Hereby presenting a tutorial on the many functions and uses of paint and its mighty artistical prowess in the creation of mods for SWGB, AoK, and many other fine 2d comptuer games. This tutorial will walk you through the step by step creation of a Coruscant Guard.(see below)

Part 1: Slp Wrangling.

As we established throughout chapter 1, the grid is your friend. Its like a little safety grid, and soon you will start feeling bad and frequently assuming the fetal position whilst away from your grid. As I wouldn't want this to hapen to any of you....often >}, we shall continue the grid action. We need some info first. Basically it goes like this.

First things first, we need to know how many frames each animation needs to be...

Quickly to the SLP listings! (HCD logo flys in then out in classic batman style)

Ok, we're replacing the GE Mounted Trooper. So the slps we'll be dealing with our #'s: 1145, 1146, 1147, 1148, 1149. Now each slp's listing looks like this.

Quote:

We see that the second # is the # of frames in the total animation. And there are 5 different angles in each animation set, if you will. So with a little math (60/5=12) we know there are 12 frames in our attacking animation. Go ahead and figure this out for all of the animations.

In my case I have:

Attacking 12
Dying 14
Standing 10
Decaying 5
Walking 15

This is a lot more than your average trooper would have, in all respects.

Now we'll set up a new set of grids for each animation.

Part 2: The Animatrix

Except this one has less anime, so its much much better. Because anime is the downfall of the western world, along with hiphop/rap. Absolute rubbish. Anyway.

Ok. I'll just who you what the attacking grid should look like, thats an easy way to describe it.

Naturally the top frames of every animation will be your neutral frames. That's why we did them first. Now we just have to fill every frame of every grid with a unit . Now you're beginning to feel overwhelmed and the grid isn't doint it for you is it? Well pry yourself out of the fetal position I've got a way to remove some of the pain.

Seriously though, this is why paint is retarded. Cause there are 265 frames in the Mounted Trooper unit. Its 245 frames for a trooper recruit. And you'll drawing most of every frame by hand or moving pieces of your neutral frame around (that's why we did the seperate sections, so when the arms move we know what to draw his side like).

Make sense?

Now, just like the neutral frames we'll start with the Iso Toward frame. Mostly because its a beast and getting it out of the way is nice. But as you'll soon find with animating everything is a beast, and it never gets easy.

Part 3: Principls of animation.

You probably remember those little animated stick figures I drew (flashback ripples) that I then compiled as a gif to figure out the pose I wanted? This is highly useful in the animation stage. But if you're lacking the software/prowess to attempt somethign like that the next best thing is... well you. You get to be your own armature. Get in front of a big mirror, or set up a camera and tape yourself. Try out a bunch of actions that you have in mind for what the animation might look like, and try it from the approximate angles the unit will do. This will let you see how you move, which is really important.

Movement is a lot more subtle than you think. There is a whole lot to a walking animation, your hands sway opposite your strides to keep your balance, theres some bob when both your legs are fully extended, shoulder and hip twist... all of this needs to be considered to pull off a convincing animation. For troopers, think about how you'd start at your neutral frame pose and then pull your gun up fire and recover fromt he recoil. RECOIL. RECOIL! RECOIL I SAY! Guns bite back, make sure you put it in your animation, looks retarded if you don't, then people whine to me that I haven't improved the standard of modding... whine whine whine.

You really need to think about where your weight is at every point in the animation. Are you leaned forward with your weight on your left leg? That sort of thing, exaggerating weight helps animations a lot. Anticipation is also important, its the build up to an action. Like when you run, you don't just run. Theres the time when you rock back and coil up before you charge off. Make sure you think about that too.

Props dont hurt either. Even if its just a paper towel tube, it'll give you some sort of reference, toy guns are nice for guns, etc.

Well, now that you've danced around in your underwear with paper towel tubes and toy guns in front of the mirror/camera for a while you've got a pretty good idea of how to get started.

Sorry about that underwear bit, I just assumed at least one of you is incapable of dressing yourself.

Moving duely onward.

Part 4: Time to draw!

Quick grab your armature/video/mirror and start drawing that Iso Toward frame. We've already talked about how to draw the other frames based on this one, once you get all the Iso Towards done, just draw out your reference lines and do the other angles. I'll post updates as my progress continues. Good luck and keep working .

CURRENT STATUS:

[This message has been edited by Brownboot (edited 08-26-2006 @ 12:30 PM).]