Saturday 3 August 2013

The Blob - Attack Cycles #8

So from general research on the internet and what I've learnt from books I have flicked through briefly. I've come to realise that game characters all have their own sub-set of animation cycles (called lists or trees). Each has their own walk cycle for instance - however these can also have iterations based on facts such as the character being healthy or possibly tired or even sick and injured.

So as you could imagine, the list of different animation cycles for just one game character alone, can be quite a huge fact on its own. - Let alone factoring in other characters and their own list of animated cycles!

Here is an Example taken from Youtube, showing what it is that I mean...


Here (below) is the Attack Animation Cycles I've been working on, since completing the initial walk (or crawl) cycle for the Blob Monster. Games tend to have quite large animation lists (or trees) where you find every possible animation the specific character/animal/item needs in order to move and preform a series of tasks within a game like; walking, running, attacking and idle etc...

So in essence, so far we have four animation cycles for the Blob Monster:
  1. The Walk.
  2. The Attack
  3. The Attack Iteration Two.
  4. The Attack Iteration Three.
Now if this hostile blob character where to be implemented into an RPG game, or something similar, we would have a basic walk and three variations of attack for the game engine to pick from when the player comes across the creature and attacks it. The enemy character would walk over and begin to attack the player's character, using a combination of the iterations of attack to make the game-play seem less repetitive and dull.

Stage One:
The basic walk cycle animation...


Stage Two.One:
Having worked on the attack and secondary movement...

Stage Two.Two:
Having reiterated the attack cycle with secondary movement...

Stage Two.Three:
Having reiterated the attack cycle again with secondary movement...


Rigging & Animation by: Scott Westwater.