Character design initial sketches
These are my initial sketch ideas for the characters within my animation that I'm going to do. Of course with designing characters and to fit their role, you need to brainstorm ideas on how they look and present themselves, which is what I exactly did here. I started off with listing the characteristics they both need to hold, and a general idea linked to the phrases. I took heavy inspiration from my first case study needy streamer overload as a guide to designing the female protagonist. The girl sketches show off all of my ideas in the body and face structure with extra details such as hair. As seen, I went for a more shut-in vibe, but didn't like it too well as I needed something more cute to throw people off that this is a psychological horror. With other experiments I tried different face designs and hair, but ultimately chose messy short hair with bows, to make her a little bit unsettled.
Then with the partner, the whole premise with them is not only physical pain, but also mental to the protagonist. With that, I need to make them look unsettling and off putting. I did this by experimenting with eye shapes and designs (this is because most expression with my characters will come from the eyes and body movement) and decided on tiny pupils with rings around it due to it not being natural in the slightest. They have messy hair and un-neat clothes with biker gloves and chains as a distinct difference between them and their girlfriend. This is to provide a massive difference between on who is good and who is bad.
Main outfit design idea
To help with outfit brainstorming, I quickly drew out the main features of the girl from needy streamer overload and then the base of my main character as well. This then can ultimately help me generate ideas from my inspired material.
These are 2 of some of the few outfit designs I created (more seen in initial sketches) and labelled accordingly. The second design out of the 2 is the one I ultimately went for due to it better suiting the character and design premise in my opinion. I much preferred the skirt idea due to her being a streamer and the appeal to more of an audience and bows to create a cuter atmosphere to the character which is highly ironic. Later on in my drawings however you can see a few alters to the outfit just to give it more character.
Then with the enemy being her partner, this is the outfit design I came up as well, being similar to the protagonists. I liked the idea of keeping the outfits close to one another in design but a few more glaring issues with the enemy. For starters, I gave them gloves rolled up sleeves and more of a messy shirt unlike the protags neater design. This is again used to further depict them out as who is good and who is bad. Some extra little details I added were piercings to give them a little more of an edge of the archetype scary person with piercings.
Colour palettes
Key designs to a character is not only the design but also the colours linked with them, that is why I experimented with both of my characters to what colours suited them well and why. Firstly, I started off with opposite colours, reds and blues, but personally I felt it was too much and went for a more muted colour choice. I did this with muted reds for her hair and outfit which contrasted perfectly with one another. I also chose the palette red due to it being warmer in its tone which as signifies that she is a warmer person than her partner. Then the partners colour palette I started off with the same reds, but decided to change it to cooler blues such as with their hair and outfit. This is to be a difference between the two, showing who is the victim and who is not.
Pixel brush experimentation
The next thing after fully developing all the ideas of the character design, is understanding how to use brushes for the pixel effect. I needed this pixelated brush for the pixel animation effect which is used in most common games, but was also influenced by the detailed style in needy streamer overload. Seen in the images, it shows me experimenting with the brushes I bought, I needed to experiment with using these as it functions a lot more differently than a normal brush. This is because there is no pen pressure, but also is blocks as the pen itself, which means I need to learn how to use it correctly for the best effect. As shown up above is my experimentation using guide lines as a way to place down the lines and then just more freehand sketches with the brushes. Doing this means I can find the right brush to fit my style for the animation (this is seen on the right with me practicing line art for the first time). Other than that I also tested out different brushes seen on the left in the pack for shading techniques whether it be lines or dots. This was extremely helpful as to a later date, when doing my background, these shading pens were a necessity.
Concept art
Concept art is ideally used to invoke more characteristics within the ones you have created, and to flesh out your overall design. This is what I have done here, being quite messy with my sketches due to cleanliness not needed, to portray the overall personality in my characters. This is seen by me practicing my freak-out faces for the protagonist and their relations to their partner (being panicked and scared). As seen here as well, I have mastered the protagonists final outfit design with a few tweaks in the skirt being a skirt-short combo. Overall, these sketches help me with the last idea makings before I start with the actual animation for my character.
Background drawing development
First initial sketch of ideas, not developed or detailed, just layout and rough ideas of the set before I add in more of the furniture.
More detailed sketch to use for the line art, this is where I added in the little features such as photos and frames instead of blocks and shapes. This is much cleaner than the initial sketch due to after this moving straight into the pixel line art.
After the sketches, I annotated everything accordingly with what are assets and what would be animated if I have enough time.
With the line art done with a pressured pixel brush, I also used other pixelated brushes that I tested during experimentation for the shading aspects which is commonly used for pixel art in media.
This is the finished result of my background piece for my animation using different pixelated brushes for shading and depth. I also used contrasting colours as highlights for the design to pop out more, which is ideally used in pixel artworks. With the mix of bright and contrasting colours, this fits perfectly and in my opinion greatly executed.
Story board
The overall idea of a story board is to set out the key movements in an animation which is what I did here. The beginning is the girl you play as in her room, and the partner in the lounge. Then she walks over to them to discuss something important which leads to an argument. This then leads to a confrontation which inevitably leads to the partner slapping the girl, leading her to collapse to the floor, causing a game over. Of course there's going to be more between the story boards like little pop ups to select something and the walk cycle, but this is going to be added later on once I get the animation complete.
Idle animation development
This is the first step to my idle animation progression, the sketch towards to finished animation. In the idle she's panicking to herself with her hand and body movements jittering on loop. Little features I included was the bows ,hair and skirt bobbing up and down to her movement to portray more emotion to when she's in peak panicking. The first drawing of her in the story board, is what I used as a guide for the starting point towards the idle. Of course the animation is a little sketchy, but this is cleaned up with the line art. I feel like this is a good first step towards the animation of her panicking which perfectly fits the scene I am trying to set.
This is now the finished line art of my character idle animation with more definition in the girls face and body posture. I still carried on using the pixelated brush to carry on with the pixel animation art style, but in my own way.
Using the colour palette I settled for in the colour experimentation, I coloured in my character frame by frame, adding the finishing touches. This is also adding in extra frames on the first and last frame within the idle for the pauses, making it look more natural.
Walk cycle development
The full process here :)
Just like with my idle animation, I used something as a reference/ guide to help me create the basic movements for a walk cycle. For this I used a walk cycle template I found on google and used that as a base. With that, I outlined the body proportions to my character roughly, then went over it again on a separate layer for her extra details like clothes and hair. With her movements, I had to alter some sketches throughout like the hair and skirt so they flowed within frames better. Even if it's a sketch, I needed to do this to easily recognise the structure of the walk cycle. I added in details such as her expression and bowed head, to symbolise her in distress and panicking, like she does in her idle animation as well.
Here, you can see me putting the individual frames together into a sequence to see how the animation was looking so far. Throughout it I was also altering parts of her such as her legs as before it didn't flow entirely smoothly like I had anticipated. Basically in this section I was smoothening her movement making it flow easily before I get onto the line art. Doing this means I can better understand the whole structure of the sequence and fix any flaws before I do the finished bits.
This is where I start the finished line art going over the neatened sketch on a separate layer using my pixelated brush for more videogame-esque look. In this however, I realised I made a mistake. With the animation, I was very happy with how it flowed, but I never considered how it would piece together when it looped round. This created multiple issues with the leg coordination and the movement for the cycle itself. What I did to fix this is by duplicating the same 9 frames I did but altering the leg so the leg that was originally at the back was at the front, and vice versa. It did cause me more trouble than what I initially like it to have, but I reached the goal of creating a smooth loop rotation for the walk cycle in a quicker way rather than doing all of the 18 frames freehand.
The last step to finish this off was the basic flat colouring for my character, as seen in the video, I actually used the idle animation frame to help with me select the correct colours. This part was quite tedious due to me having to colour every frame on each individual layer. Just like my idle animation, I decided to not do any shading due to me having limited time and that probably taking an absurd amount of time. I coloured the first 9 frames all freehand and then just like the line art, I duplicated the colouring and slotted it on the line art making the process quicker. At the very end I used a dark background to clean away the colour that was out of the line art to better see the lighter colours.
Key frames for walk cycle
Sketch of walk cycle
Fully coloured and lined result.
With all of the animation complete and the visual background done, it was only time to piece all of this within after effects for the finished animation for my project. I downloaded all of my frames individually and all of the background pieces in designated folders and put them into AE.
I separated the pillars to the actual background due to them needing to be at the forefront, that way my character will walk behind them making it more realistic. To help, I added in keyframes for the background and pillars in positions so they move synchronized with each other as my character walks along. All of my character frames were slotted above the background but underneath the pillars. A slight issue I encountered was that the idle and walk cycle flowed out smoothly, but not in. To fix that, I deleted some of the copied frames at the beginning so she doesn't come to a stand still for too long. With that fixed, I downloaded an mp3 file of music from needy streamer overload which I felt fit perfectly to set the scene as the finishing touch.
This is my final finished result for the animation project :)
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