During the 1990s I was an animation director for Creative Capers Ent., a small animation and design studio. We animated many games for Disney Interactive, many based on classic Disney characters (Donald Duck) and others on more recent titles (Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, The Lion King, etc). During that period we developed many techniques to deal with the challenges of tricky gameplay. I made several movies about these for my Lynda ‘Tips & Tricks’ course, which I’ve assembled here. Though I used 2D animation software to create the assets in these movies, all of the principles can be applied to CGI animated characters as well. These four short movies are just an introduction to some of the techniques we used and some of the principles of isometric games. My movies dealing with platform side-scrollers is here.
BTW, check out my patreon, there’s going to be a lot of animation resources posted there!
ISOMETRIC GAME INTRO (6m 45s)
This explains the process of planning an isometric environment, the background assets, foreground elements, objects, character designs, as well as how to arrange them in layers. This is a world without perspective, giving a unique gameplay / point of view.
ACTING & DIALOG (3m 46s)
To create a completely believable range of actions for acting or dialog requires a bit of planning. I developled a hookup system that separates each gesture from each gesture, with a network or web of hookup scenes connecting them, allowing flexible performances.
TURNING AROUND (2m 58s)
Depending on the game you may need to create a hookup and gesture network not just in one direction, but two or three. It then becomes necessary to have hookups from one of these directions to the others, so that the game engine can have complete coverage.
WALKING (5m 19s)
The game won’t be much if the character can’t walk or move – so most games will need a lot of walk cycles. The walk cycle isn’t enough by itself, we also need to add hookup scenes that transition from the walk into and out of an idle or zero pose, and in each direction!
In addition to these specialised movies on game animation, I’ve created many other courses on animation and design, from introductory to advanced:
ANIMATION MASTERCLASS LIST
I created this overview list of ten years of my animation classes on Lynda/Linkedin Learning. If you’re a student who wants a comprehensive series of lessons on animation, design, storyboarding, walks and runs, this gives you the links.
FX ANIMATION
An often overlooked aspect of animation is the creation of traditional FX – the animation of natural phenomena like smoke, fire, water, clouds, explosions, or candles. Anything not character based. This short series gives some good pointers.
MAGICAL CAREER ADVICE
It’s no good having the skills if your confidence is in the toilet. The mental / emotional aspect is crucial also, and can help you make major breakthroughs in your work. This short series also gives some solid advice on inter-personal work relationships.