I’ve been looking at what I might like to do once I’ve finished the course – I have a rough idea of where my strengths lie and what stages I enjoy in production, but it’s hard to know how exactly to specialise. Video games are something I’ve been interested in for a long, long time now, and I’ve researched development in the past, but I’ve not got the brain capacity nor (ironically) the patience for programming and coding!
One of the games I found most visually striking and inspiring a number of years ago was Skullgirls (developed by Future Club (formerly developed by Lab Zero Games)), a 2D fighting game that released back in 2012. The character’s are all hand-drawn digitally and I guess that’s one of its main draws; there’s been a bit of a resurgence of hand-drawn games in the last decade or so, especially in the indie scene, but hardly a few, if any other fighting games take this approach.
As part of my research I’ve been searching for breakdown images, animation pipeline tutorials and general development tool resources for video games. I’ve attached some images that have been really useful at breaking down some of how principles of animation are approached within Skullgirls specifically. It’s been really interesting to see how they handle player inputs to match positioning of characters on screen at any given time.
I’ve tried to reach out to Future Club but I know how busy they likely are and haven’t had a response as of yet, so instead I’ve been trying to keep up with some of their Twitch streams showcasing the development of animating their latest character.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1537665397
I’m going to continue to look into and contact developers for information on animation pipeline and the like for video games in this context, because there’s plenty of studios out there, but I know they’re all pretty busy!