Traditional 2-D character animation in video games

[gatti]

Here is a URL to the presentation "Traditional 2-D character animation in video games" that I gave at the New Jersey Chapter IGDA meeting on August 16.

http://www.prorattafactor.com/lessons/

When you have a chance...give it a whirl.

[codemattic]

speaking of 2d animation - how is "El Ballo" coming along?

[gatti]

It's coming along great! On the end of art: Main character, stage enemies, and bosses are completed (minus the final boss). Now I'm just plugging away at the last two components on my end: cinema scenes and background assets.

Ivan is also doing a completely amazing job on his end. He's developed the animation editor, level editor, and multiple versions of the actual playable app.

I'm also involved with play testing the betas on every mac that I can find. And since my company has multiple configurations, it has been highly beneficial.

All in all, production is going great and we're finalizing new elements every day. I can speak for Ivan when I say that we have ultimately both learned so much within the span of this project.

[Fenris]

Ivan is also doing a completely amazing job on his end.
Well, thank you very much. :) *Struggling away with stupid Quicktime... mbrll* ;)

I'm also involved with play testing the betas on every mac that I can find.
...which definitely goes into the "what went right" part of the postmortem. Very nice to get rid off stuff that breaks on odd configurations.

I can speak for Ivan when I say that we have ultimately both learned so much within the span of this project.
Oh, yes.

On the to-do list is to finalize all enemies and weapons, get QT movie playing to play well, and then... I'm all set. ;)

[Fenris]

Nice presentation, by the way. Am I right, this is an adaptation of the tutorial you posted here, no?

Did you get any feedback on it?

[gatti]

Thanks!
Yup... it's very much an extension of the article (http://www.idevgames.com/content/article.php?id=120) that I posted here. Within the real-life presentation I always mentioned that apps like BTV Pro can be replaced with a PC alternative and so forth. I also demonstrated the full process: batch vector conversion from raster artwork, coloring/manipulation of the content, and fixing line breaks.

As the presentation took place I realized that I should've memorized my notes based on the slides. I found myself searching through my notes whenever I changed slides.

A key question was raised about the differences between paper based hand-drawn animation and using a wacom tablet. Luckily two other graphic artists were there own give their own personal opinion toward the two approaches. They mainly agreed that in both the professional and non-professional field it is still just a matter of preference for how the animator wants to approach it. I just mentioned that I can't bring a wacom tablet anywhere and draw with it...unless I have a laptop of course. A pencil and pad goes everywhere with me. I can drop it, throw it, or beat it against a tree and it'll still be good. Since my projects are worked on outside of my company/job time, my tools need to be as versatile as possible to travel with me. However, if I did Flash animation at my job, I'd probably buy a tablet.

Luckily everyone was very happy with the presentation because it allowed the developers (mainly programmers) to get an inside eye into the factors behind traditional hand-drawn game animation. They all got a kick out of the last slide as ElBallo ran naked. You have to view presentation in "Explorer" in order to watch animation.