Tag Archives: hand-drawn

Public Game Testing (Part 1)

by

I showed off my latest unannounced indie game, as well as a couple other projects, to help promote my University at a local mall. I like volunteering at events like these, but doing so over the next few months also gives me fantastic opportunity to ask general people what they think of my work.

Of course, being in the middle of a mall doesn’t guarantee many will stop to see you. The entire University probably had about a hundred people stop to see the exhibit, about a dozen of which stopped to see my work. And the results?

Continue reading →

What Have I Been Up To? (“The Great Penny Robbery”)

by

I haven’t made a post in a few weeks. Why? Because I had exams. I am a student after all. Thankfully, that’s over, and I can focus my time on important things for the next few months.

But I’ve done a lot in the last few months, too. None of it is really important or “complete,” but some of it is actually pretty darn impressive given the short amount of time it was completed in.

Continue reading →

Improving RAM For Hand-Drawn Pseudo-3D Graphics

by

I keep thinking about better ways to improve my method for pseudo-3D hand-drawn graphics in games. It isn’t a very advanced method, and yet expands older methods that have been abandoned decades ago, creating traditional animation in 3D games in ways that computer animation has still be unable to mimic.

The problem with it? Never mind how it looks (I am not a professional animator in any sense, that it looks as good as it does with my ability alone is enough to convince me of its potential). It takes a lot of work to animate (still less than the typical animated film, which is hardly a comparison). More importantly, it takes a lot of RAM and hard drive space. Unlike CGI models, where the animation takes less data than the model itself (and thus animations can be added to a model with less concern), my method multiplies RAM used with every frame of animation. Every frame is its own, hand-drawn texture.

Add that there are different perspectives of one character (currently 24 in my latest version). If I have one animation with five frames, that’s 24*5 = 120 frames. If I have several animations, or add more frames for smoother animation, you can see how one character can have thousands of hand-drawn frames.

Continue reading →

Animation Test – Running – March 19, 2014

by

Ok, here’s some actual evidence of me doing something towards game development. A rough test animation of a character running, as seen below.drew_test_001

It’s a little better than how “James” used to look when running, but the legs/feet still aren’t quite right, and a few extra frames could do wonders. The top part of the body bobbing up and down is a nice touch, though. Not bad, but I should try again to improve this a little more.

Oh yeah, obviously this isn’t “James.” Who is it? Stay tuned…

Merging 3D and 2D Animation: “Three-dimensional Proxies for Hand-Drawn Characters”

by

I’m surprised I didn’t see this research before, but I’m glad I have now, and wanted to quickly tell you about it.

Hand-drawn (traditional) animation and 3D (computer) animation have been separate forms for a long time. The over-abundance of computer animation has caused some people to mutter, but computer animation is easier and more effective in many ways, so some animators have tried to merge the benefits of both mediums. Oscar-winning Disney short “Paperman” is one such example of how such a style might work (still not able to replace hand-drawn in my opinion, but it comes very close and captures the general heart and soul very well).

But on this webpage, you can find a research paper by Eakta Jain (and Yaser Sheikh, Moshe Mahler, Jessica Hodgins) at Carnegie Mellon titled “Three-dimensional Proxies for Hand-Drawn Characters,” just one of several efforts made by Jain to somehow use traditional animation with modern technology. The included video shows the potential of combining 3D computer models for physics (with environments and cloth effects) with hand-drawn characters. It looks great, and was partially funded by Autodesk (creators of 3D software “Maya”) and Disney Research. Love or hate Disney, their research division really does catch on to some fantastic work.

Of course, it appears additional technical input is required on the artist’s part to make the two artworks mesh together properly, and I assume this is all pre-rendered and may have little to do with the potential in games or real time tech demos, but it looks good nonetheless.

The website I’m talking about is here: http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/threeDproxy/ . Give it a look, it might inspire you.