Jump! Jump! Kris Kros ill make ya...

Just did a quick run and jump cycle. I think im going to keep things rough until i get to the programming part so i dont get too ahead of myself. I had to switch gears and figure out how to animate a character jumping but keeping the animation simple enough in case he doesnt go through a full cycle. I watched a couple game playthrough on youtube and realized that a lot of the animations dont go through a full jump animation. There isn't much anticipation or even any frames for the impact which i found pretty weird. When you watch the videos frame by frame, it looks odd. But if you ever played any classic platformer, you never really notice the animation, you just feel it. So i started with a full jump cycle with a few anticipation frames, some mid air overlapping action, and some stretching on the landing. Once i put it beside the run cycle to see what it would look like if this dude were running then jumped, its looked pretty bad. He went from running to pausing, then jumping. I began deleting frames and ended up with this. The first frame of his jump places him in the air with no anticipation. Im still going to play around with it to get something i can call "good animation" but for now i figured out that less is more when dealing with this sort of thing. 

Nailed it!

Fat guy complete! I still have to figure out what this boss is actually going to do as far as attacks. I havent even figured out how my hero is going to attack. I dont even know what im making to be honest with you. I know there's going to be a dude, who fights a ton of other dudes and thats about it.

(side note: plan something out)

I drew 2 pigs, check it out

I never considered myself a great artist, just a hard worker. I've been lucky enough to have a friend of mine accept an offer and start working with me at Breaktime studios. His arrival sort of jump started my creativity and made me feel like an artist again which is something I haven't felt for a long time. I told myself that i would start forcing myself to draw and post everything i do. So you might encounter a ton of CRAP on this blog and thats the reason behind it. And! So my mom can check it out since she just recently realized that computers exist and that she wont break em if she so happens to touch one. So behold! Random drawing number one.

(side note: stop being lazy and start coloring things)

First Boss Character

I've been jotting down different ideas for bosses and the power-ups that they would leave behind so i wanted to start with the most fleshed out idea i had. This is the "Sweatin to the oldies" boss. The original idea was to design a skinny character wearing a basketball outfit. This guy could blow himself up like Mr. Fantastic and bounce around the level trying to trample my hero character. As i began drawing him, over and over and over again, I ended up with a fat dude in a leisure suit which i find a lot more comedic than basketball gear. Who has time to watch a full basketball game anyway! Go Eagles! I started by looking at a ton of photos of people doing cannonballs since i knew that my characters special ability would be to bounce around in this pose. I also looked at a lot of Zangeif and E. Honda from Street fighter to nail down an idle pose. It also makes me feel all warm and toasty to look at a ton of street fighter along the way since i grew up playing the hell out of it at the local chinese store. The entire store was a bulletproof wall with people behind it and a street fighter 2 arcade game. Im glad to bring those memories back into my work. 

I got a Hero! ooh ooh.

So. I finally nailed this dude down. This is pretty much what i looked like at age 8, minus the buck teeth, and my long johns weren't red. They were that dirty white color that most traditional long johns are. If you google long johns today, al you get are these slim fit male models posing in them, with more colors than a skittles commercial. (Taste the rainbow) I started cleaning up and rigging the character in Flash with everything from highlights to shadows on multiple layers. This made it easy to do things like reuse his eye shape to make another expression and keep the character on model. I tend to get pretty outrageous from one expression to another. I could go from a smiley face to a crazy expression that makes this dude go from a little kid to sloth from the Goonies. 

I need a hero! ooh oooh.... ( you gotta be tough and you gotta be bad, something something something)

I started sketching up a hero character. I had a few ideas of what i wanted him to look like but it always takes me forever and a day to land on something. I have OCD when it comes to character design thats why i tend to avoid doing it. So i took that into account and just started drawing whatever would come out, slowly nailing down a hero that i would love to animate. I started with the super soaker character but he ended up looking pretty creepy. I would't trust that guy in real life. Some random stranger walks up to you with a super soaker, WATCH OUT! When i was younger, a group of kids in philadelphia were filling up their super soakers(back when they were super cool) with bleach and going around spraying people in the neighborhood. I was NOT one of these kids but i totally knew one of them. 

(side note: hero character will use super soaker full of bleach to fight against the laundry monster/ task: draw laundry monster) 

Happy New Year...3 months late.

First of all, I really need to remember that I have a blog. I always forget...  Well, its the new year and I decided to make my new years resolution "Make a game". Since i accepted a job as an animator working on mobile games i've had a constant itch to make something of my own. With no programming experience what-so-ever, many people suggested linking with someone who knew how to program. Great suggestion but I tend to dive into everything solo and see what comes out the other end. So! Im learning ActionScript. Rather than having to teeter on someone elses schedule and hope for the best while not getting to experience the full value of learning a programming language and potentially making something cool and having the knowledge to do it again and again. I've already started reading a ton of tutorials and PDF's and watching videos. Its definitely going to be a bitch, kind of like a stomach virus. After you throw up for a few days and clog the toilet a couple of times, when its all over, you can eat raunchy cheeseburgers again. This game will be the RAUNCHIEST CHEESEBURGER EVER!!!!! 

Signing off.