What am I doing and why?

Creating creature concepts for walk cycle animations, from drawing concept art to sculpting and animation. Working to create multiple run/walk cycles for a creature. Scope might be one skeleton for now

I want to try and experiment with creating different types of walk cycles, for creatures. To learn how to show personality through movement. I think my animations have lacked a sense of fluidity in the past and in doing this exercise I hope to refine my technique. I also feel that learning to show personality in this with basic movement will help when it comes to more complicated animations in the future.

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Who else is doing what you’re doing in the field?

My field of work belongs heavily to the creature concept and design world, which has a hold in both games and film media.

Also looking at animated features is a good way to frame what I want to do – work like Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur (2015) and more realistic (for the time) work like walking with dinosaurs.

RJ Palmer as a creature designer and concept artist, his work has been used in feature films and turned into animated characters. I think this applies to my work not because of his particular art style but rather because of the way his work captures the real world and uses that to inform his fictional designs (like realistic Pokémon).

How will I work?

Experiment with character concepting. Try out different creatures/ dinosaurs/ animals. Figuring out what I would like to animate and what forms I feel interesting. Experiment with proportions and styles realism/cartoony and then move on to sculpting experimentally.

Creating different walk cycles each week that can blend into a cohesive piece – to show changing personality.

How will I make the work?

Using photoshop to do concept work and sketch out things. Taking that as a starting point and using Zbrush to do the character sculpting, and using maya to retopo/rig and animate.

1. Rationale - Intention

For this folio I’d like to explore a story concept about a woman who weaves. I want to focus on extending my technical animation abilities and pay attention to creating realistic weight, as well as creating something character driven. I’d like to explore how textures, stylised details and behaviours will communicate the intricacies of warmth and coziness. When creating something character driven like this, I’d like to explore communicating the history of a character and ways to communicate a softness and warmth that is not physically seen. My original story concept was based on both wombats and weaving, so depending on the scope of this folio I may also play with the combat aspect of this. Focusing on details first and then introducing the wombats, as a way to play with first emulating reality and then subverting it.

2. Context - Field

I would be working in the field of animation, likely with a focus on 2D animation. The work of animators like Hiroyuki Okiura is inspiring because of his stylised realism. Although, I would potentially like attempting to unify both 2D and 3D animation. This could be similar to Ian Worthington’s ‘Big Top Burger’ series. I’m also willing to explore this as something more immersive or in the game realm, similar to Night in The Woods, but that may be out of the scope of this semester.

3. Method

This process will likely begin with sketches, and animation tests. I need to do some character studies as well as doing both weaving studies and loom studies. I’d like to explore both animating weaving and the potential of modelling threads, and constructing a loom in 3D, sound or dialogue and experimenting with the style of the environment.

4. Tools

- Sketches, concept development (Clip Studio Paint), animation tests (Blender, OpenToonz)

- Environments and props - illustrations, potentially modelled (Blender), may incorporate traditional 2d elements

- If possible would like to try other software e.g ToonBoom, but I am currently in Sydney and cannot access the Studio

Folio 1 Plan 

RATIONALE: Intention

Yangkai Huang and I are going to form a team and work together on this project. We are planning to design and build a 2d action-adventure game. I will mainly response for the work in unity game engine while Yangkai will work for art.

By discussing with my partner Yangkai, we are both interested in metroidvania game and dark souls like game. We are expecting to design a boss battle in folio 1, focusing on the experience of against between player and boss. We would like to keep developing this project for folio 2 and are keep connecting to make plan on it.

Context: Field

Yangkai and I are both fan of dark souls and want to bring its game play experience in to 2d game. By exchanging our ideas and doing some research, we found that the game “Hollow Knight”, “Salt and Sanctuary”, “Ender Lilies: Quietus of Knight” are outstanding with the same field and these games could be great guides for our project.

Method

In this project, I will mainly focus on the gameplay functions and player interactions in unity game engine including character controls, collision & physics, attack/damaged system, player animation controller, boss AI & animation controller, hit reactions, visual effects, sound effects, functions for UI interaction etc...

Production: Tools

Me and Yangkai will work separately in the first few weeks then form our work together to have a complete scene. The purpose for us to work separately in different fields is to make our work progress more effective. We want that our artwork (character, animation) can be joined into a playable scene with complete functions when it is finished. So, we are dividing the project into two parts including artwork and game engine work and each of us is picking one of them as our major work. We will keep connecting and discussing to make sure we are on the same direction, when our works are finished and came together, we hope to have a completely playable boss battle scene with good experience.

I will work on game engine as my major work in this project. Unity will be the main software for me to be used for project development.

In week 1, me and my partner is discussing the gameplay progress, art style, animation details to make sure that we are both on the same direction and list everything we need to have in our gameplay. And I’m starting to make player controller this week.

In week 2, I will focus on player & boss collisions & physics, also do a health system for player and boss to damage each other. A simple UI will be made to test the health system. There will be no character or animation artwork needed in the first 2 weeks.

In week 3, I will begin to develop player animation controllers which is using for relating player’s interactions and animation together, I will also write scripts to call functions and control animations.

In week 4, I’m going to develop boss animation controller and boss AI.

In week 5 – 6, keeping developing boss combat, sound effects, fix bugs and prepare presentation.