Hi guys!
So the last week of production is here, and one of the last things I have worked on is the death animations for the enemies.
My first plan was to do the same animation that my former teammate Daniella did on the owl mom and her owlets.
However, due to her dropping out I could not ask her for help. I think she did the animation by using the lasso tool in Photoshop and dragging small pieces backwards. But this would be quite time consuming and seeing as it was the final week and I had to do the tasks that she left behind, I simply did not have time for it.
I got advice from my scrum master Nicolina, to make it as simple as possible. And reuse the animation for all the birds. So that is exactly what I did.
I figured that the easiest way would be to use the projectile as a start and then blow them up. Not only would it be an easy animation, I also really wanted to blow these birds up because I am so fed up with them. I really had no idea how hard it would be to animate birds.
Anyways, I started off by doing a simple sketch and then I showed it to my friend Amanda. She then did this animation to give me something better to work from.
So basically what I did was to take the projectile, make it slightly bigger for every frame and using the lasso tool and the eraser tool to shatter it.
For each death animation I drew three different feathers to match the bird the death animation was for. Then I moved, scaled and rotated them in perspective in order to make them look as if they were coming closer and exploding outwards.
The last thing I did was to put the bird on a layer behind the projectile for three frames and reducing the opacity for it, in order to make it look as if the bird is slowly being pulled into the explosion.
So here you have the final results!
I am actually really pleased with them, especially the colors. And they look really good in game.
I don’t think that we have to write anymore posts for this course. So I guess that this is goodbye for now. I will so enjoy the blog-free time ahead!
Peace out!
theasofiafalkenmark 
Hi Thea!
I. LOVE. THE. FEATHERS. !
That’s brilliant haha! We had little time during our final week too and I made an animation that took me way to much time so I know how time consuming animations can be, especially death animations for some reason. Besides, I don’t know how hectic your last week was but I can only imagine since ours was quite hectic, so working smart like this makes so much sense.
The explosions look good, on their own they are not that special but they look like average 2D games explosions. What really makes it is those cute little feathers. You have distinctive feathers for each bird which makes it easy to tell them apart; they are in a good resolution and size so they don’t appear pixely or anything like that.
The use of the feathers also made using the same animation for the explosion possible, which really is a way of using the most of your time without in any way decrease the overall experience as you said. It seems to me like a perfect use of your time, great for future reference when working hourly!
It’s gonna be fun to see what you create during your work with theme park!
/Gustav
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Hello thea!
First off, sorry to hear about your teammate dropping out. I can guess that it really put a lot of extra strain on your workload this last few weeks.
Second, great text. Clear red line throughout your text. You explain in detail and me as a reader can easily follow your line of thought when you talk about your design choices for the death animations. And as an extra plus, you made me giggle and i always appreciate that. However, if we blog again….i advise you to give the reader a quick summary of your game in the beginning. It doesn’t say in the assignment that we have to answer that question but it would give the reader a better understanding of your game as a whole instead of just ….oh look…exploding birds…..cool. I know your game because i have played it during our playtesting session but it is just an advise for the future.
Now for the what, the why and the how and so on.
The artefact you have chosen for this week’s blogpost is definitely clear. Its a death animation for the enemy, does not get much clearer than that.
Why you chosen this artefact is also clear. The player has to get some feedback for when the enemies are defeated.
The how is the most interesting for me, im guessing you are using photoshop ? As i mentioned before i enjoyed your text because i can follow your line of thought during the design and animation process. Its interesting to see how other people work, how they approach a problem and how they solve it. Especially when it comes to animations.
I like the end results and look forward to seeing them in-game….when i shot them.
Keep up the good work
Erik Levin
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Hi Thea.
You have made yourself very clear about what you have been doing this week. The text was very well detailed so I didn’t have to read anything over again a second time. Maybe it is thanks to the many pictures and GIFs that helped me to understand. The post was very informative and therefore valuable, even though there technically wasn’t anything new that I learned from this other than a reminder about keeping things simple. I will remember that.
It is great to see that you wrote about which method that you have been using when making the death animations for the birds. However, I would like to see that you skipped or switched out the part in the text where it said “enjoy the blog-free time”. Somehow it just feels a little unprofessional. Sure… I bet all of us have our own special opinions about making these blogposts, but I just don’t think it’s a great Idea to write about the blogposts in a bad light when making one or have been making one. That part could have been switched out with something like: “This has been tough, and I think that I have made myself worthy of some rest”……. Or something similar to that.
Martin
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