The Animation of Ninjio

Disclaimer:

Most of the projects that I will be doing are for a game that I am developing on my own code named Project Ninjio. In short, the game is a story action driven role playing game (common referred to as an action RPG). It features 2 uniquely styled areas, one in which the cities are built to flow along with nature, and the other where the cites are hyper futuristic. The game is set in a futuristic China, where after a large war, the country is split into the two settings described above. The game is built in the Unity 3D game engine.

The Animation of Ninjio

Introduction

Ninjio's art style allows for an interesting mix of cartoon-ish and realistic looks. The models themselves are fairly realistic, only cutting back a little bit to insure smooth game play on a variety of devices. The lighting in Ninjio though allows for me to easily bring in a bit of cartoon-ish look to the model. This then leads me with only one other thing that I need for the models to truly come to life (I mean, who wants a t-posed character to come at you anyways?), that being animation for the characters. 

Types of animation styles

Example of smear frames put together in a normal animation

Primarily in video games, you see two types of animation styles, cartoon-ish and realistic. Both of these types of animation styles are also seen in animation films, with each of them working well in both 3D and 2D games and films.

In a cartoon-ish style the bodies of characters and any rigid object are flexible. This means that when animating a sliding animation for example, the body of the character may grow and stretch horizontally to exaggerate the movement. This example is what is known as a smear frame, or a quick frame or two where the reality and constraints of an object or part of the body are temporarily ignored. That means that the animators can squash and stretch out the characters and object as much as they want to empathize movement or to add more charm to a certain action.

For more information about squash and stretch in video games, you can check out this video done by Extra Credits about how it is used in video game animation.

 

In a more realistic style of animation, the idea of squash and stretch goes out the window. Typically this means that the animations are more or less Void of the charm that they would had have otherwise, but in exchange the actions have a chance to look slightly more like what they would be in real life.

Animation within Ninjio

Because I want Ninjio to have a ton of charm, I am planning on using a cartoon-ish style of animation, complete with squashing and stretching of limbs and whatnot, the game. I have, however found that animating with squash and stretch in mind is kinda hard, you have to completely know how both the action looks in real life. You also need to known how you can use your animation's rigging to it's fullest potential in order to achieve a fine balance of realism and empathize on the motions that you want.

This week's work log:

Monday March 5th: Worked on the second major cutscene.

Tuesday March 6th: Started to block out the second phase of the game, the Long Hall.

Wednesday March 7th: Model the long hall scene.

Thursday March 8th: Modeled a few props that are to be used to further detail the long hall scene.

Friday March 9th: Did a bit of level designing on the Long Hallway scene.