Crunch Time

My priorities this week were pretty intense. I had a basis for the dragon level design but I still needed to model everything, make it look good, complete the level script and create collision boxes. I also had that large list of dragon animations that I had to take care of as well as texturing him. It took some time but those are all done as well as a few more. 

As far as making the Dragon Level look good I did a large number of art assets including a catapult, cages, crates, balconies, new pillars, stain glass windows and frames, chandeliers, new flags, and a breakable chain. I handled the textures for almost everything. I have a few 2D art assets that I received tonight that I will be adding as well as the cages need a texture. I also wanted to pose a few of the enemy characters inside the cages. 

List of Completed Dragon Animations

 triple fire blast

 tail swipe

 bite

 4 second wing blast

 regular fire blast

 epic fire blast

 down ward fire blast

 Fly Cycle

 body slam

 coming out of being unconscious

 static

 hit by lamps

 rear up and slam with two front feet

 die animation

 getting hit while unconscious

 out of breath

There was also many small things I did this week like the a animated switch, other character textures, mapping UVs for a new cliff texture, fixing some Ngons in james level, and a large amount of time spent working out the base enemy exports. 

This week I need to bind all of the costumes were on our second night of the sprint and I have finished the retexturing, rebinding, optimizing, repainting of weights, and reexporting of the Enemies with the Croc Costume, Archer Costume, Assassin Costume, Archer, and I'm working on the villager right now. 

Whats left is the rest of the villager, a new assassin texture, and the whole process for a knight costume. There is also an issue with the dragon export and the bumble bear so myself and chris will be working on that a lot tonight and tomorrow. I need to add two more animations to the Goblin - 1 for him lying in his bead shaking his feet for the menu, 2 for when he picks up a hat. This saturday James, Tom, and myself will be sitting down together and really making the levels look good with all the props and background textures that I received from Robert. Last I need to model, rig, animate, texture, export a jester bomb enemy.

More

I got a lot done this week. I animated the bumble bear with a static, sting, shoot stinger, and a die animation. The character has very small functionality so it didn't need to much and the animations aren't complex since the character is very small. I also finished the dragon rig. It took a bit of research on IK splines since I haven't used them yet in my rigs but it ended up really nice. It now has controls for the wings with pole vectors to allow flapping - top and bottom mouth controls, and the tail is rigged for a good fluid swing. I created a set of 2D faces for the HUD to change expressions for whatever action is happening. I made the spike and stingers with collision boxes so that we could get rid of the arrows that are currently used when the snail and bee shoot their parts.

The only thing I didn't finish that I was scheduled for was the binding of the costumes that James made to the enemy character. This is only because myself, chris, and jon have all been working to get the fbx export  to work but it keeps coming up with different errors. We followed all the steps that worked for the goblin model to the T so I think I may need to redo the rig and animations for that character. It is probably an issue with history or that the skeleton is bound to 2 meshes. We are going to give the export a little more work before I restart the rig and animations. Last but not least I designed the end of game boss level.

This week I have a lot to do. I designed the boss level with the dragon so I could get started on the animations. I only did a basic platform design so this week I will make it good with lamp designs, boxes, a catapult, stain glass windows, balconies, pillars, climbable flags, and a breakable chain. Then I need to get the collision meshes for all the important spots of the level. I will also begin on the animations for the dragon but they are pretty extensive so I don't think I will get them all done. Below are all the animations that I need to add to the goblin and the Dragon. Since this is more of a priority then the enemy I will work to knock all these out before the moving on to the re-rig.

Goblin

another die animation

slat against the wall

take a seat in the catapult

Dragon

triple fire blast

tail swipe

bite

4 second wing blast

regular fire blast

epic fire blast

down ward fire blast

body slam

knock out static

static

hit by lamps

rear up and slam with two front feet

die animation

Still Loving It

This has been another large week of production for me as well as the rest of the group. This week I rigged and animated a static, run, arrow shot, sword attack, jump, and two die sequences for the enemy character. I also worked with the 3 current enemy costumes, binding them to the skeleton so that the programmers didn't have any issues with trying to parent anything like the hats. I modeled our flying enemy which strange enough was a bumble bear. I have most of the rig for the dragon done but I need to find out how to do a good looking fluid motion to the tail so i'm working through  a horse tail tutorial in digital tutors that looks like it will solve the problem. I also added an attack animation for when the goblin doesn't have a hat as well as a sweet victory dance. On friday night I did commit a lot of time towards lowering polygons on the base enemy so that the combinations with the clothes wasn't too much. Even though I'm stretching myself very thin I still love getting in front of the computer and doing this job so I'm gonna hopefully have another large week of production.

This week I need to
- Finish the Dragon rig and start the animations.
- Create 2D character expressions for the HUD (fear, static, concentrated, dead, victory, attack)
- Bind the other 4 costumes that James made - after they are textured
- Rig and animate the bumble bear

We still have a large list of things to do but I'm trying to knock it all out as fast and as good as I can so I can try to help with levels. James is going to start taking them on which is still ridiculous because Greg should have had the last two done today.

Big Friggin Sprint

Well this sprint was a big one - though I think this next week is even bigger. We had a few stumbles but I was still able to get a lot done. First we had a problem with the cardboard characters - it was creating an issue with collisions and you could avoid them far too easily - so we decided to change all enemy characters to be full 3D character. The only issue is that I am the only animator, as well as, the only character modeler so I needed to create a character we could just throw a costume on to be able to be versatile in matching the looks of the other levels. I was supposed to rig him and begin animations as well but I couldn't get Greg to do his part so I couldn't get to it until last night. I was also tasked with rigging the dragon but Greg wanted to do some touch ups that never happened so i'm still waiting to get started on him.

Although I wasn't able to finish those parts of the sprint I still made it productive. I created two unique enemy characters as well as rigged an animated the snail character with a walk and spike shot.

For this week I have to get as many animations as I can completed, as well as a few more character modeling. What is still left is a flying enemy, the animations for the base enemy character, three more costumes for the base enemy, a dancing and dying animation for Zug, treasure chest animation, venus fly trap animation, and the dragon rig and animations. This week I plan to finish the base enemy, Zug's animations, treasure chest, venus fly trap, dragon rig, and the flying enemy. We decided to do a bumble bear - and for variety i will just change the textures between a polar bear, panda bear, and a brown bear. It is a lot but I'm very serious about this project and about having something on my resume - plus it helps that I love this work.