Hello!
I’m finding it more difficult ever time I do this. I can’t really find anything to write about that I haven’t already written about, so this time I’ll be less technical about my animations, and just explain why I did them the way I did. If you’re interested in a more technical approach to how I animate, then I recommend checking out my previous post “Week 6: Animating in photoshop.”
This week I set out to animate the attack animations for our trees. There’s a total of 7 trees that need animating, and I’ve so far done 4 of them. Since the trees will be really small on the screen, it’s important to make each animation stand out. Make them large and somewhat extravagant, so that you can actually see something happening. Since the trees are also supposed to shoot in all directions, the animations need to be done over the whole tree, and not have a specific direction in mind. Otherwise there would have to be a different animation for each direction the tree can shoot.
The trees were designed by our lead artist Nisse (hence why they look so awesome!).
EDIT: I realised after posting that the animations look a bit messed up. The reason for this is I made them directly for the game, so they have no background (animations can’t have a background, since the background would also appear in the game, i.e. the tree would be on top of a large white square). I can’t seem to create a background for them either, so unfourtunately, until i have a video of them in-game, I can’t provide proper animations for them on this blog.
Slime Tree
The slime tree is a tree that shoots slime at it’s enemies. It deals minimal damage, but has the added effect of slowing down it’s enemies movement speed and attack speed.
I decided to make it look like the tree sucks in its own goo and then explodes it in a slime-like splash animation. The projectile will fly out with the goo explosion.
Flower Tree
The flower tree applies a damage over time effect on its enemies. I decided to make the animation look like it’s spitting out gas, or pollen, that would stick to the enemies. Since it’s a flower it made sense to use some kind of spore-like effect, and since it needs to be directionless I made it look like a single cloud that then evaporates and breaks into strands of spores that hit the ground.
Ash 1
This is a magic tree. Unfourtunately the name is based on the fact that we have two different trees named Ash. The names will probably be changed for the final game. The original idea for this tree was to have it do a whip-like movemewnt and also glow in a light blue color. I figured out that this would take an awful lot of time to get right, and I’d have to cut the tree into different segments and position them correctly across more than 10 different frames. It proved to be too difficult and time consuming, and in the end wouldn’t really look too good in the final game. Instead I went with the tree accumulating light and then exploding it.
Ash 2
This is the other magic tree. The animation ended up being 1.5 seconds long, which was too long for the game, so I cut it down to 0.75 seconds. It’s the same idea here as with Ash 1, it accumulates light and then creates a small explosion. I also made it look like it drew in the light into it’s crown as well as some energy from the ground. Then making it explode in a white light and also in it’s negative (inverted) tree color. The negative color is the pink you can see at the end. Unfourtunately it didn’t meet my expectations. I was hoping the negative colored version of the tree would be more visible, but due to the small size and speed of the animation, it’s only noticeable.
That’s all for this week! Come back next time when I will most likely talk about more animation, and hopefully something more!
//Markus Holm
Holms corner 
Holm…
A very well written and enlightening blog post. You have described your work process in great detail while also showing your animations on action. As a reader I get a good sense of your thought process, the goals you wanted to achieve with your animations and the obstacles you had to overcome in order to meet those goals. I liked the way you solved how the various trees would fire in all directions by adding “direction neutral” animations for them and I think it was the right choice to make.
Your animation for the Slime Tree is very good and I like the way you added personality to it by making it suck in its own slime after it fires it at the enemy. Same goes for the animation for the Flower Tree. Very pretty animation for the spores shooting out of it. It almost resembles a fountain spraying water, which looks good in context of the game, as well as with your choice of making the spores the cause of the damage over time.
The animation of Ash 1 might be my favorite one out of the four tree animations. I really like the way it looks when it channels the light and then unleashes it at the enemy. To me that makes more sense than the idea of the tree making a whip-like attack, since the tree is said to have magical properties and is sacred in some mythologies (Norse mythology being one of them, since Yggdrasil was an ash tree). I wish I could have seen the result you wanted for Ash 2. I think it could have been really nice if you didn’t have any restrictions in terms of space and time. It is unfortunate that the inverted pink does not show as much as you would have liked.
It is clear that you have put much thought into your work and reasoning for the different animations. I look forward to see more from you in the future.
/Erik Ögren
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