Making of Mighty Fist (part 2)
04/20/2006 (1:00 am) by Eric Elwell
Part 2Click to read Part 1
- Joe and I discussed what type of world objects we would need and how we planned
to implement them. Joe made more doodles. It was great.
more doodling. All of the above images were me throwing out ideas for quick to make shapes, and was to re-use assets (windows being the focus of some of
the drawings). The final drawing I actually drew in one of the executive planning
meetings that happens every week. An old trick I learned from a very experienced
Art Director named Shawn Sharp; If there are more than two people at a meeting,
bring a sketchbook, as it will probably be the only time you get to draw during
the day. -joe
After a bit of doodling, Joe had me put together a list of art assets we would
need for the project. (Aside from displaying my poor handwriting, the reason
for this image is the sketch at the bottom.)
Joe talked with Mark B and Lance Bass about hand drawing the art assets for
the game. Mark did some super cool drawings in his oh-so-clean style:
Lance did some awesome line work for the world objects. The original scans
were very large which made them very easy to work with in photoshop, and required
little to no cleanup.
Lance's work was a huge boost for me. Not only did it save me the time of drawing
each piece myself, but it motivated me to work faster on the painting process
just so I could see these great pieces in game.
I set out a fairly rigid process for myself using photoshop actions and predefined color swatches. This helped to unify the look, greatly increase workflow, and allow for color tweaking later on. I will talk
more about photoshop actions and my workflow in subsequent blogs.
Joe drew the background and midground layers and created the groovy background layer for the use in the game:
even more meeting doodling. All this doodling allowed me to get a clear focus on the style and come up with the final image for the background in pretty
short order. The final silhouette took less than an hour to produce from concept
to completion. -joe
Now that we had characters running around and interacting in pen and ink, and painted world objects; the final step was to paint the animated characters. This was not an incredibly difficult stage, thought it was very long and tedious with a total of 82 painted frames. This was a great experience for me in that I had to learn how to keep my character frames consistent with each other. I found myself taking time before painting an animation set to plan for the best/quickest process before painting each frame. I also found myself going slightly nutty, so I took frequent breaks to rest my brain, and rest assured, my brain was 100% inactive during these breaks
- It was well worth the work to finally see these characters animated in color.
The great thing about interning at GarageGames is that you actually get to work on projects and learn
the trade. Less of fetching for coffee and more of making cool stuff. I am very happy with the
development of my abilities over the past 6 months. Looking back at my artistic ability before interning
here, my workflow was slow and clumsy. I had previously worked almost purely in digital media. I was
skipping a lot of key steps in the artistic process. Drawing in freehand was something that I rarely
attempted, yet Joe pushed me to do more and more of it. Now physical media is my preference for a
starting point, and my final work is much more refined because of it. My work on Mighty Fist forced me
to draw a lot. Drawing more improved my ability and working speed in animation; and animating
improved my drawing ability in many more areas: from initial design to silhouette to iteration to flow to
stroke economy and much more. It has been a personal goal of mine to be always learning and
advancing my skills; there really is no end to that. It is also a joy of mine to share that with others and
help them in their artistic development. I do hope that you've enjoyed the read and imagery; but more
importantly I hope that you've grasped the concepts of how you can approach your work, increase
productivity, and improve your workflow.
To sum it up for you, when you make your project with TGB, remember to burn through a stack of
paper just for doodling. It keeps it focused, and it keeps it fun.
About the author
#2
04/20/2006 (1:10 am)
First post again. 
#3
04/20/2006 (1:20 am)
Nice!
#4
04/20/2006 (1:25 am)
Wow, that is a fantastic write-up, thank you for sharing it. Great to see the design process entirely from lunch conversation to working product. Bonus-tastiness from the bits of perspective and wisdom from Joe too! 
#6
04/20/2006 (1:47 am)
Eric this is so badass man, I am at a loss of words. Killer work dude! 
#8
04/20/2006 (2:17 am)
Eric really did an awesome job on this, he spent a lot of time making this write up as well... I kept proding him to post it but he wanted to make sure it was perfect. Awesome job man!
#9
Oh, for those who work in remote locations, an alternative to "doodle meetings", so to speak, is paintchat. Paintchat is a free browser-based java application that allows multiple people to draw on the same canvas at the same time (wacom tablet compatible as well). A person can host their own session from their computer, and there are websites that host it as well. Try it out at http://paintchat.3dluvr.com/
04/20/2006 (3:34 am)
Very, very nice!Oh, for those who work in remote locations, an alternative to "doodle meetings", so to speak, is paintchat. Paintchat is a free browser-based java application that allows multiple people to draw on the same canvas at the same time (wacom tablet compatible as well). A person can host their own session from their computer, and there are websites that host it as well. Try it out at http://paintchat.3dluvr.com/
#10
04/20/2006 (4:12 am)
Wow, very eloquent and polished thought process....too polished. I think the public has the right to know the truth about you Eric Elwell, and so I must give the people what they want. BEWARE!!!!!
#11
04/20/2006 (5:35 am)
i like the character & animation, really amazing work :D
#12
Out of interest, could you give numbers of the overall time that MF demo took and the amount of assets that ended in the demo?
Way cool.
Btw, did you guys thought of perhaps using all-out digital solution like Plastic Animation Paper? http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/
It`s kind of cool, but then there`s the fact that you have to be able to doodle with graphic tablet just as you do with pen on paper which I found a bit hard, since there`s completely different friction between pen and paper.
All thumbs up for your work :)
04/20/2006 (6:26 am)
This is perhaps the..the..the most kick arse writeup in the history of GG .plans. First, the stuff is just way cool and second, the writeup is great, just great :)Out of interest, could you give numbers of the overall time that MF demo took and the amount of assets that ended in the demo?
Way cool.
Btw, did you guys thought of perhaps using all-out digital solution like Plastic Animation Paper? http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/
It`s kind of cool, but then there`s the fact that you have to be able to doodle with graphic tablet just as you do with pen on paper which I found a bit hard, since there`s completely different friction between pen and paper.
All thumbs up for your work :)
#13
04/20/2006 (11:46 am)
That was a great read Eric, cheers for taking the time to write it up :) 
#14
04/20/2006 (1:32 pm)
Amazing article, during winter I started getting into 2d animation, I really enjoyed it. As you say being will ing to start with a pecil and paper is the key to itterations. Keep it up can't wait to play the Mighty Fist
#15
04/20/2006 (4:47 pm)
These two posts about this game should honestly be on the front-page for TGB. If people see how cool it is to make your own game out of killer art like this, they would definitely pick it up. Helps out GarageGames and helps out the developer :)
#19
04/21/2006 (1:01 am)
Eric, hi.
#20
04/21/2006 (2:45 pm)
Eric, buddy. Hey.
Torque Owner Anton Bursch