Tag Archives: art

Traditional Animation in a 3D Game: How and Why

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As anyone who has read my posts so far would know, I am working on a hand-drawn 3D game, the first of its kind. You may be curious on how such a endevaor was started, so I give a post here to explain that. Otherwise, feel free to click here to check out that game project in greater detail.

I love animation. All types of it. It makes me wonder why we use live-action footage at all for filmmaking, as it feels cheap in comparison. Animation requires a true artist to create everything entirely from scratch (not that I’m trying to put down live-action directors, the two mediums just involve different artisitc qualities). Taking the time to make something come to life, frame by frame by frame… I can’t help but admire the hard work that goes into it.

I love games in a similar manner. Here, not only is something coming to life in front of you, but you as a player are in control of that life. It’s hugely rewarding. Being a fan of animation, I eventually noticed that hand-drawn, traditional animation wasn’t being used as much anymore in the mid 2000’s for film; instead we got several computer-animated films each year, most of which were either bad or very forgettable at the time. If for no other reason, the excess of computer animation made the medium as a whole not worth what it used to be.

And so, I wondered… was there a way to make games with traditional animation? Of course, 2D games do this already, and do it especially well now, but what about 3D games? Sure, 3D graphics and models have made their way in 2D games (usually to great effect), but why not the other way around? At the very least, why haven’t we come up with a way to make computer animation mimic traditional animation to acheive this effect?

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Stress…

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Actually, stress hasn’t steeped in quite yet. This is that time of the year where student assignments are done but exams aren’t for another week. The calm of the storm. But the storm will come.

(Don’t expect too many updates in the next three weeks. But expect something very soon afterwards… until then, here’s a nice analogy of my brain.)Rope_Medium

Sprite Lamp – Some Smart Guys From Australia

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I don’t normally talk about what other people are doing. This is a site dedicated to Dust Scratch Games after all, and I am a rather selfish fellow. But sometimes, something comes up that just knocks my socks off.

Here is a group of guys from rural Australia who are working on something called “Sprite Lamp“, a dynamic 2D-lighting mapping tool for game development. It doesn’t sound like much… why not just have a point light in your environment and move it to where you want light to be? Well, with 2D art and 2D planes, that light gets reflected the same for the entire sprite, and it appears this new tool offers a way to define the effect light has from certain positions on a sprite. The result is some incredibly detailed art, making 2D pixel art look new again.

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Project James – Playable Test Demo of a Hand-Drawn 3D Game

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Ok, I’ve had my fun with some blogging, now let’s talk about why I’ve called you all here tonight.

From my previous post, you know that the first major game by Dust Scratch Games will involve 2D hand-drawn characters in 3D space.  That’s right: a hand-drawn 3d game. This isn’t necessarily the first time such a game was made: the JRPG “Time and Eternity” for the PS3 is advertised as the first playable anime, for example. But that game had the animated sprites in a fixed position in front of the camera, giving the impression of a crude first-person game with cartoons pasted on the front. This, among other reasons, was cause to generally poor reviews. Other games that tried hand-drawn images in games were either beautiful 2D games, or suffered for similar reasons of limitations in 3D.

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What’s Wrong With The Animation Industry?

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Yes, the animation industry is in a bit of a rut.

First off, let’s cover the basics. Animation is typically divided into three categories in film: traditional/cel-animation, computer assisted animation, and stop-motion animation.

Traditional animation is like those old Disney movies you remember. “Snow White,” “The Lion King,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Beauty and the Beast”, etc. These were hand-drawn: every frame (as many as 24 per second) had to be hand-made by a team of artists one by one.

Computer assisted animation is typically thought of as 3D animation, although 2D flash also counts (but I’m not counting traditional animation fixed in Photoshop or Post-Processing, as those still require an artist to create every frame). Here, animators don’t have to draw every single frame. Instead, animators draw keyframes as they normally would, but instead of an in-between artist finishing up extra frames for smoother animation, the computer automatically fills in the gaps for an ultra smooth clip. Animators can also use tools to fiddle with 3D models, and typically spend more time adding details and improving visuals. Therefore, it’s actually the easiest and cheapest of the three animation styles, despite the amount of knowledge and experience needed to use the computer software correctly, and that extra time can be afforded to making higher-quality work.

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