April 13th 2017

Today I finished shading the animation and I downloaded Go Dot in preparation to my next task in the project. This is the Final frame I was working on.

After I finished that, I did two things following that, I created a new sprite sheet, seen below:

Then I re-rendered the animation of it because the last one had absolutely no detail. So I did that, and this is what the final animation looks like, running at 9FPS:

Also, I am aware my blog URL isn't on the photo, but that is because I cant find a way to put it on it, so I kinda just left it. I am happy with how the animation turned out, except for one part, there is a slight jump in the very middle of the animation, around frame 5. And I could fix it, but it would substantially increase the amount of time I was planning on putting into this, I kind of need to start with the Engine so I can get good with that, so we can build a functioning game with our assets. 

Next day, I will be starting a GoDot tutorial, similar to Emanuel.

April 12th 2017

Today, I finished shading on the frame I was starting yesterday.

It turned out as well as I had hoped, and the animation is really starting to look as good as I can make it with the time I have. 

After that, I started and finished the frame after that.

It turned out also as I had hoped, and the animation is REALLY starting to look usable in the game Emanuel and I are making, and I am that much closer to learning the Godot engine. 

Then even after that, I started on shading the next frame. Although I am only about half way done. 

Next class, I will finish this frame, and start downloading the GoDot engine, and everything I need to learn the engine, so I can help Emanuel with programming the game and using our assets to their fullest extents. 

April 11th 2017

Today, I finished shading the frame I was on, and got about half way done the next frame. The first frame I was working on turned out pretty good if I do say so myself, especially working as fast as I was on it. 

After I Finished that frame, I immediately got to work on the very next frame, and that I got as I said, about half way done it.

The process has been pretty repetitive, I'm sure you can imagine. But it has been chugging along. I only have to finish this frame, and then two more, then I can get started on learning the GoDot engine. It has been a long coming process, but it is turning out nicely. 

I am going to try to finish the shading this week, that way I can start with godot next week. 

April 10th 2017

Today, I shaded the frame some more, but I kinda feel bad about it because there isn't much content to talk about. So this is what I got shaded:

It isn't much, I know, but  am still trying to figure out how to go about shading these angles, and different shades of white on the shoulder.

Next Day, I will be doing that shading, and try to get this frame and the next frame done, while still maintaining my standard of shade quality. 

April 4th 2017

Today, I started and finished shading the third frame. I know I started it yesterday, but I guess I forgot to save it, because none of the work I did yesterday was there. So I had to restart it which wasn't too bad, besides, I think I did a better job today than I did yesterday. 

I think I drew the headband today better than I did yesterday (shown below)

as you can see, the headband in the new one (the first one shown) is shaped and shaded better than the old one. and it even fits better in the animation as well, so It isn't so bad. Anyways< I finished shading the rest of the character as well.

I finished the shading, with no new techniques or anything like that. Pretty simple stuff.

Tomorrow I will be shading the next frame, just continuing my work as per standard.

April 3rd 2017

Today, I finished the palette that I needed to get done.

IT After I finished that, I started with finishing shading the frame. Starting with the head, and features on the head. 

After I finished the head, I started with the legs and body, like the arms and what not. 

I didn't really do anything different that I haven't done before, and that's about it. Nothing too special.

Tomorrow, I will be doing the same thing with the rest of my frames, and trying to get them done as fast as possible. 

March 27th 2017

The first thing I did today was create a sprite sheet for Emanuel because he needs it to put the animation into the engine.

Piskel actually has a pretty cool feature where you can actually just save everything as a single sprite sheet, instead of saving each frame as a .png and put them into a sheet on photoshop. so it makes the process much faster.

I also had to make all of my palettes again and that took some time. 

Basically, so I got the right colour for every one, I had to use the colour picker tool, and select each colour I used, and had to copy the colour code, and paste it into my palette, and I did it in an order of darkest colour, to brightest colour, so it is easy to keep tracks of which colours I am using. I still have one more palette to do for the actual clothes too. So that will take a little bit of time next class. 

Then I can finish shading the animation, then start learning the engine with Emanuel. 

March 10th 2017

Today, I finished the second frame of the animation for the shading. I was going to make a sprite sheet, but I decided I should finish the frame first. 

There really isn't much to say, so I just kind of posted the picture. 

So On my free time, I will be making the sprite sheet and possibly finish it over the break, that way I can just get to my next task come the end of spring break. That next task being beginning to learn the engine, so I can assist Emanuel. 

Have a nice Spring Break!

March 8th 2017

Today, I continued to do my shading, and worked on the second frame of the animation. 

I had done the belt, and I started work on the arm of the character, but there is much work to be done. I didn't get as much done as I anticipated due to the shortened day, but tomorrow is also shortened, so that means I will have to work faster. 

Tomorrow, I will be making a sprite sheet for Emanuel because that is the only way he can import it into the Godot engine. It won't be too difficult. I will just have to select each frame, and then save them as .png files individually, then import them into photoshop, and just put them on to one big sprite sheet and put it in our dedicated project folder. 

March 3rd 2017

Today, I continued doing some frame shading, by first finishing my progress on the first frame of the animation. 

It wasn't very much, but It did add to the depth of the character.  Then I went on to the next frame, and started with redesigning the headband, so it animates in the wind. But I think I may have did it wrong, and will eventually have to re do it.

It the idea is to have the headband wave in the wind, but as I said, i think I may have drawn it wrong, so I will have to just wait and see the full animation to see if I will have to redraw it. I am kind of hoping I won't have to though because it is kind of a hassle to draw them in accurately and the motion of it to make actual sense. 

Next day, I will be continuing with shading, and I will have to draw the belt in as well.

March 1st 2017

Today, I started shading the frames of my animation, and drawing in finer details, starting with the first frame.

As you can see here there are a lot of improvements, in terms of details and shading. I added the excess material to the belt, and to the headband, and I will actually have to animate each of those items for each frame, so I have to add on the belt and headband to each frame. And I will have to shade those as well. 

I also drew an eye on using the circle tool, and colored the inside with plain old black, that way the character had eyes. I am going to skip doing the mouth because it isn't something I would want to be brought to the attention of the character. 

Tomorrow I will continue shading and drawing features onto the character, then I will just keep doing that until I am done all the animations for this character. Once I am done with the character, I will start my coding work for the game. 

January-February 2017 Self Assessment

During the very beginning of my Independent project, being from January to the end of February, I completed my initial assignment of creating, and animating a character. 

It is a loop off the character I created running, although it the basic animation is done, I still have to shade it, then animate a jumping animation, and shade that. And I decided after I am completely done with this character, I will instead of starting a second one, I will begin to learn the Godot engine, that way I can help Emanuel, and learn what what will happen to the characters I am making. And how they will be applied to the game we are making. 

Overall, I am satisfied with my progress throughout the first month of work. I completed the character, now I will fine tune the colours and what not, then I will like I said, start to learn Godot. I think it would prove to be very helpful to the progress of the game, and I won't have to spend all semester running out of ideas and creations. 

I feel I put in an appropriate amount of effort for my task at hand, because obviously my character was created, now I have 4 months to help Emanuel with his substantially larger task and try to get a playable game by the end of the semester. If we both work towards it, with Emanuel being lead programmer, we can achieve that goal. 

February 28th 2017

Today, I finished my character animation, in a total of 8 frames. 

You can see all the 8 frames, and they blend pretty seamlessly actually, I'm surprised on how fast it came together. Running at 10 FPS or maybe 12 FPS it will work marvelously for a placeholder animation for Emanuel to Work with. 

I couldn't figure out a way to get my blog address to go over top of the animation without screwing it up, I couldn't get it to work in photoshop.

Tonight I will write my Self Evaluation.

Next day I will make a crouching pose, then a jumping animation. Once I do those, I will make the idle animation, then once that is done, I will make attack animations. Then once I have all those moving animations done, I will do the shading, then after that I will do the alternate colour so we can distinguish between two different characters when playing in the 2-Player mode.

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February 27th 2017

Today, I completed the fourth frame, and even started the fifth frame. I started the fourth frame as I have every other frame, so I didn't screenshot it because it isn't something you haven't seen before. But here is the finished product.

Then I went and did a little short cut to make it easier to animate. The program I am using (Piskel) has a little duplicate frame button on each frame.

Basically I duplicated the first frame, and changed the perspectives, so it looks like it is completing the running animation. It just speeds up the process. So this is what the original frame looked like.

And this is the changed version.

All I did really was erase some lines, and then draw some new ones in. It changes the perspective, and it actually helps the loop, so the animation will progress a lot faster. Because I can get the main positions a lot faster, and all I will have to actually draw are the filler frames to make it look a tad bit smoother than it is right now.

Tomorrow I will continue the animation and possibly write my Self evaluation for February and January.

February 23rd 2017

Today, I completed the second, and third frame of the animation. For the second frame, all  I had to do was draw in the arms and fill all the colour of everything which isn't very hard at all. I also polished up the feet a little bit so it looks a little better.

So you can see that it is colored in, and has actual arms, not like the beginning when I started with only the legs. I am starting to really grasp the redrawing process to make this process go as fast as possible, while still maintaining somewhat of a standard. 

I then bolted through the basic drawing of the third frame as you see here, and made it so the feet actually follow the angle of the legs for the most part. I feel like in this frame, things got a little more natural from an animator's point of view, and I am sort of just knowing what tools to use, even though it is mostly just the Stroke tool for the long straight lines, and the Pen tool for any sort of curve like the knee, and the slight curves I do for the joints and for defining body features. I then colored in the body with the primary colours with no shading, as I do for the speed of the animation progress. 

I decided the animation speed for this animation in particular would run best, with the distances I am going in each frame, so be around 10-12 Frames Per Second, that way it isn't too choppy, and it also isn't too fast with the amount of frames I am using, which I believe will be around 12 in total. 

Tomorrow, I will be working on the fourth frame, and possibly the fifth if I get the fourth done as fast as I got the third frame done. I am still somewhat surprised at how fast I am pacing through the frame by frame pixel drawing of the animation. The program I am using does a really good job at helping. Really User friendly, all the symbols and names used are pretty easy to figure out, and not hard to get used to. But I still have to learn the keyboard shortcuts, because that will increase my pace considerably I think, seems how that is how it usually is when I do graphic arts.

February 22nd 2017

Today, I finished up rounding some of the edges on the first frame of the animation, mainly on the legs because that is where it was needed most.

After I finished that, I went on to the second frame, and put on the onion layer so I could see the frame before it, and draw it accordingly.Starting with the head and torso using the pen tool exclusively.

I did the head and torso first because I knew that those would remain the same throughout the vast majority of the rough animation. After I did the torso and head, I went on to the legs, which I just about completed. I still have to redraw the feet because I don't really like them, and they don't really fit the last frame.

So you can see that the running animation has been progressing, and once I finish the feet and arms, I will colour it in as I did with the first. I am working on these at just under a frame a class, and I am gonna see about getting around 10-15 frames for the full animation and run that at the desirable FPS which I am thinking will be around 24 frames per second. 

Next class, I will be working on the feet, and arms. Then I will be coloring the body in with the basic palette as well, just like I did with the first frame. Then if I have time, move on to the third frame, and see where I can go with that with the time I have left. 

February 21st 2017

Today, I worked on the running animation. I started by making a basic shape of what I want the sprite to look like and touched up the shape so it isn't too extremely sharp, and has some sort of rounding to it, starting with the legs. 

I started with the legs because I felt like those would be easiest to draw. I used a combination of the pen tool for rounding, and I used the stroke tool to draw long straight lines. At this point, I hadn't been too worried about rounding things, and making things like the knees look less sharp. After I did the legs, I then moved onto the arms, and with some trial and error, I eventually came to this basic shape. 

I still had yet to go and polish some corners up, but this is basically the first frame of the running animation. All I need to do with this is colour in the areas, so I can move along to the next frame, and be on with the animation process. Besides dulling the corners, of course. After I got this image, I started to colour it in, and came to this. 

So I Started shading, but I decided to stop, because I realized it would be a much faster process if I go through and draw all the frames before I do the shading, that way I have all the frames with their basic coloring done before I do the shading. Which will make the process of drawing the animation go by much faster, and more efficiently. 

Next Day, I will be working on the next frame as this one is basically done. I think to get the rough animation I will leave detailed features out, like the fingers, and toes, and not completely make everything proportional. 

February 10th 2017

The first thing I did today, was complete the rough standing position of the character.

After I completed the shading, and basic coloring, my plan is to start the running animations using the abilities and features of the program, and keep it simple to so I don't have to switch between this and another animator, or even photoshop's animation features. After I completed this, I saved it, and also saved it as a new file, and named it something else, I then cut the model in half so I could have more space to work with so I could recreate the sprite, but sideways. 

Then what I did was make some measurements of height, and the size of the head, and I created a rough head sprite, so I had a base to build everything else off with relative ease. 

This is what I came up with. As you can see, it is the head, but it is sideways, and that is emphasized by the nose shape on the right side of the head. I then built the rest of the base model off of that. 

That is what I came up with.

Next day, I will be starting the running poses and animations, and learning how to use their layer functions to my advantage, and also doing the frame by frame animation. and instead of coloring the shading in, I will try out the darken tool, what it does is slightly darken a pixel and I think it might become slightly easier. 

February 8th 2017

Today, I started added the base skin tone, and shaded some of it. And I also started adding facial features.

I started with creating a new colour palette I called "Skin"

Colour #3 is the base skin tone, and there are two slightly brighter, and two slightly darker, so I could do appropriate shading with my bit size. 

I have gotten the sense of shading for pixel art, and I am sure I am doing something wrong in the eyes of professional pixel artists, but it looks decent to me, and it is only a rough copy of what I am trying to do. I am trying to get this character out to Emanuel as soon as possible, while still maintaining some sort of standard, and so far, this is meeting my standards. So you can see here that I  coloured in the character, and shaded the arms, pretty basic stuff if you ask me. 

Then I started shading, and adding features to the face.

Now, I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared even a little bit while drawing this. But I managed. 

Tomorrow, I will be finishing the face, and body shading, and starting the running animation, because it is time to figure it out. 

February 3rd 2017

Today, I sent Emanuel the stage I made yesterday, so he could learn everything he needs to, for that stage which includes things like collision boxes, and physics, and stuff like that. And I also found this program called "Piksel" online, and downloaded it. It is a pixel art drawing program, that actually isn't too bad. there is a lot of useful features in it, and tools. Like tools where whatever you draw will be mirrored across the Y or X axis, or even both if you want. So, with that, I was able to draw a basic humanoid shape with a black outline. 

So I drew the character with relative ease. It isn't exactly proportional, but it is a start, that way I could mostly learn to use the program. I also measure how many pixels I should use for the character size in relation to the stage I created, and found that 175 pixels in height, and 150 in width is a good size for what I need. So that's the size I made the canvas in this program. 

After I drew the character, I started to learn how to use the program, and it is very user friendly I found. You don't just select a new colour every time you need it, you actually create palettes whenever you need them. So I created a colour palette designed for the clothing I planned to put on the fighting character I made. 

So those colours are for the clothes I put on, I put on black, white, and multiple shades in between to make shadows on the clothing, and so I could put depth into the character. After I created the palette, I wasted no time in getting my clothes and whatnot painted onto the character. 

So I drew the white clothing, seen on a few martial arts uniforms, and added a headband. I shaded the headband, though I am not quite happy with the top of the headband colour, it isn't quite the right bright colours I need, so I will be fixing that. 

Tomorrow, I will be refining the clothing colours, then colouring in the skin, and facial features, and drawing the hands and feet better. My plans with this character, is to sort of make a low effort model, and create his animations, then once I finish that, I can send the animations, and poses to Emanuel, via a shared dropbox folder that will carry all of our assets that we create, so it is easily accessible between the two of us. I am happy with the progress we are both having, he seems to be doing well with learning the interface he is working with, and learning the engine script, and also Python. Once he becomes proficient in that, then we will climb through this project at a healthy pace, so that once I create an asset, he can almost immediately implement it into the game. 

So to reiterate what I will be doing tomorrow, adding onto the model, and if that is finished, begin the animating progress. Starting with the running animation, then the jumping animation, then an idle animation. I am not quite sure how to animate in this program, but I notice that they have an icon that looks like an onion cut in half, and an amount of frames bar behind it, so I assume that it is an onion layer option, that way I can see the frame behind the one I am working on, just translucent, that way I can animate more smoothly. I don't really have a goal of how many frames each animation will use, but I do wan't it to run at 30fps.