The Spirit and the Mouse - Animation & rig related footage dump

 Just felt like posting a bunch of developpment gif and video from The Spirit and the Mouse. I Love recording footage, so I have a LOT! This is only a fraction

 

loosely themed around animation, rigging, etc. There is no chronology, it's from the earliest stage of dev to even after the release!

 

"This year I'll learn Learning Blender" he said for the 5th year in a row. + BforArtists

- What a fool

 

Context: I have 10+ years of 3DS Max experience, I initially started learning it by myself, then went to 3D school, and spent most of my game dev career as a Environment/Tech artist working in AAA games using 3ds max.

 

I've been wanting to switch to blender for many years for a few reasons:

- It's free

- I hate how slow and clunky 3ds Max is. I just can't anymore with that whole UI refresh every time you change context 💀

-I really REALLY want to try Grease Pencil and Geo Nodes 

Every time I tried, I end up giving up pretty fast because the UI and UX of Blender is atrocious...Well that's not fair to say, it's more..."unique". I know some people love it and it's fine, but it just doesn't squeak with me 🐭

- About "BForArtists"

I recently discovered this "BforArtist" tool, which in my humble opinion not very well named but, if you take some time to learn about it, its actually an incredible software and effort

 

It's basically a fork of Blender, with better UI and UX. Take 5 minutes and read that page, it will make sense : https://www.bforartists.de/the-differences-to-blender/ 

 I was initially reluctant to switch to this after starting to get serious about blender for a week, mainly because I don't want to start learning something too niche, that might get abandoned in a few years.

However, looking into it, it's unlikely: The dev team of BFA is very small and incredible dedicated. The main dev has a strong UX/UI vision ( check this presentation) , the community is active and it's following very closely all blender updates.

https://www.bforartists.de/  

 

I almost want to make a beginner tutorial for it once I'm more used to it. The software is great but it lack "marketing" 😁  Anyway I'll post more about this later! 

- Youtube video process

If you want to see the process how I modeled some of those mario enemies aboves, I have non sped up video on youtube! You'll even see me struggling and google search my way...yay!

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST

more reading: 

• A thread of tweet I made about BFA
• The thread of the mario enemies, which I'll keep updating 

Easing Cheat sheet poster

 Made this a while ago because I kept going to Easings.net to choose an easing shape... It's hanged next to my monitor and I look at it almost every day for reference! 

If you're interested, you can get it here https://www.inprnt.com/artist/print/easings-cheat-sheet/ (Please note that I can't set the price lower this is the minimum0

Animal Forest / Dōbutsu no Mori N64 Wallpaper

 I really wanted a wallpaper, so I made one out of it! (You can download by clicking the image) 

I saw this tweet showing the booklet for first animal crossing game on N64, and I absolutely loved it!

 

 

 

Here is the process for fun: 

 Basically stretched out the image > added details to the horizon,  repainted the sky > added back dust / scan imperfections (I wanted it to be crunchy!!)

the full booklet! SOURCE: Randomized Gaming

I can't get over how melancholic this art feels...It captures perfectly a calm summer sunset, and it has that Japanese countryside vibe

 

Prototype - Slingchess

A prototype done a while ago, semi abandoned for now, but I still entertain the idea of doing it one day!

The idea is simple: Slingshot + Chess = Slingchess! The idea came from brainstorming about a Physics-based chess game

Each turn you can move a piece of your choice, I came up with this idea that each piece have differents movement "patterns" inspired by the actual rules of chess

Weight, speed, friction and such varies between pieces, the goal is to evoke the feeling or the idea of a chess piece.  Ex: Pawn has a small radius, but can go fast, but will stop fast too (high friction)...because..I dont know it feels like a pawn 😁

In the video you can also see that each piece has health points and even an attack value, very different from chess! The goal is that you can play more with the physics.

Finding the balance between the strategy of chess, and the fun/chaos of physics is very fun!

 

here is a another video: 

 

a few more details on Twitter : https://twitter.com/AlexStrook/status/1744761230194045014

 

 

 

space bunny, gerbils and a goomba

I really want to get back to drawing/painting! here are some various pieces

 

 

Space Bunny (Unbound + Photoshop)

 

 My gerbils (Ipad + procreate)

 

Super Mario Wonder fanart (Unbound)

Lofi 3d pixel art explorations

 Various gif of different unrelated project, for some reason I'm really digging this style recently!

It feels pixel art, but I would not call it pixel art: My process is usually the same

• lower down resolution of the game in unity (create a new RT, apply to camera, reduce its resolution and set to point, and then display it on a canvas as a fullscreen raw image, or on an unlit texture material + a different camera. You can also use a post process shader like this one "Pixelate", which is what I used for that first gif, it gives a smoother feeling) 
  
• Make the art, but always looks at the final render (game view) while working , because the scaling is not consistent, its a lot of tweaking to get it looking right!
• I keep changing the resolution while I work, trying higher/lower rez, still trying to find the one I like
• I really enjoy square 1:1 formats
  

All of this was made in Unity, because I just like working in it!