Zombie Slice! FINISHED!

BluepigGames

Hi!

At Blue Pig Games we are proud to announce that our first creation,
Zombie Slice, is now available to download on the iTunes App Store https://itunes.apple.com/app/zombie-slice!/id550128658?mt=8. You can find a lot of animations made with Spine.

Without Spine this project would not be possible, so we decide to put your logo on the opening screen.
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Here's the trailer where you can see the ingame animation in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iwNzbd1Nbw

BluepigGames

Nate

Looks great! Love it. 🙂

IndieDragon

One thing I have trouble with is making art assets that don't "clash" when they are animated. Any tips? I notice you somewhat taper the black line in the areas that are going to connect

You did a really good job on the hands.

BluepigGames

Thanks!

These two zombies still need many touches yet.

To create these animations we used the Spineboy tutorial to guide us with the bone structure. As you say, the black lines are a small problem by fitting joints. Our artistic style uses black contour line in all illustrations, so for now, we are trying to fit them "testing and tweaking" with "draw order" and retouching the .png's until we see some improvement. Using assets without black line and reducing details probably would help us a lot, but by now this is not an option.

Nate

Maybe the head movement could use some interpolation curves?

BluepigGames

We did not realize this option yet. We'll try it!

IndieDragon

It seems counter-intuitive to go back and retouch each png... But I guess it adds that final polish!

BluepigGames

You're right, this method it's not really counter-intuitive. In fact, this is our first experience with this kind of animations, so the more we work on it, the more we found better ways to do it. A clear order draw is one of the keys.

Here's some new character animation. Walk + Headshot in the same .gif file.

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outtoplay

Looking really good. Quick animation tip. When your Zombie hits the floor in the Head shot clip. Try to offset left and right limbs a few frames(2-4) it makes things feel more organic. For example, when he is shot, his arms go up and stop at the same time. Perhaps let his back arm star a frame or two later, go a bit further, and linger a wee bit longer at the top.

Also, when the arms come down, remember to 'break joints'. The idea is, like a two jointed pendulum, the parent will go up slow, the start to fall, the child joint (in the case the lower arm) will lag a few frames behind it's parent (the upper arm). this goes for the slap on the ground when they hit as well. Let the upper arm hit, then have the forearm follow. Will feel way more polished. And and remember to offset the final foot keys at the end, 2-3 frames should do.

BluepigGames

Thanks for your tips outtoplay! We really appreciate them!
We where too concentrated finishing the game and we missed up your post :$
We will try to implement that in the next update.

sez

Regarding the black outline: is this where the limbs overlap to create an elbow or knee, etc?

I believe I have fixed this in my animations in Spine by using a "patch" - which is a trick from the other animation tech stack I have in my game using Anime Studio 8. A tut here by the Anime Studio guys explains what patch layers are: http://youtu.be/vGNRSqWSeAI

Basically Anime Studio is a vector art plus animation tool which I had been using up until now for all my in game animations. I export the results to a sprite sheet. Unfortunately my game is character driven and due to an explosion of sprite sheets for the animations I'm basically having to move to Spine. I'm still going to use Anime Studio for cut scenes.

I've only played with the trial, but by creating an patch (50x50 png) which is the same color as the characters skin in gimp, and making a new slot on a bone to attach it to, I can position the patch over the part where the black lines over the arm & leg joints cause a problem. It has to be positioned correctly in the draw order, and scaled/rotated/moved to fit. Also it needs some tweaking as the joint moves, but it seems to work pretty well.

Once I get the full version I can see how it looks in the game, but it looks pretty good in the editor.