From Six Shooter To The Big Six Month Project

Last week was pitch week for the six-month project. Each of us was tasked with coming up with two unique game ideas that we wanted to work on and presented them to the class. We then started the stressful and emotionally taxing task of diplomatically working out which games we wanted to work on. I’ll be honest, it was a hard week for me, and for a lot of the other students. Everyone wants to make their game, but not every game can be made. So compromises have to be made and people had to rethink what was most important to their development over this project. 

For me, that meant teaming up with Dante, Josh, and Christa to work on Iron Brawlers, an arena platform fighting game. I was drawn to Josh and Dante’s pitch because it requires a lot of animation. I'm also just psyched to build a game where you and your friends can punch each other around!

Most of the animations that I have made in the past have leaned towards the realism side of things. Fighting game animation is very gamey. They are fast and exaggerated; they need to convey to the player what is happening as quickly as possible so that controls feel snappy and responsive. In the words of Dan Floyd, fighting game animation is all about "clarity". For this reason, I think working on a fighting game will really push me as a technical artist and animator, and will show that I can animate for a range of different games.

I'm going to be modeling, rigging, and animating on this project, so I'm diving deep into how to approach animating for fighting games. We are also exploring how to really make 3D assets look and feel 2D. Dan Floyd of New Frame Plus on Youtube has an awesome breakdown of Arc System Works' approach to solving this very problem on their fighting game, Guilty Gear Xrd. These two videos are a huge inspiration for me right now.

Next week, we’ll be starting to build our first prototype and fleshing out what the game is going to look like. We’ve got some pretty cool ideas for a unique, hand-painted world. For now, I’ll leave you with the first pieces of art for Iron Brawlers, by Dante Kennedy George.