Week 8-9

Week 8-9

Summary:

Animation Style Research: 1.5 Hours

Motion Trails and Effects Tutorials: 1.5 Hours

Animation Reference Research: 1.5 Hours

Host Poses, and Personality References and Research: 1.5 Hours

Character Animation Flowchart: 4 Hours

Total: 10 Hours

Animation Style Research:

Motion Trails:

Some research into the style of animations I envision with our holographic weapons. Motion trails seem to be one of the ways to accomplish the effect we want.

This is an example of a particle emission along a motion trail. while it's obviously very low poly. it creates another interesting effect. that could be useful for either our melee attacks. or for some of our ranged weapons.

This is an example of what can be accomplished in engine. I particularly like the trail of the sword swing on the right. at it very much matches what we'll be looking to do with our hitboxing for our melee attacks.

Motion trails and Effects tutorials:

Animation Reference Research:

Two-Handed Big Sword Attacks:

While we probably won't use attacks exactly like these as Sparkus only has one 'arm' and it basically is his blade, there's alot of poses and footwork that I like.

I like the swiftness and reality of a big heavy sword shown in this video, and its something I want to capture when I start doing the animations for Sparkus.

Four arms/Blades:

General Grievous was obviously a big inspiration

Dual Swords:

Can't find many other references for four armed fighting, So I started looking into dual swords, with the intention of just doubling what I found.

This video was interesting as the two instructors went through and showed the various flaws in current culture's interpretation of fighting with two swords. but what I was mostly looking at was their stances and the arc of their swings.

This Demo showed some good references for poses and movement, particularly in the footwork.

This was a good reference, its actually a skyrim mod where someone has come through and improved upon the vanilla dual wield animations. and it shows a comparison.

Host Poses and Movement Research:

For our Host I wanted to fine some good references for movement as well as some personality. So I started with one of my favourite show hosts, John Oliver.

I wanted to focus on how he presents himself and his body language. and how hes not just a stable talking head. but moves and expresses himself with a slightly larger than life persona. obviously for our Host we're going to crank it up to 11 to get across her craziness and manic nature. but this was a good baseline reference to start with.

Speaking of cranking it up to 11. I then looked into some crazy over the top commentators and hosts of sports and wrestling shows.

I then looked into Jim Ross, and how he delivers his lines and builds up the hype of a match.

Character Animation Flowchart:

A big thing that I need to start wrapping my head around and need to be aware of from the beginning is my transitions and flowcharts for all the different animations that will be needed for each character.

I found an interesting article/guide to help me get in the right mindset and to start thinking about the correct issues and transitions that i'll need to have work while animating.