I know this is the first time that I'm writing about this project so let me try and catch you up to speed. Right now in my Game Development II class (separate from the senior capstone project) we are working on a prototype game for a large company . The point of the class is to make a 3D game specifically for a client. In the beginning we had contact with the client but once it got close to needing to get started we had difficulty meeting with them. To try to keep the experience accurate Marty Clayton our professor and former assistant art director at EA took there place as the client while still trying to capture the same vision. Now we are getting some attention on the project so I figured I should start blogging about it.
The game is essentially a photography game based in Yellowstone but can expand to anywhere - which will be our pitch.
In this project it is the first time that we are doing an actual production line. Before I was always did everything start to finish character concept-model-rig-animation-export/integration. This time since we are the larger group in the class I am almost solely the animator since I have by far the most experience + the only one with the knowledge of rigs and how to get 3D animated models in a game. So far there has been some issues with the models. At first we had the plan to make every animal very characterized since we don't have the time to make them realistic. We received several bumps and bruises since the beginning phases of animal modeling proved that we couldn't really stray far at all from the build of the animals we are doing without loosing the functionality in many of the animations that we and the client wanted. This moved us to make the decision to make the shapes of the anima accurate and leave all the characterization of the animals to be done in textures. I have animated two deer, one buffalo, and three bears now before we came to this so it has been a learning experience of "how things really go sometimes" said by Marty.
We do have another animator but he is very elementary in his knowledge of both rigs and animation so we had to make the choice of whether he was going to hurt us and we should let him go - or to keep him on and not rely on his work. I knew that if we let him go all the work would fall on me anyways and he really wants to be an animator so I asked if we could keep him on and if worse came to worse it would all fall on me anyways. Marty was able to help me out a bit with bringing on a animator from the Masters Program - since Heroes of Hat is taking up a lot of time and this project is BIG. We had our first meeting last night and she seemed good to go so it is boosting my moral a bit.
This weeks tasks
I have already done a few animation for the newest bear and I've completed all the animations for the main character. Since I'm still the only knowledgable one with rigs I will be doing the wolf, bison, big horned sheep, and deer rigs by tuesday. Hopefully I will get the chance to add a few more animations but the rigs are my only committed items for the week.
I need to get back to work on HOH so I will post videos and images of this game next time.
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