My current animation

I am currently working on an animation to be used in my game "Neglecting Yew"

The animation itself will be a 1st person cutscene to help introduce the audience to the games enemy

This is the storyboard for the animation and is a brief showcase of the key points of the animation i want to showcase

For the animation i have gone for a first person cutsscene approach which is a daunting task but a challenge is always good.

The 3 types of animation that I am co siderimg are rotoscope, mocap and 3d animation

These 3 styles are unique in their own ways

The 1st style I had thought of was general 3d animation this would be doe through the use of the 3d modelling software blender which is great for creating 3d models as well as being able to allow users to create animations. For my animation to be done through this style I would need to have the rough ideas of poses in mind so that I can change my models allowing them to become more fluid. Also a benefit that comes with using blender is that I could import the animation straight into game engine so that the animation could play out in engine allowing for a seamless transition rather than having the game start then transition to a video then back to game though this is a very much acceptable and wid3ly used approach to animations in games it can often seam jarring to the user if not done correctly.I had thought of using blender to mdoify 3d rigged hands so that i could get fine movements and also use the character model i had alraedy made so that if i wanted to further my animation i could as i would have more of the scene done

The 2nd style I had thought of was mocap. I had decided to look into mocap after doing research for the 3d animation in blender I came across a free mocap extension on twitter that allowed simple mocap with the only requirement being a webcam. The free extension can capture finger movements, generic facial movements and an upper torso movements. Since the extension is experimental as well as free it has quite a few bugs so it’s not too viable of an animation style using this method but it is good more testing and getting a feel for how the animation would work inside of blender .

This is a test animtaion done in the style of rotoscoping. as you can see it has some issues whith missing textures, this is due to the method of how teh rotoscoping has been done as with ebsyth it tries to fill in the gaps but certain movemnts can cause issues (this is most commoly seen in facial exprerssions) also havinbg more of teh screen filled in green and certain parts drawn better could fiox these issues. its is also very beneficial as industry stanadrd mocap is by far the most expensive form of animation as it requires actors and a whole lot of equipment which can raise development costs drastically

For my animation style I chose rotoscoping as I had come across “Joel Haver” on youtuber a while back. .

Joel is a youtuber who primarily does comedy sketch videos which have been in 2 styles one being the typical real life and the other being a rotoscope styled animation.

His most popular video is in this style and is where I first became aware of the type of animation.

Joel is a very skilled artist when it comes to this type of animation as he has used unique and quirky tricks to achieve great shows, an example of this is how he simply just wore a big fluffy hat but turned it into a giant alien head.

I very much like the style that Joel has brought to light as it does have flaws such as mouth movement, but it feels much nicer and unique as its not polished finely and shows these oddities and sort of revels in them.

The style now has a lot more creators who have even worked with Joel.