The artwork is the driving force of the project. However, to truly bring it to life, animation plays a crucial role and cannot be overlooked.
There are several animation styles to consider, but rotoscope animation seems to be the most fitting choice—it creates the effect of a painting in motion.
In the footages below, you can catch a glimpse of gameplay, menus, and the fishing minigame along with its animation.
Folk are people that will be in your city. They may be assigned to gather resources.
To gather resources, player will go through small minigames. This is Fishing minigame. Please note that in this video below, player’s walking animation has not yet been completed and work in progress.
And this is the Player walking.
During the process, I realized I forgot something: How game fails. So I needed to create another animation for player dying.
Without going into too much detail, the game includes several Self Actions, each providing the player with specific buffs. To create the animation, I first recorded a video of myself performing all the Self Actions. Then came the fun—but exhausting—part: painting each frame one by one. The result is a smoothly animated player character that looks like a moving painting, performing their actions with style.
Here you can see the first three base animations for Player’s Self Actions. Eat, Meditate and Train animations. As game progresses with technology research and buildings, the player gets more actions.
Another important aspect of the artwork—beyond visuals and animation—is the audio. It’s designed to complement the other artistic elements and evoke the feeling of nature that runs through the project’s design.
Until next time.