Hey all jammers! Just wanted to drop some tips of what I’ve picked up to animate Moth Dad! Hope you enjoy!
Here are my sketches done as soon as the jam started. Please notice how rough they are.
That’s the point of everything – to not let your logical brain kick in and tell you that you’re awful or something doesn’t look right.
Just keep drawing. Keep loose.
Not seen – 15 other sheets of doodles. XD
I spent a good half hour looking at butterflies and moths too before I finally stumbled upon moth dad, at the bottom. His pompadour was a solution for his hairline, and proved to be invaluable for his animation below.
Anyway, stumble across a good color combination that you like. Just muck around in your painting program of choice until you get 3-5 colors that go well together.
Now draw out all his body parts at a high resolution – I drew these at 4096 x 4096. When you are playing a game that is heavy on visuals, you don’t want any blur from small textures.
But again look at the image below and then above. There’s really not a ton of parts here, just lots of stretching and duplicating in Unity. His wings are the same copy of the wing shape I drew above, just a different shade and stretched and thrown behind him. He’s a very simple creature with lots of cheating! ๐
Then came the animation. I actually did two passes on this guy – the two major frames of “bob down then up”, then added another set of frames for his hair and beard, that start at a different time to stretch him out a little as he moves. Please note that his legs are splines – they are generated when the game is being played and simply draw a point from his torso to his ย knee position, then finally his foot position.
I’d highly recommend getting a copy of “The Animator’s Surivial Kit” by Richard Williams to help you ease into animation. I am not means an expert on anything, but I hope that I was informative to someone out there!
Thanks all! You can see Moth Dad and more (I did have to animate four other creatures!) inย 10DaysOfDreaming.