Mudtato
Biting Bullets
So there I was, all excited about getting started on my animation exercises… I created a little character (see below) and started with a walk, but then the legs weren’t staying straight, the body wasn’t staying in the right position, things were moving after I posed them, the usual.
So of course, I need to make an armature. Well the armature wasn’t cooperating with the plasticine.
So I guess I’ll use sculpey instead and bake it, but yet again the results weren’t what I was after…
And so there I was, faced with a reality that I (for some reason) chose to ignore when initially researching and planning the project, but is now obviously and abundantly clear: I need to use silicone puppets.
In the making of Skullmonkeys they talked about their process - modelling in clay and casting to silicone. I didn’t think it was as authentic as clay, and so I ignored it and now I feel a bit silly.
So the good news is that I still get to create the clay models, and when it comes time to animate them I won’t go insane.
The bad news is that there’s another, somewhat complicated step, and I’ll need to paint the models.
This sort of thing has happened several times with the project, and each time it’s a little bit painful but ultimately a huge relief.
Animation Routine
Stop motion, claymation, animation… it’s all quite difficult.
To make sure I’m able to create the best work possible I’ve decided on a weekly animation routine that’ll keep me improving.
It breaks down as follows:
Monday - Walk, run, stop
Tuesday - Push, pull, interact
Wednesday - Jump, fall, land
Thursday - Hit, get hit
Friday - Collapse, get up
Saturday - Pick up, throw, catch
Sunday - Idle
The goal is to share (via Twitter) at least one half decent animation following the theme of the day, every day.
I don’t anticipate this to be easy, but what is?
Today being Monday, I guess I’d better start walking.
Happy New Year
The Christmas period was obviously pretty busy and I didn’t do much on the game. I’ve mostly been working on my house and garden.
This year will see major progress on the game. I’ll set a goal right now to get a demo out before the end of the year!
This morning I thought I’d do a goofy little walk cycle with a mostly featureless character to get me in the mood for animation. It’s rough and not many frames, but here it is!
Patience
I continued thinking about animation after my last post and realised that I really need to just be patient and not treat it like a race.
I was expecting to just be able to finish a decent bit of animation without investing too much time into it, whereas the professionals can spend a whole day on only five seconds of animation.
I also had this misconception that I could make a model once and then animate it, but this is claymation… I’ll need to mess with and remake the model multiple times.
I’ve got more realistic expectations now, so I’m feeling better about tackling the animation.
I’m also not super happy with the colours and will be revisiting them.
Animation…
I’m completely daunted by the thought of animating. I know all the principles but when it comes to moving the models and taking the photos I’m kind of terrified.
Sure, I can just try it and keep iterating until it’s good, but I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and animate everything in 2D before attempting to animate the clay.
I tried a little test animation tonight and it was terrible.
I’ll share the rough flipbook animations as I go.
In the meantime, I at least took some photos of the few enemies that I’d made, so here they are (as usual they’re roughly shot and edited).
This guy pops out of the ground and spits slime or something towards the player. 
This is a spiky mushroom that the player should avoid jumping on. 
This guy is a floaty little spore thing, which will waddle and pop like the Flood carrier forms in Halo. 
Enemies
I haven’t spent enough time recently on the game, but what I have been working on is several of the enemy characters.
I picked four enemies to start with for the prototype/vertical slice, and probably spent the most time on working out what colour to make them.
With everything being clay/physically modelled, I can’t really tweak colours later on, so I’ve got to make sure I get them right before I start making stuff.
Although, for the models I’m only using plasticine, as they don’t need the same detail and durability as the main characters, so they’re a bit easier to make.
We’ll see how it turns out once I start animating them… I’ll hopefully be able to share it in the next post :)