Character Animation: January 28th, 2016

I continued working on 2D character assets for the game. Today's focus was on the running animation, and I got pretty far.

There are still things I need to fix before it's complete (need hair movement, arm and shirt movement still too stiff, etc), but the leg movement is nice and smooth. 

Custom Sprites: Tuesday, January 26th

Today I started working on sprites for my 2D game. So far, I've created two complete animations; one idle animation and one sliding animation. I am doing these in Flash.

Normally this character has long hair, but because this game takes place before my senior thesis short does, I want to imply the passing of time. By the looks of the Idle gif, I'll have to slow down the framerate.

Next class I hope to tackle the running animation.

Working with Sprites: Thursday, January 21st

I made some pretty good progress with learning about making a 2D side scroller today. Following a video tutorial by an Epic Games employee (seen here), I learned about how to import sprite sheets and create animations. The video also included a link to a file of demo assets that I could use, but for the time being I used the demo assets as a template so I can test how my own sprites would look when I import them later on.

Creating animations in Unreal is pretty simple, tho sometimes the playback is a bit laggy, which will probably be a bit of an annoyance down the road. Still, I'm happy with how much I've learned.

I had to pause 20 minutes in due to class time, but it looks like I'll be delving into camera angles a little when I come back to this.

First Day of Unreal Engine: Tuesday, January 19th

Today I learned about how to operate a light fixture in the Blueprint setup of Unreal. I figured out how to also create an empty object in order to place said light in the inside and use blueprint tools to make it turn on and off whenever I either activate a trigger or leave the empty room.

On the side I began researching more tutorials on the 2D SideScroller builder, as well as basic tutorials on how to use Autodesk Maya. I think I will challenge myself for this independent study by learning how to use two programs at once. It would be nice to visit mixing 2D/3D assets again, as I did with Cinema4D awhile back.

Figuring Things Out: Thursday, January 14th 2016

Today the 3D class was visited by the well known Larry Harris and John Sutyak. Harris is famous for creating the Axis and Allies boardgame brand, and Sutyak, a friend of Harris, had been employed at Parker Brothers. The two men gave the class an insight on what game design is about, as well as their endeavors and experiences.


After the discussion, I went off on my own to learn about working with Unreal Engine. There is a 2D Side Scroller blueprint which should hopefully make it a little easier for me to work on this game, but I'll have to read up on tutorials to get myself going since the tutorials within the program are not exactly helpful (I prefer video tutorials so I can work as I learn).

First Day; January 12th, 2016

For my independent study I will be making a 2D side scroller version of my senior thesis, a story about a young child who wanders the forest by their home and comes across a house owned by witches.

I will be developing this game using the Unreal Engine, and will be creating 2D assets in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint.

If time allows, I will also work on smaller projects, maybe with other classmates.