This is a dev diary on my work practices during the production of I Will Prevail in Trimester 1 2018. This dev diary is a record of how my skills and production techniques whilst learning 2D animation have improved and increased. The irony of the situation is that I first approached SAE to study animation, but opted instead to do Game Development. In the end, it has worked out quite well, as I have found that I am enjoying animation and it does sound better when you can say that you are a Game Developer who specialises in 2D animation (at the moment).
📷Example of a good artist. My brothers work. The Art Engineer
I never considered myself a fine artist, that is I know I don’t have the skills to draw and compose images in fine detail. I do know I have creativity and can draw but not to the stage I aspire and dream about. Being forced to take on the animation role in the production for I WIll Prevail! Meant that I was literally thrown into the deep end and had to literally sink or swim. This was going to be a steep learning curve.
📷More Art Engineer creations, sorry just am proud of my brother work and slightly envious of his talent…
Not having a clue about animation, I did the only course of action I could and Google and Youtube and searched high and low for information. The next step was choosing the software. This was important as I did not have the resources to purchase a high-end program nor did I want to be confronted with some sophisticated system that required hours of tutorials and research. I also sought advice from animation students as well as tutors but the problem was that there was no general consensus on what software to use.
At the end based on a fellow teammates advice, I settled with Piskel. A simple free online program that turned out to be perfect for my learning style and ability. I was able to create simple 2D sprites and simple animation clips and helped learn some of the basic techniques of adding layers, animation frames and basic drawing skills. It soon became apparent that I required more advanced software as Piskel App was missing quite a few essential features and tools I required, like being able to rotate an object.
The wonderful but slightly scary invasive nature of the internet and your search engines learning that I was on the look out for an animation program conveniently placed an ad or link during on of my many browsing sessions. This lead me to download Graphics Gale another free 2D sprite and animation creation program. This was a program that would suffice my requirements and enable me to create units and assets within the restricted timeframes. This started another journey.
Due to not knowing much at all about creating sprites nor animation I was not aware of the procedures an animator would follow. I was not aware of the hints and tips that make creating and producing animation more streamlined. Not knowing Graphics Gale was another issue, but thankfully it has a very simple interface and there are plenty of online resources to refer to, so I was able to pick up the basics very quickly. I still once again did not know all the little shortcuts and tips that would help me streamline the process. Not knowing how to create and draw objects was also weighing heavy on my mind. In particular, I do not have the talent or the knowledge to change the perspective of an object, I know in more advanced programs I can do this, but due to time restraints, I had to make do with what I had before me.
I had before me the seemingly monumental task of creating 4 Unique attacking units with their own 4 sets of animation giving me a total of 16 animation segments required. On top of this, I also had two create 3 unique defensive units each with their own of 3 sets of animation, adding another 12 animation segments required. A grand total of 28 different sets, not including any other sprites required for the user interface and other game art.
I made many mistakes which led me to take more time to create a 2D sprite and its related animation. I was averaging around 8 hours to create 1 unique unit and its 4 related animation segments. Some of these mistakes and repercussions were:
not adding enough layers when adding different parts or sections to the sprites that were going to change position or angle. I would try and use the lasso tool to cut out the part and move it, but it would create more work, as I had to know fix up the area that I had cut the section from. Increased production time as well as increased frustration.
Not saving the file in the related format, in particular, I did not know how to save the file so that I could open it and edit each layer. I was saving them as gif or png files. Severe impact on production because I literally had to create a whole new sprite from scratch which of course then went through its own evolution and ended up always looking a lot different to the original sprite.
Creating too many separate animation frames to perform simple actions. Overcomplicating the animation. Severely impacted on production times.
Not knowing about the best size and how to change the size of the sprite and its components. If I decided to change the size I was copying and pasting each layer to a new sprite, this increased production time as well as made the animation look glitchy in Unity as it was changing the sprites base position as well.
All these mistakes above led to production times blowing out to around 8 hours a unit, combined with my insane desire to try and create something as near perfect as I could, led to further production time added as I kept changing my units based on my improving skills and confidence. I would estimate that from the initial units and their iterations leading to the final units I am somewhat satisfied with ended up costing around 80 hours. Fortunately, I had the Christmas break which gave me the much needed extra time to learn and practice.
Due to the proverbial knife of delivery date forever hanging over a project, one has to increase their output. One can do this by either increasing their work hours, which is not a good thing long term as it can and in most probability with me, lead to burning out. Or one can work smarter by creating procedures that streamline the process. Once the initial base sprite and layers are created the process of animating them was significantly reduced by:
Every time I needed to introduce a new section of the sprite, I added a layer. I decided that it was better to have more layers rather than not enough. Being able to reorder the layers meant that it did not matter if you forgot to add a section. I did reduce some time by creating a separate sprite sheet with all the components separated but found by adding the layers my production time was reduced more significantly.
I realised thanks to the help function that I had to save the files as a *.gal. Finding out this enable me to continue with a design, as before I was forced to start a new design from scratch as I could not separate the layers and thus make them change position or angle.
I did a bit more research and in particular looked at some other 2D animation done by students and other games that I wanted to emulate in the game. I realised that the human eyes and brain fill in the blanks or ignore the change when an object changes position or angle. I was not required to put in multiple animation frames just to make a sprite look like it is walking. I know that this is basic film and animation principles and once again some research did also confirm my theory. I also decided that as the sprites were only going to be displayed on the screen at a very small size, I did not have to be so detailed with my sprites. This helped cut down on over complicating the sprite and its related animation segments.
Changing the size of the sprite to a larger resolution gave me more options in my animation. We were working on a 300×300 resolution scale but I increased that to 800×800 for most of the units. This meant that I was not running out of space when creating different elements and sections for the sprite. I also discovered that I could actually select all the layers in one action. This enabled me to enlarge or reduce the size of the sprite and all its components in one quick action.
The lessons above were learnt over a period of time so the real effects are not being noticed until now. The production time was greatly decreased to the point that once the initial base sprite is created, I can now create the required amount of animation segments in approx 2 – 3 hours for each unit. My confidence and ability to create sprites and animation frames got to the point where we decided to create unique units for each level, therefore adding another 12 unique defensive units and 36 of their animation segments. Using the lessons I had learnt earlier, I was able to deliver the defensive units and their animations for each level at the rate of 2 a week. Essentially about 16 hours worth of work. I had also been procrastinating on the drone sprite and animation but ended up finishing it in under 3 hours by applying the lessons learnt.
I know I have still a lot more to learn and that my skills and knowledge will increase depending on the tools that I may end up learning and end up using. This is also only 2D sprite animation, there is also 3D animation which I want to also master, but that will come later. For now, I can say confidently that I have learnt sufficient basics of 2D sprite and animation creation to be able to create something from scratch in the minimum time possible.
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