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Friday, May 29, 2015

Animating Battle Gem Ponies


     I have about a hundred ponies to put in the game and only a few months to do it. I also want each of those ponies to have at least 10 animations each. That's a lot to swallow for a beginner dev like me. To make drawing all these pixel horses possible, I needed to break it down to an efficient process. I need to establish a large "pony parts library" to avoid having to redraw poses I've done before, decide on common poses and frame counts, and limit each pony with 5 frames per animation (with few rare exceptions that have 6-7 frames).

     After taking my time building up a library of wings, bodies, tails, and idle bobbing, I can start using them to make the ponies move in-game. A good thing about limiting the designs to equines is having all the similar body shapes be so easy to animate. I'm still in the process of animating the last 3 ponies today (Orscina, Vinerva, and Sweet-Bot) and once they're done I can tidy up the battle system and draw attacks. Things are behind schedule, but they're still looking great.

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