ScottTykoski ScottTykoski

FE Animondays - Breathing Life into our Paintings

▼

FE Animondays - Breathing Life into our Paintings

Making the Mini-Cutscenes of Fallen Enchantress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-PDlxZRpMY&feature=channel_video_title
from Elemental Forums

Ages ago (or, at least, what FEELS like ages ago) when we were nailing down the art style for Elemental, one of the key factors was creating a world where the cutscenes weren't in glaring opposition to the in-game graphics.

This was around the same time that Fable 2 was released, where a beautiful pre-rendered intro felt (IMHO) fairly out of place in comparison to the mid-game cutscenes (which were beautiful in their own right). It was that realization - that paintings brought to life can be as appealing as their 3d counterparts - that helped fuel the artistic style of the game.

Unfortunately, the dream of these moving paintings weaving a tale as you play the game was never realized in WoM. We got as far as the 'wedding' cutscene and the 'you killed a dude' cutscene before needing to shift the focus onto other things. In FE we want to revisit that idea and have mini-cutscenes that underscore major points in your adventures.




This is a painting done for "The Bilge" wildlands cutscene, a vast swampland dotted with the ruins of a former kingdom, now overrun with trolls and spiders who protect treasures of the dead.

There are several bits of this image that beg to be animated, for which we use a program called Anime Studio Pro. It allows us to take a 2d image and attach bones to it, letting us animate much like we do in 3d.




Once all those vines are animated, and the rest of the scene is put together in After Effects, we do a simple flythrough to get the first of our mini-cutscenes.


Sorry - no Blood or fantasy Violence in this video. We'll try and do better next time :(


Also, since mini-cutscenes are total polish and very data driven, we can keep adding more and more right up until gold (if the budget and time allows) . By bringing our paintings to life and really punctuating those key points in your adventure, we also breathe some extra life into FE itself.

132,610 views 37 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 18

I can post a quick tutroial vid if you guys ever want to see how it all works...it blew my mind the first time I saw it in action.
End of BoogieBac's quote

Thanks for the answer,and yes,some quick video would be really nice...if you have some free time to do it.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

This looks very nice! I think you are doing a great job on that. To be perfectly frank, I think these cut-scenes would be satisfactory without the additional animation (since, I imagine, most of us will attempt to click / escape-button them away after we have seen them the first dozen or so times), and would much prefer that precious resource allocation go into implementing less suboptimal terrain functionality, tactical battles, unit abilities, and AI.

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting onomastikon, reply 27
and would much prefer that precious resource allocation go into implementing less suboptimal terrain functionality, tactical battles, unit abilities, and AI.
End of onomastikon's quote
All of those tasks have been handed out to considerably more skilled developers than myself :)  Plus the additional animation work takes so little time that it be a sin not to add that extra (and noticeable) polish.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BoogieBac, reply 28



Quoting onomastikon,
reply 27
and would much prefer that precious resource allocation go into implementing less suboptimal terrain functionality, tactical battles, unit abilities, and AI.All of those tasks have been handed out to considerably more skilled developers than myself  Plus the additional animation work takes so little time that it be a sin not to add that extra (and noticeable) polish.

End of BoogieBac's quote

That is good to know! Excellent, thank you

Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Lantros, reply 4
Great. I love the whole artwork in WoM. That will not change with FE. The idea of these moving paintings is fantastic. Really, really love it (and can´t wait to see more). 


Sorry - no Blood or fantasy Violence in this video. We'll try and do better next time


 

hahaha......I started to remind you as i saw your statement.Allright, maybe next time.

 

 

 
End of Lantros's quote

I never did care for the art style in WOM too blah for me. But remember that art is subjective so where as I may not like the art others will love it and that is the way of things. It is not bad enough for me not to want to play the game after all graphics are not everything. I'm personally looking forward to the game play which so far sounds like it will be pretty good game. 

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Hey Boogie, at moment 0:26 on the vid i see depression over the cliff by a narrow water mass. This depression is suposed to be a harbor spot or a pass trought the "river"? Can you tell us something about the rivers?

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Isn't it cool that the more skilled developers have to do the dirty work such as AI and tactical battle coding, while you Boogie get to work on the cool artsy stuff that can become really memorable if you do it just right?

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting PanicWave, reply 31
Hey Boogie, at moment 0:26 on the vid i see depression over the cliff by a narrow water mass. This depression is suposed to be a harbor spot or a pass trought the "river"? Can you tell us something about the rivers?
End of PanicWave's quote

 

A river is seen in post #32 in this link (https://forums.elementalgame.com/409163/page/2/#replies)

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Alfdaur, reply 33

Quoting PanicWave, reply 31Hey Boogie, at moment 0:26 on the vid i see depression over the cliff by a narrow water mass. This depression is suposed to be a harbor spot or a pass trought the "river"? Can you tell us something about the rivers?

 

A river is seen in post #32 in this link (https://forums.elementalgame.com/409163/page/2/#replies)
End of Alfdaur's quote

 

Found it! And didnt like it... Is that the final version of the rivers?

Tx for the info Alfdaur.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Probably many of us remember the Homeworld cutscenes which were just plain awesome in every way, in black and white no less.

I always though we should see more of that in games, particularly ones on a budget.  Good art is timeless.

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Lively paintings go well with lively sound/music.

I happen to read A LOT for work.  What works best for me in this task is having just the right music playing in the back ground.  A nice pair of headphones with noise cancelation capability can literally transport you to a different dimension - so to speak.

What do I usually listen to?  Civ V music.  I open the game as if to play, but instead of playing it, I just listen to the music.  The large variety of the music in Civ V is complimented with the sound of the waves, birds, etc.  It's a lively environmnet.  It simply draws you in.  My favorite music theme is the Iroquois civilization.

Elemental needs more sound and more variety in music to compliment the beautiful artwork.  The last time I played WOM, the same song played over and over again that I just had to turn it off.  The game itself looks great and fancy cutscenes would always be welcome, but it does need to provide more auditory stimuli.

Oh, and one more thing, my sovereign's right to polygyny needs to be honored.  Hopefully with the next patch, my sovereign will have his wives and reign wholly as ordained by the divine.

-.-

Reply #37 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting aeligos, reply 36
Lively paintings go well with lively sound/music.

I happen to read A LOT for work.  What works best for me in this task is having just the right music playing in the back ground.  A nice pair of headphones with noise cancelation capability can literally transport you to a different dimension - so to speak.

What do I usually listen to?  Civ V music.  I open the game as if to play, but instead of playing it, I just listen to the music.  The large variety of the music in Civ V is complimented with the sound of the waves, birds, etc.  It's a lively environmnet.  It simply draws you in.  My favorite music theme is the Iroquois civilization.

Elemental needs more sound and more variety in music to compliment the beautiful artwork.  The last time I played WOM, the same song played over and over again that I just had to turn it off.  The game itself looks great and fancy cutscenes would always be welcome, but it does need to provide more auditory stimuli.

Oh, and one more thing, my sovereign's right to polygyny needs to be honored.  Hopefully with the next patch, my sovereign will have his wives and reign wholly as ordained by the divine.

-.-
End of aeligos's quote

Don't really care about music in games (i usally turn the music off) but I do like sound effects which I turn up to include back ground noise (bird, insects, town noises etc.)