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. 

February 2nd 2017

 Today, I made the stage again in 2D, and scrapped the 3d style. So what I did, I made the same basic shape with a grey colour, and put a brick pattern over top of it, and changed the blending style to Multiply, that way it removes the white colours, and makes it so it blends better with whatever is behind it, in this case, it is the grey shape I made for the main stage. Then I added a pattern effect to the grey shape and lowered the opacity so it blends well to give the shape some sort of depth. I also found some picture of a coliseum online, and put that in the background because I think it is cool. T

So this is what I came up with, but I decided it doesn't quite have enough. So what I did, was added some platforms with some pillar pictures I found online, and just resized them. Then, I found two bit-style pictures of the two basic fighter ideas we are planning, a Swordsman, and a Fighter. The characters I decided to use is Link, from the Legend of Zelda, and Ryu, from Streetfighter.

I didn't create the Link, or Ryu art, so I take no credit for those. and I didn't create the pillars either. I mostly added the characters, just so there is some sort of height reference to everything, that way when I design the characters, I know exactly how tall and wide to make them in relation to the stages. And that way when/if I design more stages, I know how big to make them in relation to the characters. I am progressing through the prototyping of these stages at a faster pace than I thought. So that is good.

Tomorrow, I will start designing rough version of basic characters that Emanuel and I will use as placeholder characters, that way we don't use copywritten characters. 

February 1st 2017

 Today, I started prototype production on a basic stage layout for Emanuel to make a base off of, so he can learn how to use the collision boxes, and assign collision boxes. I am also using it as a base for an actual stage design.

This is the first version I made, the idea is to make it look 3D. But, this is actually in 3D, with a 3D composite I made with Photoshop CC 2017's built in 3D editor. I first made a parallelogram in 2D, then I cut a box out of the center, then I extruded it into the third dimension. But the issue with this, it isn't the right perspective, and it is too thick for what I need, and it isn't quite the right lighting either. So after a bit of work, I came up with this.

So in this photos, I made the box noticeably thinner, and changed the lighting type from infinite, to a point light. Basically it just makes one big light, that emits light in all directions. This is just so it lights up the whole arena, so I can keep it simple and so I won't need any special lighting effects when I ultimately remake the stage in 2D. This stage is really a placeholder stage, just so I can get an idea of what perspective to draw it in, and what type of lighting I should use, and sizing in general, so I can produce something for Emanuel as soon as possible. 

Tomorrow, I am going to start changing it to a 2D, sort of bit style look. so it is enough to have detail, but also enough to be able run on most computers, and for ease of design and animation. In the future, maybe in a second version of the game, I might pick up a Pen-Tablet of some sort, so I can draw characters, and assets.