INTRODUCTION
The indie horror game Sally Face, and is a point developed by the creator called Steve Gabry. The whole game is about a boy who moves into an apartment complex following a murder mystery. It is a psycholigcal horror like needy streamer overload, but takes more on the satanic and mental insanity route. It was used on the engine unity by the publisher called portable moose.
Brief history of the company and 2d digital animation
With Sally face official development started in 2015 lasting around 5 years with the very first chapter releasing in August 2016. The very last chapter for the game was released in December 2019, marking the end to the videogame. Although the development began in 2015, Steve Gabry invented the concept for Sally Face and the world in 2006/2007. He took heavy inspiration from 1990s cartoons and his own personal nightmares. Even within the initial first chapter, it was critically acclaimed as one of the best indie horror games in a while as seen with the crowd funding, (13700 dollars). The game overall won top 100 indie of the year, indie of the year 2018 and finalist of indie digital. Steve Gabry being himself created the ideas himself but also all of the art within the game as well, giving it its distinctive style with jittery animation movements. With it being from an indie company as well, they have quite a small team within their publisher portable moose, with all indie games itself mostly are 2D animation due to money costs and time.
2D animation began in the 1940s/1950s by John Whitney. This was used by computer graphics and notably for engineering, so this was never used for in media or for animation but more for the development of technology for the industry. However, in the 1970s to the 1980s animation started to enter cinemas, before that animation for media was done traditionally. Cell animation was most used before this drawing and colouring frame by frame, but now with technology evolving, animation was able to be moved onto computer and better software. However many large scale video games now are 3D do to the rise in 3D media, smaller and/or indie companies use it as it's cheaper or for the visual flare.
Steve Gabry, being the creator of Sally face, was also the initial concept artist and designer as a whole for this games art direction. Not much online can be found about the development of his expanding ideas and designs but in an interview it's said that concepts began as early as 2007 with Sally, but then were later changed when the development actually began in 2015. This is all that I could find in concept pieces of Steve's work.
Why this is important to my work
Style ands animation choices- Within the game janky animation is prominent throughout which fits within the horror premise, this then ties in perfectly to my own atmosphere with what I am going for. In my opinion, less smoothness and or frames mean more character and visual flare which I want my animation to project through in inspiration to Sally face. Animation within sally face consists of the idle animation and walk cycle, which isn't seen in needy streamer overload, so all the animation techniques for my project are all taken within sally face due to NSO being a visual novel. The janky moving animation from the character walking creates the effect of feeling unsettled which is what I need for my character. Therefore, this will be replicated with my protagonist within my animation as well.
Background visuals- With Sally face being a side scroller game, this gives me inspiration for the background designs and flare due to my own animation also being a side scroller. Sally faces background design has more detailed due to it only being a 2D PNG, meaning you can add much more to the environment and the setting. It has background visuals using darker tones like needy streamer overload but with a darker and discoloured premise. This is what I'm using for my background idea due to it being set within night-time, so I need discoloured backgrounds to set the theme and darker tones like it does within Sally face.
Conclusion - Overall, with Sally face, I am using the background and animation stylisation to help me with the horror implication to best execute the psychological premise for my animation as well.
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