Animation Research

During my research into Anna Lepeshkina, I found a video of her showcasing a trailer for the ‘personal game project’ she had created the ‘mushroom forest’ concept artworks for.

Potata release gameplay (indie adventure platformer game)

After some further research, I also found a behind-the-scenes video showcasing the animation program she had used in her game.

Fat witch animation timelapse (Spine 2d)

The program is called ‘Spine 2D‘. Spine 2D is a program that animates 2D assets in a way that makes them appear 3D – the animations make them look ‘floaty’. We had a brief discussion about it in an early team meeting and decided that the ‘floaty’ animation style wouldn’t suit Eden as it lacked a clear, crisp quality.

Afterwards, we discussed ideas for alternative free animation programs. Some programs that were mentioned include Krita and OpenToonz. Since Krita had a limit of 100 frames, we decided to look into OpenToonz as none of us had used it before.

After researching OpenToonz, I found out that “the software [was] used to create Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away and TV shows like Steven Universe and Futurama” (Allen, 2016). This meant that the program could produce quality animations and was industry-standard. OpenToonz is also a free software to download and use. Therefore, it was deemed a suitable program to use for producing the game.

In order to test out the program myself, I decided to download OpenToonz and research for a tutorial on how to use the software. I found a short beginner’s tutorial on YouTube that I ended up using as a guide for using the program.

Using the video as guidance, I created tried creating a short, rough animation of the deer walking in order to familiarise myself with the program and see how easy it is to use. I found that the program was fairly simple to use but it did consist of many menu options that I would need time to get used to.

Bibliography

Allen, P. 2016, OpenToonz, the 2D Animation Software Used by Studio Ghibli, Is Now Free, viewed 11 February 2020, <https://lifehacker.com/opentoonz-the-2d-animation-software-used-by-studio-ghi-1767833445>.