Hello everyone! 

This month’s blog post will be another retrospective. I’ll be addressing the topic of melee animation, as we’ll as posting some assets that I’ve been working on for the past month. We’re in the final stretch before the completion of Alpha Demo #3, and animation is still my highest priority until it is released.

With our recent implementation of the melee combo system, I was tasked with creating a variety of melee animations. As of right now there are four total moves- jab, cross punch, uppercut, and block- all of which will need to be propagated to every character that appears in combat (both playable characters and enemies).

As with earlier animations, all of these moves were first tested on either an animation template, (pictured below) or on The Drifter’s sprite, before being applied to the other characters. When generating a template I make much use of various references, usually videos posted by experienced boxers that help to breakdown the motion of a particular type of punch. I also take inspiration from old-timey fisticuffs posing, attempting to blend it with more modern styles of boxing.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced with this latest round of animations has, by far, been creating punches that are believable, but also exaggerated enough to be easily distinguished from each other. While the uppercut is fairly distinct, the jab and cross punch are much more visually similar. I did my best to emphasize the torque that is present in the cross punch, rotating the body and foot in a way that differentiates it from the motion of the jab.

In comparison, the block animation felt incredibly straight forward after working on the punches. Despite its simplicity, it is still an integral part of our melee combo system, in which players will interact with a rhythm style mini game to both throw punches and block enemy attacks.

As the release of Alpha Demo #3 draws ever closer, Eric and I are working hard to ensure that it will accurately represent all the collective effort that has been poured into this project thus far. We hope you will give it a try on September 3rd!