Gameplay Pack Animation Production blog by Wayreframe

 So, the last animation in the list is the run animation. And to be honest, this one was probably the most rushed one with the least number of frames. But then again, a fast sprint doesn't need a lot of frames in the first place since there aren't a lot of eases compared to the other animation where I had to put in a lot of ease in and ease out in between each transition. But here everything happens so fast that there's no room for that much ease ins or outs. And the final result was still as good as the other ones.                                But this animation could still use a bit of cleanup, especially the skirt which has some minor issues visible from other angles. Other than that, I'm happy with the end result of the animation.

 So, after having fun with the jump animation. The next thing on my list was the dash animation. For my workflow, I like to try a completely different or irrelevant part of the project after completing one part of my project because working on similar things for a long time can sometimes feel a bit boring. For example, if I started working on Run animation right after finishing my walk animation, the whole workflow process would feel a bit redundant as the walk and run have almost similar body movement and mechanics. But jumping up and dashing forward are two completely different sets of movements. This not only helps me stay motivated, but I feel like it also helps me practice variety of things one after another and compare the difference of different kinds of animation as the memory from making the previous animation is still pretty fresh when I'm trying something different. Another benefit is, I'll be able to see if I can retain the lessons for longer period of time (For exa

 After completing the idle animation, I wanted to work on the jump animation first as I was curious to see the full potential of the cape movement as soon as possible. Again, the Great Sword Pack from Mixamo provided a perfect reference to work with a character jumping with a heavy weapon. But this time, I also had to look at other sources for a reference of cape moving up and down along with the body. But unfortunately, I couldn't find any good reference and so I had to practice and experiment for a longer period of time with the cape movement animation. Here's the final result:               Like before, i wanted to make the animation a bit more dramatic so i decided to make the cape wave way up high as she finishes reaching the peak of her jump and starts to ease into fall down movement. Even though this kind of cloth movement is completely unrealistic for such a short jump, but I wanted to do this anyway just to have fun.   If I have enough time after finishing the initial

 After working on the attack cycle, I wanted to work on the idle cycle first as it is the simplest of the animation pack of a character. But a character's idle pose can differ in style depending on the mood of the character, the type of costumes and weapons the character have. My idea for the rest of the animations is to make it combat focused as that's the best way to get the most out of the heavy weapon wielding and the cloth movement looks nicest when the character is making a lot of effort or in other words, in a high profile mood rather than in a calm, low profile mood. So, I started with a high-profile idle animation where the character looks like she is about to attack and that's why the character is constantly shifting her weight between two legs instead of standing on one leg and breathing which gave room for that subtle cape and skirt movement.                    But I had to make some adjustments to balance out both the posture and add a sense of weight to this l

 So, I've completed the walk cycle animation and did some research on gameplay animation packs. Naturally, the most reliable source of similar references was found on Mixamo . Since my idea was to make the character wield a heavy weapon, the Great Sword Pack is my primary reference as the character wields a heavy sword which is similar to my character, and I only needed reference for body movement. After getting the reference, I wanted to practice more with the secondary controls of the rig like the skirt and the cape movement, so I made a simple standing animation as a practice base to improve my knowledge about cloth physics animation and how the movement of the body is supposed to affect the cloth.     I wanted to make the cloth movement exaggerated to add a sense of heavy weight of the weapon and the energy of the swing as I have yet to experiment with animating the facial expressions of the character. For now, I've set it back to default expression as I definitely don'

After getting the feedback, I had to practice and experiment a lot with the walk animation.  I felt like something was off about the whole idea. So, I decided to start from scratch and change some things like the movement of the head which was looking a bit more cartoony and the body movement was looking very rigid making the whole animation imbalanced. Even though my reference was of rigid body movement, I wanted to make the character relaxed for this animation. My idea is to try to make both high-profile and low-profile animations for this project, so I added a bit of sassy movement as an exaggeration for this animation. Here's the final animation for walk cycle: Just to see if everything works well or not, I created a loop of the animation cycle to repeat several times. I added a simple happy expression for the face, but if I have enough time at the end of making the other animations, I'll animate the facial expression as well and post a new animation clip.