Having Completed the animations I exported them out into both individual frames and into sprite sheets for dziek to import them into Unity.
Entrance Sprite Sheet.
Idle Sprite Sheet.
Run Sprite Sheet.
Jump Sprite Sheet.
Fall Death Sprite Sheet.
Burn Death Sprite Sheet.
Gas Death Sprite Sheet.
Exit Sprite Sheet.
All animations In video form
Animations in-game.
A series of test was then done on the three main animations to capture the basic motions of the characters, as the Idle, jump and run animation were the most prevalent at this point I focused on them.
As I worked on them I presented them to my course mates and tried to gradually improve upon them.
Initial Research
The design of the Character animation had to reflect not just the character itself but the situation he was involved in as the situation often determines a person’s actions and allowed some personality to be defined.
Much of the game is centered around running and jumping so a Monkey character was decided on, research into Ed muybridge’s, Dream work’s Kung fu panda character Monkey and Rare’s work on Donkey Kong country helped to understand how to create a realistic acting Monkey.
http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/415768/Baboon_Walking_on_all_fours
http://kungfupanda.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Images_of_Monkey?file=MonkeyConcepts2.JPG
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_boy_advance/dkcountry/sheet/13810/
This allowed a firm background to create the characters movement through the game though a more frantic design was incorporated to reflect the escape nature of the game, experimenting led me to believe using puppet animation in After Effects was the best choice.
Flash
A quick test in Adobe Flash but was dissatisfied with it as it looked more like a dog than a monkey, decided to continue to experiment in After Effects rather than use flash as felt it was new and could be useful to see what I could do with a different method.
After Effects
Each limb and appendage was separately drawn (See Character Design) and imported into After effects where I assembled the monkey character and used attached pegs to each separate limb and key framed them create to create a whole walk cycle that could be observed once finished individual frames would be exported onto a sprite sheet for use in the phyre engine.
Some Animation tests in After effects using the peg animation and the reference’s above to try and get a fell for this style of animation while creating a monkey like movement.
Initial Idea Development.
For the Game concept we brain stormed as a group to come up with some idea’s to make, mine was a robot trapped inside a space station that is collapsing into a dangerous nebula and you must escape, it was selected to be the one developed so I did some quick sketches of the Character and game play ideas to convey what I had in mind for it
As the concept was pure platforming where we were to create a game as the best example of a platforming game I wanted to keep it simple dividing it into four different game mechanics
One: Running
Two: Jumping
Three: Grabbing
Four: Throwing
Things such as Running and jumping were obvious, using these to jump and traverse around the space station as it broke apart though we could play with gravity to see what challenges we could throw the player with simple differences in run speed and jump height.
I also wanted to switch it up a bit with using Scientist in the game as objects to avoid hazards, such as throwing them at gun turrets to drain their ammo and laying them on fire to walk over it safely, not for the scientist obviously.
Another mechanic was grabbing, Such as holding onto platforms that were floating throw space and launching yourself in straight lines to other platforms to reach the end of the level.
Once Lee and Sean took over game and level design we filtered into our respective roles and as the character animator I spoke to the Character designer Murray about the way I would need the art assets to be to animate them, We brain stormed Ideas and came up with the suit idea having researched Animation techniques I wanted to use After Effect’s Peg animation.
As the rotation and peg animation tool each limb was broken up to create a type of ball and socket join, in example the right hand asset overlapped the right lower arm at the wrist while the right lower arm overlapped the Upper arm at the elbow, the right upper arm overlapping at the body’s shoulder and so on.
This allows for the creation of a puppet in after effect that could be easily changed to create multiple animation from the same basic art assets.
A quick animation test in flash.
AlaisterGrier 
