks, starting in March 2011 and ending in late May. Besides working full time and more during these 10 weeks I had been developing skills and tools for this project since last summer.

The outcome of the project did not match our vision for the final game, in several areas. The most noticeable being the absence of multiplayer. The game was designed, and built around 4 player cooperative multiplayer. The day before GGC (www.gotlandgameconferece.com)and our deadline, we decided to remove the multiplayer all together. This was mainly due to us having extremely little time for play testing the game properly, ending up with a ton of bugs which we just didn’t have time to fix. The number of bugs was severely reduced when the game was played in single player so we chose to go with that option instead.

Besides this we had to leave out a lot of planned content for showing of the project. We had two secret events that we had to cut, one larger area of the level and another playable character which we just didn’t have time to implement correctly.
One of our main features, the combo system, also took a pretty severe beating from not having that many combos for the players to unleash. This, in combination with poor tooltips and a pretty steep learning curve made it hard for players to catch on to it.
All in all the game did not turn out horrible, but it could have been so much more.

Gameplay from the final product.

My Role

My main work areas during the project were character modeling and animation. I have 3D modeled all the playable characters and enemies in the game, as well as rigged and animated them.
Considering my previous experience within 3D animation and rigging (zero) and the amount of content I actually managed to push out within the time frame we had, I’m rather pleased with my contribution to the game. I’ve done closer to 130 animations all in all, with an entire character (20 animations) not making the final cut.

A quick video showing my pipeline a few weeks into the project.

What we did present at GGC was a decent product in my opinion. Much of the graphic content was there; I just think we needed another week or two to polish the gameplay part.
With more work and polish put into this project, I think it could’ve turn out pretty great. The short amount of time, poor planning from our side and broken promises from the HGO (not delivering unity pro license until the very last weeks) made it turn out way below its potential.

The Jester, the character I think turned out best in terms of animation.

My improvement

Before the start of the 10 weeks we had dedicated to this project, I spent months teaching myself how to rig and animate characters in 3D studio max, since we’ve had very limited lectures covering those areas at HGO.

In time for the start of the project, I had gathered a solid ground of 3D animation knowledge but never really tried it out in action so to speak, with exporting animations and trying them out in an actual game engine.
The animations I had been doing prior to the project start were all pretty small test animations with no elaborate motion such as body rotations and such.

This is an early test animation I did for one of our playable characters.

After a few weeks into the project, with me improving in all areas, this is some animations for the same character which we ended up using in the finished project.

Recommendations

For anybody taking on the role of animator/rigger/character modeler I have a few recommendations.

First and foremost, put the necessary time into it. If you are running on a very short deadline (like we did) then you need to work a lot. Don’t be discouraged if you have to work 14 hours a day for weeks in a row. Sacrificing your spare time now might result in a great job in the future!

Second, don’t be afraid to reuse animations instead of making completely new ones for everything. Sometimes it might feel like cheating, but if no one knows you’re cheating then no harm done!
If you have four different characters that all needs running animations, use the same one as a base for everyone. It’s much easier to change and add personality to an already established animation then making a new one from scratch.

Third, exaggerate your animations. Don’t be afraid to go over the top with your motions. We have a tendency to go the other way around. If a guy is swinging a sword, then have him really swing it. It doesn’t really matter if the motion is impossible for a normal person to perform it, as long as it looks like it’s possible.

Finally and maybe most importantly, don’t be afraid of criticism. People will not love everything you do. You will have to redo stuff a lot of the time. This is what’s going to make you learn, become better and probably what’s going to separate you from the people who don’t land a job in the future.


As for overall project recommendations, make sure you play test your game as early as possible. Have a working prototype of everything the final product is going to have AT LEAST a few weeks before the final deadline. Don’t wait until the night before, because not everything’s going to work as you intended. There will be bugs, there will be balancing issues and gameplay changes.

Focus on quality before quantity. Instead of adding more content and features, focus on what you’ve got and polish that until it’s perfect. It’s the little things that make all the difference.

Once again, don’t be afraid of criticism. Receiving it as well as giving it. If you think something could be done better or in a different way, don’t be afraid to let your team members know.
By not just settling with the first option you have, even if it’s great, will make your game stand out from the crowd.


Closing words

Overall, this experience has thought me a lot. Mainly working with 3D, but also understanding the importance of group dynamics and roles within a team. All in all, while the project did not turned out as I had envisioned it, I'm taking a lot of knowledge with me into my next project. Which I'll be reveling sometime soon.
With that being said, thanks for reading my blog, and I'll see you guys around!