In the weeks since my last entry, I've been focusing on trying to more concretely define Aurora and Jane's archetypes, attacks, and overall styles. To do this, I set out creating general guidelines for their designs, identifying key aspects of how they move and interact, and forming everything else around that.
The overall concept of Aurora is committed balance. I wanted her to have a bunch of strong tools that can handle every situation, but only have access to them when she's able to put herself in control of the tempo of a fight. In this sense she fights similarly to Poison from Street Fighter V or Sin from Guilty Gear XRD, as opposed to Ryu, Ky, or other more straightforward neutral-based characters. I think her style will require a lot of work and experimentation to figure out how good or bad it'll be, because on paper it's very strong in the right hands, but might be too much work for too little reward if handled incorrecly.
For Jane's design, I had in mind since first creating her that she would be a grappler.
For her overall kit, I really like the idea of highlighting non-traditional movement options and extreme setplay, at the sacrifice of traditional anti-zoning tools. For this I thought it'd be really neat to give her a projectile that's super non-standard, acting like Kum Haehyun's tuning ball, while also being able to be reflected by being hit. This could create fun interactions where Jane could approach using her guard-point dash to have her magnet sphere follow her in, or start a volley back and forth in neutral. The true purpose of the projectile is as a setplay tool, creating a scary mixup between the hits of the magnet sphere and her command grab.
First I updated Jane's tail rig. I wanted something that would have the minimum effort needed for keyframing smooth arcs, and this is what I came up with.
The tail is driven by the spring bones addon by ArtelBlender, coupled with a "track to" modifier that points the tail towards a resting target. By keyframing each of these modifiers, the tail can go from rigid to physics-based when needed, creating more natural looking rest and action poses.
The first animation I did for Jane was her command grab, which is one of the cornerstones of her archetype. I like how it came out, but it does feel a bit wobbly, so I might adjust the arc of motion on it a bit.
It DOES look pretty cool when performed on another character though!
The other animations I ended up doing for her are a walk cycle that I'm fairly happy with. Might need slight cleaning up, and for every animation that I've done so far I need to animate the face, tail, and accessories.
I also fleshed out a few basic attacks for Aurora to get her started on feeling like an actual fighting game character. All the animations were created keeping frame data in mind. Her palm strike is stubbier than her kick, but 2 frames faster, for example.
I also updated her slash animation to make it read a bit clearer in the keyframing.
And here's a super rough mockup of a special move! It feels like it lacks weight, and I already have an idea of how I'll fix it, but the basic concept is already looking promising. The uppercut is designed to be short range to intercept people jumping at her quickly, giving her a response to aggressive characters.
And that's it for now! Got a lot done but have a long way to go until they're both complete. The goal for these two is eventually to have them in a working game prototype. I'm dreading that because of Aurora's asymmetrical design, meaning I might have to make adjustments for her animations to be able to read properly while she's facing backwards, but that will be a problem for a later time!
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