Achroma App
Dragon Cutscene Animations
The Achroma App is a digital companion and choose-your-own-adventure game.
Brief:
To create 3 x 15-second animations that will play after an in-game battle for win/lose/draw conditions.
Solution:
With only a timeframe of two weeks to produce this, I was provided with a rough storyboard, an example of other in-game animations and access to a library of (flat) graphics.
Due to the tight turnaround, this meant that no time could be wasted, with minimal room for any feedback changes.
The provided storyboard was a great jumping off point, but there seemed like a lot to cram into 15-seconds. So, I produced an animatic and suggested some edits to make the narrative work (see video above for a side by side comparison).
The video at the top of this page is the ‘draw/tie’ scenario, where both Dragons charge at each other and collide. They crash down to the ground where an unseen character (the player) activates a crystal which turns the Dragons into stone. The other scenarios were similar, except it would be a single Dragon defeated that would plummet to the ground and turn to stone.
With the Animatic signed off, I began drawing from the existing artwork to make new assets and quickly learnt how to rig a dragon.
Dragon animated in After Effects and rigged with DUIK
Cancelled
However, after the first week of production, the project was unfortunately shut down for internal reasons.
I had done two of the three cutscenes which were awaiting feedback before I received the news.
It was a shame that the project was cancelled. Despite the tight turnaround, it was an extremely fun week of work.
The takeaway from this is that I can draw, rig and animate cutscenes for mobile games within 2 weeks. And I now know how to rig a long dragon.