more progress Char animation

while I wait on some reference opportunities, I work on the reason why I'm going to love my final product so very much.

AWESOME ANGLES

epic posture is epic.

character animation process

this is my character animation progress so far. The first set is a few shots of Hao's expressions and reactions to Zhuang's random crap and excuses and such. The first is the initial 'oh hey there', the next is after Zhuang refuses to let him past, so Hao offers to move aside. The third is Hao responding to Zhuang's "you'll push me off" with a "what do we do then?"

As for the fight animation, this is a simple loop of the first 2 strikes. From then on it's a left hook kick from Zhuang and then 2 quick punches, both blocked, and then countered by Hao with a shove to a big ol' special punch. I might add more moves as I consult the friends.

Problems encountered so far are limited to the bridge now. I need to find a way to render off the PNG's, while allowing for progressive transparency. I'll be trying several plain white floors that represents clouds, and have various degrees of translucency between each plane. Creating a cloud cylinder, rather than a sphere will stop the weird sucking in at the top, and since they're high in the sky, it's easy enough to stop the clouds halfway up and add the sky coloured roof, making all of the cylinder immune to lighting effects like the bridge.

woot.

Zhuang - a change

I have made the final decision on one of the characters. It's a simple one, but will re-write the entire fight essentially. After alot of practice and fiddling in Flash, I've found it's somewhat difficult to make the staff work for me. Using the line tool will result in making it look very disconnected from the rest of the scene and characters, and not using the line tool results in a mess when the staff is static.

It's also a bit of a pain to erase and draw in the staff on a third layer as well if I want to not have to erase lines from inside the character. The simple solution is to change the weapon before I get too into the choreography. At first I thought sword... then I looked at the huge lunk that is Zhuang, then thought...

Tonfa.

Being nice and intimate will allow for more awesome bats and close contact stuff, and they're nice and easy to draw in comparison to a big ass staff. I never thought what is essentially a rectangle would give me this much problem. Traditionally animating this, the staff drawing would have the convenience of a ruler, and flash unfortunately does not.

But yes, Tonfa. I think they suit him rather well. As does the lack of jacket...