Updates for A Crooked Heart

[acrookedheart]

It's been too long since I've given updates to my traditionally animated game, A Crooked Heart. The backgrounds are created in Photoshop, because I'm used to it.
Everything else is animated using TvPaint. I'm not using any 3d elements because traditional animation is what I love, alongside illustration.
The engine we'll use is Unity with output to Steam and PS4. Xbox is not out of the question but ACH's programmer does not own a dev kit for that.

A Crooked Heart is a revenge tale staring Lulu, a Welsh Pembroke Corgi. She thinks her love, Y has been killed by the ruthless, nasty tyrant Saevus. Here are the words I'll use in all of the promo material.


If you want to start following A Crooked Heart from the beginning, go to http://acrookedheart.com

On to the updates-










Test puzzle











This is a 10 minute video going over the struggles of dealing with a jump from animation to engine.

[D.T. Nethery]

Very interesting , Matt. Thanks for sharing.

Note that the link given above : https://acrookedheart.com/ is broken . (the website works fine , but the link in your post doesn't go anywhere) .

[Benjamin Cerbai]

It is very nice to see how the project evolves. Keep the good work!

[acrookedheart]

All rough Ollie Animations test in the engine, set up mechanics and make sure the the animations look good in the game. Once everything is set I'll go back over all the animations and clean and Ink them.

1. Attack
2. Attack Idle
3. Idle to Attack
4. Birth/Emerge
5. Shock state Idle
6. Idle
7. Hit react
8. Rest Idle
9. Explosion
10. Return to attack state
11. Stunned Idle. 11 and 12 will be move in engine,
12. Return to Attack state Idle
13. Explosion on head when Ollie is killed.

[acrookedheart]

[acrookedheart]

Death variants for Sweasel

[acrookedheart]

[bleupencil]

I love these. The style is really appealing to me and it's really interesting to see process videos of how a 2D animated game comes together. Really looking forward to seeing more

[acrookedheart]

Thanks Bleupencil

[acrookedheart]

engine playground that lets Juan and I work out the mechanics, animation, interactions and player responsiveness.

[acrookedheart]

This is mainly for Juan, the programmer and I to get an overall view of the demo. It’s also helped me cut down on the cutscenes and learn more about the main antagonist and how I want to deal with the violence. Finding a bridge that favors more Hitchcock, when it comes to less is sometimes more.

[acrookedheart]

I've learned to simplify. Well I shouldn't say that I've learned to simplify but after 75+ iterations of the demo level, I made a dent.

While this was all done in Photoshop and paper, it's still part of the production.

[melanie]

Thank you for sharing this with us.
The excitement you give off when explaining the actions of your characters is very communicative
We are looking forward to see what will be coming next!

[acrookedheart]

Thanks Melanie

[acrookedheart]

The importance of sketching/roughing out an animation idea can not be stressed enough.
I've gone through so many ideas that get scrapped because it would be a nightmare for the player to interact with. Player responsiveness overrides anything that interferes with the flow and action of the character. Press A to jump and the character has to respond immediately. If you're running and approach an edge to jump over a gap, and the character anticipated the jump every time you'd probably throw the controller through the screen and cry about what you've just done.
The following GIFs, not timed out, give me a rough idea of how I want Dr. Mengele to perform his attack. When I interact Lulu attacks him in the level the action could be shit and i'd have to scrap it.