Things that Creep and Things that Fly

That’s a lot of bots

Earlier this week I set about creating animations for the Spider Bot enemies (we’re thinking of calling them ArachNeuros, any thoughts on that?) and as people familiar with some of our older posts will know, animation is not necessarily something I am skilled at. Oh, this is Kyle typing by the way. Our actual animator, who is quite talented, was busy working on more complex animations, like this roll for Edgar:

So, I set about doing a simple pass at the ArachNeuro walk animation. Or, at least I thought it would be simple. I ended up spending a fair bit of time planning, drawing, re-planning, and re-drawing the frames. I looked up photos and slow motion videos of spiders (which was pretty upsetting on its own) and still couldn’t get it to look right. What I ended up with were two different walks, one that looped better, and one that looked more creepy and spideriffic. The creepier one also had less frames. With a few adjustments we were able to settle on one we liked, at least until our actual animator can have a look at it.

A Helpful Raven Companion

We’ve also been working on implementing our raven companions into the game. They’re already flying behind Poe, and going out to grab ink, whiskey, or coins, whenever Poe needs them. We have a few things to add in order to make them smarter and less of a distraction, especially during combat.

Diamond ravens are a poet’s best friend

We’ll continue working on special variations for the companions, including special ravens with unique particle effects and behaviors, as well as different animals entirely, including some that can’t fly at all. We’ll have some videos of this all to show soon.

Thanks for reading!

– Wrought Iron Games