Animating Ella

So now I've got the basic design down to how I like it, I've started animating her model. Now, you've already seen the 'idle' animation, but just in case you missed that post, here it is again (with the added shaders and no jitter this time... hopefully):

I think I'll have to point out that the quality of gifs aren't brilliant (they look fine locally, honest) but I'm sure you're getting the general gist of the animation here. I've also managed to get the 'walk' one done too. This took a while since it was a struggle going back and forth through Photoshop and Illustrator and tweaking the movement to look like an actual person walking. That and making sure there were enough frames for the animation to run smoothly. Again I can't count for upload quality but the basics are all there:

*Upon review, I've noticed it's just the 'idle' that looks shoddy, should be fixed in a future patch...

**I've also now noticed that it's to do with the lack of transparency on the second image, meaning it has a white background instead of none at all.

Refining the style

I've played a little with having solid black outlines and having the line work that I used in my past post on Ella, and having seen the two differences, I've come to the conclusion that I prefer it the first way. Take a look:

That being said, Ella herself seemed to be lacking something so I've added a few shadows to the design and I think it adds a kind of 'paper cut out' effect to her, and as I didn't intend for her to look overly 3D in nature, I feel it lends well to the model.

Adding colour and idle animation

Here's a very short post but I've managed to get my basic drawing of Ella into the computer and with a little tweaking and adding colour I'm a happy with what I've got so far:

She's wearing a night-gown/nightie/whatever-you-call-it, because the story starts with Ella painting/drawing while in bed and she falls asleep whilst doing so, she then dreams about being in the painting which is half complete (cue 'The Unfinished Swan') and so she has to finish the work she already started. Not worked out all the fine print but that's the idea I'm heading up!

Starting Ella

I'm calling my game 'Ella' since that'll be the name of the player controlled character, also I guess I wanted to keep things simple without trying to think of a witty/inventive name for it instead.

This aside, I've started work on the actual design of Ella so I've been taking a look at various different  examples of children's literature to help the design process. Here are just a few which I've taken cues from:

I wanted to keep a drawn look and feel without making it look too polished and refined, similar to the top image, taken from "My Father's Arms Are A Boat". As well as this, I wanted to use a 'pastel' style colour scheme similar to the bottom image to keep the colours neutral and similar to those found in children's literature.

Here's my initial sketches:

Laying the ground work

Alright, I've started to decide what I want my game to look/feel and be like so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Initially I wanted to have a game which used shadows and a flashlight to help the player navigate in a 2.5D puzzle platform environment. The concept was simple, using the flashlight to cast shadows on the background in order to manipulate the level and alter how the character can get around.

The more I thought about it, I started to stray away from that idea and wanted something to be clean and simple, after all, the game was supposed to come across as 'charming' and that wouldn't fit into a horror-esque genre properly. This led me to drastically alter my plans for using shadows and lean towards a more 'Unfinished Swan' form of gameplay (but in a 2D style). If you've not had the chance to play The Unfinished Swan developed by Giant Sparrow, I'd highly recommend doing so, right now. Get your hands on a PS3 and go have fun. Seriously.

Here's a little look at the game: