Hellgate: London Developer Diary

Flagship Studios animator Eric Ingerson has penned a new developer diary over at IGN PC about the day-to-day process of creating animations for Hellgate: London. Here’s a taste:

The first things to fix are game play or game feel issues. Making it look pretty has to wait, although sometimes the move looks so bad in game that it interferes with the feel of the game, and sometimes the look and the feel of a move are so wrapped up together that they’re virtually the same thing. Though some improvements to animation just make it look better, many also make it *feel* a lot better. A nice snappy, but heavy sword swing will feel better to the player than a paper-light swing or a sluggish swing. As an animator working on the player character, I spend a lot of time going back and forth, iterating to make things look and feel “snappy” but not “poppy” (i.e. weightless and papery) and, by the way, doing it in such a way that the player feels cool with the character instead of like a big dork. Which, you may be surprised to know, is more and more likely the more fancy and “animatorly” the moves get. I need to keep reminding myself to leave the Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, and especially the flowy, follow-through heavy Don Bluth-inspired techniques mostly out of it. Mostly. Think strong superhero comic key poses, and motion that pops and dazzles more than would reality, but with both economy of motion and the appearance of physical viability.