Ben Emerges From The Shadows...with stuff.

Boy have I been neglectful.  Not because I wanted to be, but because nothing is finished.  So rather than give off the impression that I'm some lazy lump that rides on the coat tails of his fellow monsters, I thought I would share some Work In Progress stuff.  So let's get up to speed.

Post by Need Your Disease.

First up, I had grand plans for Halloween.  Namely, a quicky animated short to post on the site.  Turns out, animation takes longer than you would think (even limited animation).  So I missed my deadline.  

Luckily, it took the pressure off of me and I can toy with it more.  Even remaster the whole thing in 3D.  Apply your 3D glasses....now.

Next up: My superhero game!  Since I last showed it, I was in the process of revamping my animations and adding art.  Well, I have a couple new things to show you.  First, I was running into a problem where my stopping animations (character resets and cape falls to the side) was playing twice.  It was really bumming me out.  So after some coding wizardry and a healthy dose of luck, that has been corrected.  Now the animation plays beautifully.

Post by Need Your Disease.

The other addition...well, more of a test...is these speed trails I've developed for the game.  I wanted some kind of trails behind him when he flew and threw this together. 

Post by Need Your Disease.

And finally, I'll be on the C2 Podcast talking about my game and using Construct 2 this Friday.  More to come soon.

Ben: A Redesign!

Time for a project update!  I've been really busy lately with a redesign of the game.  After looking at some of the things that I liked and didn't like, I came to the conclusion that it would really benefit from a restart.  What would I do different if I started over?  The characters would be built with Cut-Out/Skeletal animation (mostly), the art would still be retro, but at twice the size, the levels would be built with repeatable tiles, and the controls would be streamlined.

Well, I can show the first couple of changes.

After getting some flack on the internet for the original design basically being Superman, I decided a redesign was in order.  I took a bunch of unflattering reference photos of myself and got as far from the last design as I could (except for the cape).  Another problem with the original design was the short legs.  It looked tolerable standing up, but tipping him on his side while flying was a little ridiculous.  Those tiny legs just didn't hold up. 

With the new design in place, I built the character up in pieces from both the front and side angles (additional angles coming).  Then, I started rigging the bodies with a skeleton so that they could be animated.

Skeletal Animation rigged in Toon Boom Animate Pro

With the rigging in place, I animated a simple "idle" loop and attached a cape animation.  I did the two separate to break up the cycle.

Idle Animation next to Original Design (Left)

Next, I started rebuilding the backgrounds.  I reworked my first "shop" in a more simplified design to keep my file size down.  The new version is bigger and only 12kb.

There is still plenty more to do, but I thought I would show some of the new changes.  You can see much more at my personal blog: www.NeedYourDisease.com

-Ben

Original art and after derezzing in Photoshop