Day 8 of my Game in Two Weeks brings to me to animation. It is also a good day to take stock of where I am in my progress.

Before the models I was running ahead of schedule. Hand-drawing 5 different butterfly wings took more time than I expected. Several days I ended early so I worked on Saturday (also, it was fun and I would have worked on Saturday anyway). Monday was my scheduling and design day so I didn’t include that in my estimate. I burned down 36 hours of tasks on the five days from Tuesday to Saturday, and I spent about 34 hours of work.

So when it comes to actual hours spent, I’m still slightly ahead of schedule.

According to the schedule on Monday morning I have 39 more hours of tasks ahead of me, getting my project finished on Friday afternoon. So far, so good.

Day 8, Character Animations.

When it comes to animations, it is absolutely an art rather than a science. There are many rules about giving the appearance of mass and force, about exaggerating motion.

I needed an idle loop animation (just sitting there). I needed 3 animations each of turning from the idle pose into a right or left direction, looping in the given direction, and returning to the idle pose. I needed one animation for casting an offensive missile spell, and an animation for casting a defensive shield spell. So, that is 12 animations total. Fortunately none of the animations are complex, and one day was plenty of time.

I suppose I should create some youtube videos at this point. I’ll probably come back later and make some videos. Right now I’m feverishly working on polishing up the animations and documenting today’s work.

So imagine this is youtube clip showing off the animations.

Beautiful, isn’t it.  🙂