Artist and Animator
Fandominion is a platform-fighter game where up to 4 players compete for the highest point score by fighting each other and participating in quick mini-games before the time runs out.
There are 4 playable fighters, 5 stages to duke it out on, and 2 game modes to play!
Bringing Fandominion's characters to life!
In Fandominion, I took on the role of lead Animator and Artist and gam designer! Going into this project we wanted to capture a comedic tone with the characters' designs. Since we were trying to parody "nerd" culture and their fandoms such as High-Fantasy and Sci-fI, we had plenty of inspiration to draw from. While keeping our designs simple, we wanted to celebrate the effort that cosplayers and con-goers put into their costumes representing their favorite fandoms.
For the Sci-fi genre, we felt that there was nothing more iconic than lightsabers, the magical girl sub-genre for anime, the Superhero genre with supersuits and masks and finally, elven archers in HIgh-Fantasy
The Animation Process
For this project we decided to utilize sprite animation for the games characters. I began by sketching rough drafts on paper, figuring out the general details and brainstorm how I wanted each movement and attack to look. Once I settled on an idea, I'd head over to Adobe Photoshop to draw each pose on a line spacing them out evenly and measuring each pose's proportions. With that done, I'd bring them over to Adobe Animate and adjust spacing and timing until I got the animation I wanted. If saw any inconsistencies with the proportions or if a pose did not feel strong enough, I'd head back into Photoshop and made the necessary adjustments, then bringing it back into Animate until I felt that the animation was strong enough to put in game. This was the process I used for each animation for each character.
Nebulord
Nebulord was our first character to be animated. I wanted to make him goofy and somewhat clumsy with his animations to contrast the "seriousness" of the characters attire. I aimed to exaggerate as much as I could with his movements such as over arching his back at the ark of his hump, the Looney Tunes-esque nature of his running cycle as well as the clumsy trip falling onto his opponents. This was also one of the first times or at least the first time I had to put extra attention with smear effects. With each swing of his sword, I wanted to capture the effect of his weapon whipping through the air towards his opponant as best as I could. While I do think I could have done better with them, I'm still very happy with what was finalized.
Magi-GIRL
Magi-GIRL was an overwhelming fan-favorite among both players and spectators. I wanted her design and her animations to embody a cutesy, excitable demeanor and floaty style. I borrowed some known anime tropes and integrated them into her animations such as the "tsundere" expression in her stomping attack and the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure themed poses. I think the massive amount of love we got for her was because of the easily recognizable tropes and jokes in her animations.
Potassilass
Potassilass being my personal fighter of choice was also the most difficult to animate due to her rigid and stoic theme. Since she's a masked hero who believes in all things justice, I tried to create each pose with the idea of something rigid and dependable in mind. However, this resulted in very stiff and boring animations that had to be re-drawn repeatedly, especially with her running cycle. Eventually, I felt like I was able to find a balance between stoicism and freedom with her animations that I was happy with. Our upcoming deadline surely played a part in finding this balance quickly.
Windbreaker
Windbreaker was our last character for Fandominion and also the most rushed due to our fast approaching deadline. Because of that I had to get a bit creative with the animations I had planned and how to trim them down. Luckily, since he is an archer, I was able to get away with most of his attacks with him shooting an arrow. In fact, three of his attacks use the same arrow shooting animation. However, I still felt like I could do more with this character so I still did my best in creating every other animation as best as I could with the amount of time I had left.
