So, today’s post will focus on the animated introduction of the game.<\/p>\n
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II – Creating an opening animation<\/h3>\n
If you have already tested the previous demo, you may have experienced a few difficulties to get into it. That’s because there is no global introduction to the game setting up the “context”. All games have this kind of introduction to enable the player to progressively enter the game. Even movies have them. Introduction sequences are often wide shots where you can have a grasp of where and when the action takes places. With this in mind, I made a storyboard about this intro a while ago:<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\nOf course, these are personal notes, and I have a very poor hand-writing, so you may not understand all. But the goal was for me to have a record of the general idea of how the camera moves, what happens on screen, what is the timing… etc. This storyboard was very optimistic \ud83d\ude09 Finally, I simplified a lot of things… For example, at the beginning, there is only the hero on the boat at the moment. Maybe I’ll add more guys later. But those are not mandatory for the story understanding.<\/p>\n
III – New 3D models<\/h3>\n
OK! I have the idea more or less clear in my head and on the paper, now it’s time to actually model all the stuff we’ll see. This includes:<\/p>\n
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- The Thief Guild Island: until now, I only had the “inside” of the main yard. I have to add the “outside”, that is to say the whole island.<\/li>\n
- Various decoration stuff: fir trees, benches. I already had a few ones that I took from the Eagle Island.<\/li>\n
- The ship on which the hero arrives at the island. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This doesn’t seem that complicated…
…except… that at the beginning, I don’t have a very precise idea of how they may look like. So I spend a lot of time trying to “design” their look. Do I want something curvy? Something blocky? What colors? what materials? Something original? Classical? Can the viewer\/player understand what it is at first sight? Does it merge well with the graphical style? Of course, one can always say “I want something cool!”… But what is cool? Can we draw it? This pushed me to draw a lot of concepts. And it took me very long to achieve the result you’ll see in the next demo.
The 3D model in itself is sometimes complex to create, but the idea is a LOT longer to flesh out. It’s a long period of trial and errors, coming back-and-forth between Blender, GIMP and a simple paper sheet. Moreover, you have to put this necessary time in balance with other things: do I have the skills to create what I have in my head? (Obviously, not yet…) Can I spend more time on this according to my planning? (Obviously, no again, I’m always late…)<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-Su0FOzQeA7U\/UheJh4FPqHI\/AAAAAAAAG1c\/lk_7C3LpfCU\/s400\/DSC_1159.JPG\")
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<\/a><\/div>\nSome of the concepts I tried before I finally achieved something that “was OK” (but far from perfect). You may notice that this is a mess because I tend to draw everything at the same time: buildings, vehicles, characters… I just think about stuff… and they sometimes mix between them.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/p>\n