Introduction
This blog is mainly a supplement to the third chapter: research methodology. Breath of the Wild has many practical examples to prove the 12 animation principles in The Illusion of Life, and I hope to continue to add them.
Process
1.Squash and Stretch
Chu Chu is more suitable for explaining this principle than Link, because they are more like a bouncing ball. It’s just that I think other principles are explained by Link, so it’s good to do the same.
2.Timing
In addition to the game animation, the gameplay of this game also allows players to change the timing of the game, because Link has a time still. The interesting part of this gameplay is that when objects are fixed, hitting them will give them a huge force, so as time goes on, they will be hit faster. This looks a bit like the player is controlling the timing of the game animation.
3.Anticipation
I didn’t know whether I was going to explain anticipation at first, because this is so common in animation, and even the most junior animators know to make him. It is the game element of Telegraphing that allows me to keep it. The following is a description of this term by cooper:
Telegraphing, a sports term widely adopted as the NPC equivalent of anticipation, is used by design to alert the player that an action such as an attack is coming and the player must block, evade, counter, or similar. When telegraphing an attack in combat , we exaggerate not only the length of time required to wind up the attack, but also the posing to ensure the player can see it coming, as well as any visual-effect bells and whistles to ram the message home.
Unlike in competitive player-vs-player (PvP) combat, we generally favor the player in player vs environment (PvE) situations so as to promote the fantasy of overcoming great odds, when in reality the player has many advantages, not the least of which is the ability to outsmart the AI. PvP telegraphing, while present, is generally on a much smaller scale, with less generous windows of anticipation and interruptability to match real player response times.
4.Staging
If it’s other games, I would mention this. For example, in escape games, lights are often used to tell the player the way forward. Or the game animator in cutscene designed the camera perspective to remind the player of the focus of the screen. But as I mentioned in the article, this game promotes freedom, and the designer will not provide too much guidance to the player. I think this may be the reason why everyone is immersed in it. I can do whatever I want. No one tells me what to do all the time. Isn’t it good?
5.Follow-Through And Overlapping Action
Although I can be sure that the overlapping of Link’s clothes is a procedural animation, I haven’t found the relevant information, so I can’t explain it directly in the paper. What’s more, I haven’t tried this technology personally, let alone explain it in detail. I hope I have time to study procedural animation in the future, which will save me a lot of time.
6.Straight Ahead And Pose-To-Pose Action
This is another principle that I did not mention in the article. I believe that most game animations use pose to pose, but maybe in old 2d games, the former may also be used. But it is worth mentioning that the special effects of this game are drawn frame by frame, pointed out by a game enthusiast, but because it is a personal comment, I cannot put it in the paper.
7.Arcs
I didn’t write it out mainly because it was exactly the same as other animation forms, and it didn’t become special because it was a game animation. When Link uses a sword to attack, players can even see a clear arc-shaped trajectory.
8.Exaggeration
If I take Overwatch as an example, I can write McCree’s animation with Exaggeration, but I haven’t seen such a picture in Breath of the Wild. If there is evidence to provide, please remind me.
9.Secondary Action
Secondary actions are used to complement and emphasize the primary action of the character, adding extra detail and visual appeal to the base action. While it can be difficult to incorporate more than one action in many gameplay animations due to their brevity (secondary actions must support and not muddy the look of the primary action), it is these little details that can make a good animation great. Examples of secondary actions range from facial expressions to accompany combat or damage animations to tired responses that play atop long stretches of running.
Without it, I believe that animation will become very boring, of course, if this is a small-cost game, it would be another matter.
10.Solid Drawing
While at first seemingly less relevant in the age of 3D animation, one must remember that drawing is an essential method of conveying information between team members, and the use of thumbnails to explain a problem or find a solution is an almost daily occurrence when working with game design. All the best animators can draw to a degree that can easily support or give a direction, and the skill is especially useful in the early stages when working on character designs to illustrate the pros and cons of particular visual elements. Nevertheless, the “Solid” part was essential in the age of 2D animation to retain the volume of characters as they moved and rotated on the page, so a lot of focus was placed on an animators’ skills in life drawing and the ability to visualize a character in 3D as they translate them to the 2D page. While no longer done on a page, an understanding of volume and 3D is still essential for an animator when animating a character in 3D to aid with posing and knowin g the limits and workings of body mechanics.
11.Appeal
Appeal should be the goal of every animator when bringing a character to life, but is ineffable enough to make it hard to describe. It is the difference between an animated face that can portray real emotion and one that looks terrifying and creepy. It is the sum of an animator’s skill in selling the force of a combat action versus a movement that comes across as weak. It is the believability in a character’s performance compared to one that appears robotic and unnatural.
Appeal is the magic element that causes players to believe in the character they are interacting with regardless of where they lie on the stylized vs realistic spectrum, and is not to be confused with likeability or attractiveness, as even the player’s enemies must look aesthetically pleasing and show appeal. This is owed as much to character design as it is the animators’ manipulation of them, where proportions and color blocking are the first steps in a multistage creation process that passes through animation and eventual rendering to make a character as appealing as possible . Simplicity in visual design and posing on the animator’s part help the readability of a move, and clear silhouettes distinguish different characters from one another.
The following is some information about the game rendering:
https://www.zhihu.com/question/271474165
https://www.baidu.com/link?url=DuGPV0H3GcXTgJ9n-jWVcxT2fTf3tDMc8YL31F7GoPv5yh7tiGKoUY8tGiX5nnnq62xM-p6i5RcooIisZ85NQa&wd=411700f=eb0b661
Conclusion
These are my supplements to the principles of 12 animations. Maybe this is not very comprehensive or even right. But all this proves that I have to search for information. In addition, starting from this chapter, every picture is taken by me in the game.