Character animation on the Board feature:
We worked on a Board feature in our game which required one of our main characters to be travelling around a gameboard.
Buddy's art was provided by the great talents of Elsa Ekberg.
Part of the feature involved saving new Pet friends every stage. This required us to have the character animated in different scenarios.
- The characters locked (sad)
- The character being freed (jumping through the clouds)
- The character happy idling (already saved)
I ended up creating a small setup in order to reuse as much as possible the skeleton and animations while trying to adapt the uniqueness of the body types and poses (sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, and sometimes with wings instead of legs). This was a fun challenge.
here are for example some of the Pets animated with a similar setup that allowed flexibility to reuse (while being able to add tweaks to keep it unique) and adapt animation.
Pop ups and Characters:
Was able to support in the animatio of Background and popups, someitmes for promos, events and player communication.
These are some examples of animations that required character rig/setup, animation and environment animation.
Animated Event / Feature Icons:
Supported the animation and implementation of Different Feature Icons which included characters and props. There were times that we also needed to support animation and feedback on the events to show the player progress and status.
The art for the Icons was provided by the great talents of Niclas Alftberg, Pär Andersson and Jörgen Wänerskär.
Luna's Leap feature:
Worked on the character and rig animation for Clawdia the crab as well as Luna the cat. As well as the Icon on the main page and the
Worked on animating the VFX of the ocean, props, and environment.
The art was done by the great talents of Niclas Alftberg and UI/UX by Hampus Högberg.
Seasons / Cards:
We tested the idea of different seasons in our game. I got to support animation for 2 different seasons: the WildWest and the DeepBlueSEa:
This included having to animate different idles of states of a vehicle (a train or a clam submarine). Plus different Timelines in Unity to support small cinematics when ending the seasons and giving out rewards.
Cards:
With the provided art of the great talents of Elsa Ekberg. I had the task to animate the card packs sequences opening the cards. This included support to animate every different tier of cards plus a special Card which included a longer animation and special VFX.
This examples shows the latest iteration of both a regular 2 card pack and a special Card pack:
The setup for the card packs to be able to change skin was done in Spine and implementation and VFX were done in Unity.
Booster Idles:
The art was provided by the talented Pär Andersson. Created a rig in Spine and exported it in flipbooks for implementation.
We wanted to add idle beats to the boosters for them not to only stay static and to add personality into them. These were a few tests that we played around with including activating lights, adding a human gesture (burp) or just a spin. After different tests we felt that we went for a burst of energy rather that made sense with the other boosters.
The one we went for was a combo of VFX but also movement that expressed powerful mechanical energy bursts.
Character Blockers: Bunny and Hedgehog. The art was provided by the talented Pär Andersson.
Bunny Blocker:
Created an Idle with 4 different beats where the bunny could look at different corners to add feeling of uniqueness into the board.
Also added a new animation that would show the bunny be excited when it was close to be rescued for the player to understand that they were close to completing the task.
Created the animation using Unity 2.5 setup and use of flipbooks for the final jump.
Hedgehog Blocker:
The hedgehog needed to break through 3 different frozen states before being rescued that needed to show appeal. It was a task to make it feel more alive every step for the player to also understand that they were getting closer to the goal but also communicating that the character was gaining freedom and mobility every step.
For the last state which required a freeze, we spent so me time testing setups for sneezing both in Spine and in Unity 2D animation system for implementation:
Final implementation of the Hedgehog and the Bunnies:
