Synopsis
My revised proposal for Senior Thesis, after spending the
semester working on my project and in planning to move forward through the
Winter Break and Spring 2018 semester, remains to develop mechanically
functional 3D assets for a fighting game called Temp Work Mercenary (working
title). I will pay close attention and care in developing animations with frame
data in mind, as is standard for most fighting games.
My goal based on what I have accomplished at this point is
to have the core movement animations for the player to maneuver easily through
a level. Knowing how much time is left I don’t believe I’ll be able to develop
out combat animations for the character before our final presentation. Depending
on how my Winter Break goes I may even want to redesign the model entirely. Ultimately
my vision for the end of Spring remains the same: One detailed, high quality
character model with all animations in place and on display via rendered files
as well as a demo reel showcase of a mock-up fighting game match or intro
cinematic using those animations. Stretch goals permitting I will model out
more characters I’ve conceptualized to be showcased on turntable rendering to
show what other members of the cast will look like with text-based character
bios documenting their personalities and gameplay quirks.
Research/Planning
Initial Concept/Mind Maps
Genre Research
Due to the nature of my thesis covering 3D art and animation from within the specialized genre of fighting games, I have opted to research successful industry examples, as well as a variety of informed sources both on a community and professional level, writing or speaking on the genre in terms of a quality fighting game’s use of, and self-imposed limitations of animating characters in context of mechanical systems. These systems, heavily grounded within visual feedback, responsive controls, and balanced frame data, (i.e. advantages, disadvantages, safe/unsafe on block) are essentially aspects which rely on both art assets and deeper understanding of what makes fighting games satisfying to play.Influences (Visual Approach/Aesthetic)
Guilty Gear Xrd: Use of keyframing on 3D animation to replicate the look and feel of sprite-based 2D animation of previous entries. Sacrifices smoothness for impactful gameplay feedback and makes hitbox/hurtbox data simpler to create and follow.
Punch Planet: A Sci-Fi fighter developed in Unity, this project most closely resembles my end goal for this project in the long-term. As an inspiration template to model my own mock-up out of it’s a great influence to set a general bar for myself.
Late 20th Century Pop Art: A boldly colored, sometimes filtered and comic book influenced art style, pop art is loud and eye-catching, which is important for designing visuals for fighting game characters, they should stand apart from the background and be easily recognizable, not just by their silhouette, but by their color palette, texture and subtle detailing.
Neon Lighting/Dystopic Future Cities: The contrast of bright neon coloring washing damp, nighttime streets is a physical identity I’m especially fond of from the classic film Blade Runner, and has influenced many settings thereafter. My own world setting takes place in the Martian colony of Neornot City, and I wish to create a similar atmosphere, should I have time to work on backdrops for my mockup scene. This may end up being a stretch goal however, as it implies a lot of rendering techniques and environmental art that I haven’t yet considered for my project. Sea Shell Aesthetic: The depths of the ocean hold some of the most hauntingly beautiful examples of life, much of which remains alien to us. Creating a sci-fi world, I feel the descriptor of hauntingly beautiful fits in very well with the dystopic, neo-noir style of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles. Given my story exists offworld, and far in the future, I would like to give it a fantastical flair with architecture and technology developed and inspired by the natural and complex spiraling designs of shells: conches, spires, nautilus, venus combs and other mollusks. Even hovercars adapt the sleek designs of these shells. I believe this aesethetic will provide Temp Work Mercenary’s world its own distinct look apart from its peers in the genre, both in terms of fighting games and sci-fi media.
What are you Fighting for?
Imagine picking up a sport or an instrument; games often don't cast up the same kind of view as these physical arts, but picture it for a moment. The well-practiced memorization of concepts, their applications, strengths, weaknesses, and the actual, consistent execution of those concepts. With a fighting game, each character in a roster provides their own set of moves, their aesthetic design, personality and dominant strategies. Characters in fighting games are your position in a sport, or your instrument in a band, and part of selecting a 'main' or your primary character to practice, is finding the right one for you, in turn fighting games provide players with a sense of identity, just as taking part of an orchestra may give a musician a sense of duty, a role and purpose in a larger scheme. You can dabble with every character, but ultimately each provides a potential for hundreds of hours to learn and master at high level play.
Furthering the analogy, imagine a combo as a bar of music, a fight as a song where the victor is the one who has practiced their instrument and responds to their opponent's notes quickly and correctly, applying pressure to play louder and harder. Fighting games are a battle of the bands, they're a competition but also an expression. Fighting games are an expressive scene populated by people who find their passion in coming closer to mastery of their craft.
That's what fighting games at their height represent as an entertainment outlet. From a game developer's perspective, fighting games are an intense zoom-in on high-detail character design and mechanical fidelity built and balanced for play between two or more humans. Fighting games are intense, mechanically dense, and difficult as all hell to create. They are also one of the most satisfying projects to work on.
This is Daisuke Ishiwatari, game designer, illustrator, musician... Basically an all-in-one. This guy is my idol. Daisuke has worked for decades under the Japanese game company Arc System Works, a developer and publisher of many popular fighting games. One such project, released in 1998, was Daisuke's passion project, Guilty Gear. This series is an amalgamation of his passions. Character designs, the names of special moves mechanics, and art aesthetic all paint a world of punk rock backed by the supernatural in the modern day, from Japanese folk legends of ghost possession to a society which shunned technology in favor of magic.
Here's one of the cast members, I-No. She's basically Guilty Gear's style personified in one character: Punk Rock, Magic, and High-Speed Aerial Combat. These three phrases are the bedrock of the series, it doesn't seem like much, but these three tenets inform the entire universe, and Daisuke's designs pervade the entire product. While obviously the scope of these projects require large teams, the amount of work Daisuke contributes to the world vision and more importantly to the art and music are considerable and respectable, he's not just an idea guy, this series is his baby.
I'm enough of a realist to understand this is too much to expect of a single person, it's very rare to find a person like Daisuke, and it's certainly not something to take lightly. The reason I bring him up is simply because the sheer amount of work the guy does is inspiring, and it shows the other side of fighting games. They are just as fulfilling to design, to create a world, a cast of characters and an intricate shell in which others can engage and identity with on a high level both independently and as a community.
What Strength!! But Don't Forget There Are Many Guys Like You All Over the World
But this by itself doesn't really provide background to the genre itself. How about we get a little history?
Hardcore Gaming 101's article here provides a mostly exhaustive pre-Street Fighter II history of fighting games, which goes as far back as '76 with the black and white fighter, Heavyweight Champ, or depending on who you ask, as is the case in the HG101 article, the '79 top-down sword duel game, Warrior. These were the early years of video games in general, and along the same lines as Space War, Warrior did not use AI, so the game could only be played as a 1-on-1 fight between two human players. Interestingly, many of these early video games showed that even back then we were approaching video games as social medium, a conduit to interact with others for entertainment, for competition, etc. The biggest change over time has been the visual fidelity and mechanical complexity, but the core purpose behind fighting games have always remained much the same.
The FGC, or Fighting Game Community is a social group that has emerged in prominence to mass media over the last decade with the popularization of e-sports, but their origins go as far back as the mid 80s to late 90s, where arcades had their boom. Back in these days, communities were close-knit, converging on local arcade spots where reputation, friendships and rivalries were built over this genre.
The FGC, or Fighting Game Community is a social group that has emerged in prominence to mass media over the last decade with the popularization of e-sports, but their origins go as far back as the mid 80s to late 90s, where arcades had their boom. Back in these days, communities were close-knit, converging on local arcade spots where reputation, friendships and rivalries were built over this genre.
The standout point I feel in much of the media that comes out of the FGC is the diversity of the players. Fighting games in the age of arcades brought people together from all different age groups, cultures and walks of life. Today, they are recognized as an international sport, with competitors hailing from all different countries. In similar spirit, and perhaps part of why these games have maintained such international appeal, Street Fighter, one of the most long-running and popular fighting game franchises, reflects this diversity in the expansive geography of its cast over the years.
Just as much as the people who play fighters hail from all over the world, so too do the developers, and many modern fighting game developers come from a background of competitive, sometimes professional play in the FGC
See Skullgirls, developed by American studio Lab Zero Games and headed by professional BlazBlue tournament player Mike Zaimont. Chocked full of references to classic Capcom and other Japanese fighters from those arcade days
French company Piranaking based out of Paris developed the 3D fighter Lastfight, based on Bastien Vivรจs' Lastman comic series and inspired by Dreamcast fighter Powerstone
Japanese studio French Bread has grown in popularity over the past decade to presently work alongside big publishers like Arc System Works, most recently releasing Under Night In-Birth.
And even on independent levels there are many small studios working away at innovative projects, such as Brazilian developer Onanim Studio and their project Trajes Fatais.
Gimme Your Best Shot
My point is, the influence of fighting games is strong. They translate on a worldwide scale in the spirit of healthy competition, building connections and communities both local and large-scale, inspire travel and broadened horizons in both players and developers. As a young, aspiring developer, as well as a somewhat seasoned fan of the genre I want to immerse myself in this world in both respects. I want to play these games and meet new people through them, and ultimately, I'd like to connect with those who create them, and offer my own talents to contribute to an amazing genre with deep history and instinctive roots in what we enjoy about games as social tools for personal betterment.
Fighters for the Modern Age
In the past, fighting games were largely 2D affairs, and the amount of work that would go into a quality fighting game from art to design, even for a single character, was painstaking and expensive. This has not changed today, but in an effort to remain relevant, fighting games have taken strides both in the realm of stylistic choices as well as the content they bring to players to improve their appeal to people who normally are turned off by their large skill gap and complicated nature, and to make the best use of today's available techniques and technology to optimize the creation process.
Today, many popular fighters have made the switch to 3D, sometimes retaining 2D gameplay as is the case with Street Fighter IV and V. Some have utilized 3D models from the beginning, and built their gameplay systems around the use of 3D space, major franchises to list being Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Soul Calibur. Using a full 3D movement system meant that the Z axis would also be considered, not just X and Y as it is in 2D fighters. Sidestepping and sweeping attacks become an inherent part of the strategy of these sorts of games. The point is, 2D or 3D, the use of 3D technology in fighting games is becoming a standard part of their polish. Nothing is wrong with retaining the 2D roots of the genre, as games such as Under Night In-Birth have done, but we're seeing more and more games use 3D to great, and surprisingly still cost-efficient effect. In many ways, other than retaining a retro feel, there's little difference considering a 2D fighter to a 2.5D fighter. A full 3D fighter is a different beast altogether and thus requires different considerations, the two are not transferable, but they utilize the same base concepts of high detail character design, animation and in-depth movesets with steep learning curves.
To appeal to a wider audience, Fighters have also diversified their appeal by trying to reach out to a player base that does not have a history with fighters and cannot easily recognize the complex button inputs required to use all the tools a character has to offer. Many fighters have begun to implement cinematic story modes, where simple fights to round out the player's knowledge of the roster and gameplay fundamentals are accentuated by longer narrative-driven scenes, contextualizing all the fighting.
Even back in the day, fighting games often provided single player modes if nobody else wanted to play, from multi-stage arcade modes to practice several matches against computers of increasing difficulty, to actual training modes which set you up with a dummy to practice and experiment with combos and special moves unimpeded by a usually aggressive opponent. Some separate out gameplay altogether, and provide these story-heavy modes as standalone experiences the player can watch or read like a movie or book. This approach has been popular with several Japanese series, including Blazblue, Guilty Gear and Under Night In-Birth. Still, in the end, the main attraction is the genre's namesake, and the genre as a whole continues to provide a standard of quality for players to enjoy while providing new worlds, characters and lore alongside unique systems to set themselves apart from the competition.
Finish It!
Ultimately, Fighting games still face a challenge of being a niche market with a dedicated audience. That audience has allowed them to thrive, but to continue into the future they must continue to innovate to become accessible to a greater audience.
With Temp Work Mercenary, I hope to use my knowledge of the field alongside my pursuit to increase my proficiency in 3D art to create a new world full of colorful characters, a compelling world aesthetic, and something of meaning both in terms of mechanical depth for fighting game fans, and in terms of narrative experiences.
Annotated Bibliography
Animation of a High-Definition 2D Fighting Game Character1 Rantala, Tuula. “Animation of a High-Definition 2D Fighting Game Character.” Theseus.fi, Spring 2013, www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/59254/Rantala_Tuula.pdf.
Tuula Rantala (http://tuularantala.com/) is a Finnish Game Artist who coincidentally created his own in-depth thesis researching fighting game animation a few years ago, and ultimately created his own sample character to demonstrate the process using open-source fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. and within his thesis he lays out many of the same discussions I have been considering in conceptualizing my own project. While perhaps redundant to source another thesis for my own thesis, I’d argue there’s no better resource than someone who has written extensively on the topic and gone on to do their own projects in the medium. Rantala’s conclusion ultimately states that 3D animation is the ‘most versatile and practical approach’ which gives me hope that my own project is built on a solid foundation to succeed on. This is a vital and exhaustive resource for me to reference as I move forward. Additionally, a select few of his listed references are quite applicable in my own.
2 Keits. “Seth Killian Explains Why 3d Graphics Give Fighting Game Developers Flexibility.” Shoryuken, 28 Sept. 2011, http://shoryuken.com/2011/09/27/seth-killian-explains-why-3d-graphics-give-fighting-game-developers-flexibility/.
Seth Killian has been a competitive fighting game player, esports commentator, and developer both working at Capcom and independently, and has been a part of the community and the industry for years. In this short interview excerpt, he expresses that the fundamental differences between 2D and 3D are ultimately less significant than the process of creating them, ‘cheating’ to achieve effects or save time where necessary to keep on track, and the subtle care put into adding personality into animations to communicate character in a genre that doesn’t take much time for exposition or plot. In the end, Killian identifies that 3D provides more flexibility for what designers can do with their characters, iterating designs quickly and reworking animations if necessary, which with sprite-based characters can be an exhaustive, painstaking and time-wasting process.
3 How to read frame data: Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition EventHubs Community, “How to Read Frame Data: Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition.” EventHubs, 10 May 2010, www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/feb/17/how-read-frame-data-street-fighter-4/.
User Ashn0d lays out some general terminology to aid in reading fighting game terms and understanding the concept of frame data, that is, the duration of animations, their properties and how they effect or are affected by other mechanical aspects in the game.
4 What is a Hit Box EventHubs. “Guide to Understanding Hit Boxes in Street Fighter.” EventHubs, 21 Sept. 2009, www.eventhubs.com/guides/2009/sep/18/guide-understanding-hit-boxes-street-fighter/.
An anonymous EventHubs user does a nice job laying out how hitboxes function, interact with one another, and unique properties such as move invincibility. Just a good personal reference for my own purposes.
5 Designing a 2D Fighting Game Ketonen, Miikka. “Designing a 2D Fighting Game.” Theseus.fi, 2016, www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/118514/Thesis_Miikka_Ketonen_KAT13PT.pdf?sequence=1.
Another thesis, this one is more focused in contextualizing the history of fighting games, and goes a little more into the mechanical depth of control layouts, attack strengths and so on rather than the artistic considerations, a good alternative angle to read up on, as each aspect informs the other.
6 “I Wanna Make a Fighting Game!” Demetrio, Andrea "Jens". “I Wanna Make a Fighting Game! - A Practical Guide for Beginners (Part I).” IndieWatch, 14 Apr. 2018, https://indiewatch.net/2017/04/11/wanna-make-fighting-game-practical-guide-beginners-part/
Andrea provides a 4-part introduction and tutorial to beginner game developers who wish to create their own fighting games, going not only into the fundamentals discussed several times prior in this document, but providing excerpts of programming in order to actually implement these things in a development environment such as Unity. Andrea also uses a personal project for many of these examples, showing qualification and past experience working with the genre.
7 Why Animation Matters – The Fighting Game Poonian, Sandeep. Why Animation Matters - The Fighting Game. YouTube, Zenvizi Games, 19 Apr. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnASbvheF4A
In this video, narrator Sandeep takes a quick but detailed look at the importance of animation for feedback, hitboxes, and the consequences of sloppy alignment of animations to hitbox data. Of particular interest he does bring up the 12 principles of animation, a universally accepted resource for creating quality animation, and a good stepping stone to follow on any animation-centric project.
8 A.B.I.torial 14: Injustice 2’s Animation SugarPunchDW. “A.B.I.torial 14: Injustice 2's Animation ALSO SUCKS.” YouTube, SugarPunchDW, 14 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbNWb-vmlB4
While I’m not a huge fan of the uploader’s cadence and asides, this video contains some great indication and call-out of cut corners in the animation department on a AAA title that one might otherwise not readily notice. He makes his points well, uses other recent and relevant examples of the genre that do animation right, and does concede where Injustice 2 succeeds, so ultimately just a good resource to reference the do’s and don’ts of fighting game animation.
9 How to Animate a 2D Fighting Game Root, Dan. How to Animate a 2D Fighting Game. YouTube, Rootay, 18 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfPWyVpIjM
I’ve been a fan of Dan Root for a while, as he explores a mix of mechanical, thematic and artistic aspects in the games he covers in great depth. In this particular video, he’s covering a lot of familiar ground to us by this point, but very efficiently does break downs with visual aids for fighting game animation that follows concepts quite a bit differently than the typical 12 fundamentals of animation coverage. Instead, Root opts to list out more specialized techniques in animating fighters, that is: keyframing, anticipation, follow-through, smears, overshooting and exaggeration/breaking as the main aspects of fighting game animation. Keyframing references the most important parts of the animation, the beginning, middle, end and general key points of movement in a given animation, follow-through is what one would think of as the recovery, where the player returns to their idle state after an attack, block, knockdown or any non-neutral pose. Overshooting is the idea of ‘stretching’ joints beyond their normal range before returning to the expected position, creating a smoother, snappier attack. Paired with overshooting are smears and breaking, where the illusion of motion is implied through a character’s movement being blurred or replicated several times at different positions in a single frame, as through photographed with a high shutter speed. Breaking as the name implies will bend or even break a character’s limb position in impossible ways to create a flexible, dynamic motion. Root references The Animator’s Survival Kit and its consideration for walk cycles, that you may 'break the leg’ to exaggerate and accentuate walking motions with character and life. Root ends with an interesting viewpoint of 2D vs. 3D, and how many of these techniques can become lost in the transition from traditional 2D art to 3D, but that in considering these techniques, a 3D game can mimic and ‘cheat’ out these techniques with a little extra care to bring them out.
10 Making Animation Rock While on the Indie Clock Dawson, Tim, director. GCAP 2017: First Pass Final Pass: Making Animation Rock While on the Indie Clock. YouTube, GCAP, 3 Dec. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DsKgUfpYJo
Tim Dawson, one part of the three-man team at indie game company Witch Beam, has worked in the industry since the early 2000s, and in this talk expresses fantastic insight into the concepts of gravity and energy, and how it is distributed by motion. His decade plus of experience shows in his published work, and the several examples he uses during this talk further solidify him as someone worth taking as many tips as possible from. In fact… Here’s a text resource from him to supplement this video!
11 Assault Android Cactus Dev Blog – Birth of a New Queen Dawson, Tim. “Assault Android Cactus Dev Blog - Birth of a New Queen, Part 2.” Assault Android Cactus, Witch Beam, 28 June 2013, www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2013/06/birth-of-new-queen-part-2.html
Graciously, Tim did a lot of documentation while Witch Beam’s first title, Assault Android Cactus, was under development. This includes the full design process from concept sketches through modeling, UVs, rigging and animation, plus plenty of other tricks along the way. This guy really did it all, and his work here helps inform me as I work on my own documentation. I especially enjoy his witty captions! Jokes aside, this is some really valuable stuff, and more than just the one link above, every blog entry provides a different part of the process with some really cool samples along the way. http://www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2013/07/birth-of-new-queen-part-3.html http://www.assaultandroidcactus.com/2014/05/there-will-be-justice-part-2.html
12 Low Poly Modeling: Style Through Economy Redd, Ethan, director. Low Poly Modeling: Style Through Economy. YouTube, GDC, 3 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1oNuKChsdU
Ethan’s body of work exemplifies the quality and merit of stylized graphics succeeding to get across visual clarity without the need for high fidelity, intensive processes common at the AAA level today. By making economic use of geometry, effective workarounds for shading, texturing and rendering scenes, as well as faking it to make it, as he shows with the idea of scrolling UVs, he provides some very cool, and very uplifting alternatives to stuff that often times is restricted only to the big, well-established businesses of the industry. A great reference to keep my goals attainable while still striving to create something of quality.
13 UCA Rochester 2016 Student Projects Gallery Rochester, UCA. “Discover.” Computer Animation Arts, 2016, www.computeranimationarts.com/discover
This one has a bit of a story to it in how it counts as a resource for my own project. Aside from seeming to be exactly the sort of high-end program I would want to inhabit if I could afford such a thing as grad school and to travel out to the UK, it provides several student blogs who show the results of following several high-detail tutorials on a variety of fundamental and stylization-techniques in Maya. One in particular, Poma, is a tutorial on 2D Facial Rigging that I really wanted to find, but could only access student blogs detailing their final results, rather than any of the actual process. (seen on http://manishadusilacaanimation.blogspot.com/2016/10/maya-stylisation-2d-facial-rigging-part.html & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAI7N8FEZTQ) In other words, there’s fantastic resources here, but my understanding is unless I were a student those resources are locked off to me. Nonetheless, I can find equivalent resources elsewhere, and if the time and opportunity comes, I know where to go knocking for an in-depth academic program for 3D artists. Until then it’s a good basis for ideas.
14 Kuserkvfx Demo Reel & Portfolio Website Kuserk, Andrew. “3D Generalist Reel.” Kuserkvfx, May 2015, www.kuserkvfx.com/
Andrew Kuserk is a graduate from TCNJ who excels in 3D art from every facet. As his work demonstrates he has a firm grasp over several industry standard programs, and utilizes them in tandem to create professional quality models, rigs, animations and renders. If possible getting in contact with him could definitely help bolster my own workflow, and improve my own thesis project.
15 visuals9 Youtube channel (Rigging Research) Chery, Farley. Rigging Research: Farley Chery's EnhancedIK Cat. Youtube, 12 Oct. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvp0AHsVch4
Professor Chery was one of my teachers when I was attending Becker College around 2012-2014. Though I never took any Maya courses with him, he has a series of videos on Youtube documenting rigging research he had done in Maya, as well as a handful of in-depth hours-long tutorials on Pluralsight (originally Digital Tutors) from 2011. https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/farley-chery I don’t know how applicable those tutorials are with today’s versions of Maya, but at the very least the concepts should be valuable to learn. I’ll likely be looking further into his work now that I have a better understanding of Maya.
16 Rigging Dojo: Teaching the Art and Science of Character Rigging “Teaching the Art and Science of Character Rigging.” Rigging Dojo, www.riggingdojo.com/
Rigging Dojo is a website dedicated to keeping abreast of rigging technology and techniques, from 3D animated Netflix shows to significant figures in the industry, they’re a great resource to keep up to date on what’s happening in the wide world of multimedia. Aside from that, their Rigging 101 page and other offerings provide course curriculums that anyone who has a few spare hundred dollars sitting around can apply for and learn advanced techniques to help them learn the ins and outs of rigging. Pretty cool website, worth keeping in my repertoire of resources.
17 Cody Little: Animating 2D Eyes From a Texture in Maya Little, Cody. Animating 2D Eyes From a Texture in Maya. YouTube, 1 Dec. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSLyA7eQWOU
From Cody’s website (http://codylittle64.wixsite.com/codylittle) he establishes himself as a rigging and animation enthusiast, creating low-poly models and in context of this video, providing guidance of performing niche techniques to get stylized forms of animation functioning within Maya. As I share this interest in low-poly, and have seen animated 2D assets on 3D models used successfully on independent projects in the past, I plan to use Cody’s guidance here to potentially create my own animated 2D facial features, should 3D facial rigging prove too difficult to achieve in a limited period of time.
18 Garrett Shikuma: Character Eye Blink Shikuma, Garrett, director. Animation School - Animschool: Character Eye Blink. YouTube, AnimSchool, 28 Dec. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jRo4fwU3I
In this video Garrett Shikuma provides some nuances to a rigged model’s blinking. It doesn’t account for the process of rigging leading up to these animations, but as a general fundamental guide to animation principles it’s good for getting into an animation mindset after keyframes are implemented for more smooth, flowing animation.
19 Remco Willemsen Portfolio | 2016 Graduation Rig Project Willemsen, Remco. “2016 Graduation Rig Project.” Remco Willemsen | Portfolio, www.remcowillemsen.com/#work--7,grad.html,2016_-_Graduation
Remco’s portfolio covers a vast range of projects from game development to 3D, and his graduation project provides a really solid benchmark for a quality rig that could be applied for most situations. While there’s no instructional content as to how he got this rig done, the general overview of the process in itself is valuable, showing the time frame in which it was accomplished (14 weeks) use of facial controller attributes and explanation of the animation itself having only two weeks before his deadline. This may significantly change how I consider my own critical path, and how I spend Winter Break possibly reworking parts of my model so that the final result cooperates when I get to the animation stage.
20 Guilty Gear Xrd’s Art Style – The X Factor Between 2D and 3D Motomura, Junya C, Presenter. “GuiltyGearXrd's Art Style - The X Factor Between 2D and 3D.”, YouTube, GDC, 21 May 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1032&v=yhGjCzxJV3E
This source coming from Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear Xrd, which I’ve discussed prominently on this blog in relation to the goals for my own project, Junya Motomura goes in-depth on the technology and artistic approach taken to achieve a high-fidelity, 3D as 2D style for their game, providing good info on the additional software used in their pipeline, such as Autodesk Softimage, as well as specific details on how they achieved their cel-shaded art style.
21 Maya Modeling Techniques – Character Clothes Maya Sensei. Maya Modeling Techniques - Character Clothes. YouTube, YouTube, 23 May 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFzt2Xh2mTU
I’ve been trying to cover as many different angles of Maya as possible in these resources so that I have a good range to fall back on and get support with as I need it. Though on my current model the clothes are modeled straight onto the character, I may find it better to try separating the clothes from the character mesh in the future. I see this causing rigging/weight painting issues down the line, but depending on my approach it may make other aspects such as cloth physics and interchangeable outfits possible, which would be great options to have.
22 Maya Tutorial – Low Poly Detailing (Hair & Facial Hair) Mrs. G’s Digital Tutorials. “Maya Tutorial – Low Poly Detailing (Hair & Facial Hair).” YouTube, 4 Dec. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f76nSa6tGyc
In this tutorial Mrs. G offers an approach to building out low poly details on the face such as hair and facial hair. As The Horror exhibits both, and I’ve had some trouble up to this point creating his hairstyle in a neat fashion, her video may help me use a different approach to get a more effective hair modeling technique into practice. 22 Toon Shading with Arnold “Toon Shading with Arnold” Toon - Arnold for Maya User Guide 5 - Arnold Renderer, docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Toon. Directly from the Maya User Guide, this article explains the implementation of Arnold’s Toon shader preset, as well as connecting to various articles detailing its individual variable features. As I’m going for a stylized, soft pastel look, but may need to tone back from an approach such as Guilty Gear Xrd’s, this may be a good compromise, and in general the Maya User Guide should assist me with variety of troubleshooting issues and feature implementations.
23 How to Rig an IK Leg in Maya Swartz, Michael. How to Rig an IK Leg in Maya. YouTube, 31 Mar. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiU_KoPPTws&fbclid=IwAR1NiJLNko8oOsDi_M9o-J6xuOafSbR2JL-IbXWNOWBDtgOdzbn55O4VhyA
Backtracking a bit, I’m considering using Michael Swartz’s tutorial here on IK Leg rigging as I’m feeling that reworking my rig could do a lot of good and save a lot of painful development in the long-run, and part of where the biggest improvements will lie are in the arms and legs. Being unable to get a reverse foot rig wasn’t terrible uplifting, so I think it would be valuable to start taking note of some basic rigging tutorials for a humanoid character. This is just a jumping off point, but offers a pretty in-depth process and even goes a bit into coding with Maya, which is something I’d like to introduce myself to at the very least for reference’s sake.
24 Tech-Artists.Org Forum “Tech-Artists.Org Forum.” Tech-Artists.Org, tech-artists.org/?fbclid=IwAR1kXqlYNn3HNstClQUT96onh1zUdmV_SzgBbxcfvKXsVmadYkoTpyPbYeg
This last site is an open forum for technical artists, and may prove useful to lurk and search for prior threads dealing with any potential issues that may come up in my own project. Pretty open-ended, but useful to keep close nonetheless.
Critical Path
We're coming up on the end of the Fall semester, and therefore it's integral that we know exactly what the plan is moving forward for Winter Break and my final semester in the Spring. I want to finish strong on this project, and so I took the time to deliberate on where my time would be best spent, on what activities, and for what general timeline to keep on track and end out with a successful Thesis Project. Because of how I formatted this, and also because it's a long timeline moving from the beginning of the Fall 2018 semester to the end of Spring 2019, I've transferred it onto a Google Doc which is available via This LinkFor a sample of the template here's how I'm organizing my Critical Path:
Taking note of my remaining time at TCNJ, as well as the interim breaks in Winter and Spring, I've organized my critical path so that each week I have a new set of tasks, and a loose deadline in which I expect to be able to accomplish them. Some weeks are more intensive than others, but the ultimate goal is to keep me moving and push me to my full capacity, and end up on the other side of the whole thing with a project to be proud of. I will continually return to this document to update my progression, noting my successful accomplishments from the previous week, and updating the Priority To-Do list with incomplete tasks from previous weeks, so that I can play catch-up if need be, or add additional tasks for the week on if I pull ahead of my projected tasks.
I may also transfer this document to a physical medium, transferring the necessary info to sticky notes which I can keep on a wall at home, and crossing off tasks as I complete them
Self-Reflection
My progress this semester has been significant, I feel I’ve
learned a lot regarding troubleshooting my workflow in Unity, and I’ve come out
with several animations to show off for it. I do however feel that I could’ve
dedicated more effort, time permitting, to my animation work. I feel like I
should have more to show after the several weeks of development this semester.
I had hoped to get all the way through a full character moveset and have a
rendered sample of what my final product would be like in the Spring, but I
know I’m not ready to move onto that step of the process just yet.
I do think I’m my own worst critic in regards to these
things, and if I rework my entire project and remodel my character while I have
more free time over Winter Break, I still don’t know if I’ll be entirely happy
with the results. Working solo on a project like this was ambitious, especially
with the limited skill level I’m currently at. I need to practice, use the bevy
of tutorials and resources I’ve built up in my annotated bibliography, and come
back in the Spring stronger than before.
