Restitched: Dev Diary | Animation (Patreon)

Welcome back to yet another Dev Diary! This time we’ll be shedding light on the animations of Restitched, and the lovely animators behind them.

Good animation is often the cornerstone of enjoyable gameplay. We don't always realize it, but the way we perceive movement is changed by the quality and responsiveness of an animation. This is no different in Restitched, so it's a huge reason why we're always going back and reiterating our work.

When we first entered Restitched, many of us were learning the ropes of game development for the first time. This meant trial and error, including a lot of inefficient methods for animating. We originally didn't have IKs on Stuffy and our character rig was mostly auto-generated with an online tool. We had a character that looked good at a glance but was actually terrible for gameplay and animation. The character was tall, chunky, and awkwardly proportioned. We struggled for a long time to animate it until we realized that trying to work around the issues was not going to hold up forever.

We've taken a bit of a different approach to the Dev Diary this month, as the rest of this feature is largely written by Restitched animators Brennan Timiney and Luke Briggs themselves!

Introduction to Animations

Animating characters in a video game is tricky, because not only does it have to look nice, but it has to feel nice. When there are only a couple of animators on the team, it’s vital to take the extra time to ensure animations look polished enough for the final game.

When the player provides input we expect a quick response in character movement, yet smooth in animation. This is a fine line to balance, as having the run animation start immediately is too jarring. On the other hand, taking too long to build up to a run after input can feel sluggish and unenjoyable. It's the job of the animators and programmers to strike a balance that feels natural and responsive.

Teamwork is incredibly important when it comes to animating, like any other part of development. When making animations for Stuffy, we have to consider gameplay, asking ourselves questions like: "Is this responsive enough?”, “How does it look from all angles?”, and “How will this transition from another animation?”. We have to be flexible, otherwise, the character will look janky, and if Stuffy looks janky, the game will feel janky.

This is Blender, the software the animators use for animating Stuffy. This is the default setup the animators work with. This image is specifically from Luke’s Blender setup, which has minor changes to suit his workflow.

The Animators

Animating can be equally tough and satisfying. With so many moving parts to consider, some animations are much harder to create than others. For instance, waving a hand is far less complex than doing a fun little dance! So, what would the animators consider tough animations to work on?

Brennan: "The hardest one for me was the new idle animation. This is an animation that players are going to see a lot, so it needs to be perfect. It took a lot of fine adjustments and re-tries to get it right."

Luke: "The running animation was easily the toughest animation I’ve made so far due to all of the micro-adjustments that needed to be made. I remember my first draft looking pretty good, but there was too much sway and bounce. While that’d be fine for a general animation, in Restitched, Stuffy’s position is incredibly important. Sway too much, and they’ll swing into other layers. Bounce too much, and they may hit their head on something that they wouldn't do when standing still. As Brennan said, it took a lot of fine adjustments to make it perfect for the game. It’s important to remember that you’re animating to fulfil a function in the game - not to show off.  Function over form."

An untextured "idle animation" test from December 2021.

Although some would consider animating tough, there is always the other side of the coin! Animating can be an extremely satisfying medium when looking back and seeing your previous works, forming favorites that you're proud of. What do our animators deem as their favorite piece of work thus far?

Brennan: "My favorite animation so far is this ledge-climbing animation. This is an animation I’m really proud of because it looks nice, responsive, and fun - especially with his little feets climbing up the wall. But most importantly, it’s a gameplay mechanic that will be used time and time again."

Luke: "For me, it has to be the running animation again! Yes, that which took me so much time and patience, is also my favourite. When you put enough time into something, you become attached to it. Seeing the finished running animation also gives me a sense of importance in the team, as it is a core animation that will be seen by a lot of people. Getting it just right feels good."

Stuffy shown running in a recent update to the animation.

One major selling point of being an animator is the fact that you get to express the ultimate creativity and bring a character to life. Similar to the theme of Restitched, being an animator means being creative! Everyone has their own reasons for enjoying what they do, so, why do our animators personally find animating fun?

Brennan: "Being an animator is fun for a lot of reasons; I get to work with lots of other talented people who inspire me as well as make me happy to be a part of this fantastic group. My animation partner, Luke, is an amazing animator with an awesome sense of humor and is lots of fun to work with; he is my biggest inspiration on this team and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the future.

But the best part of being an animator is bringing characters to life; The word “animation” means “to give life” and that is exactly what we do with Stuffy. It is because of animation that Stuffy can run, jump, swing, and climb. I am happy to have brought that into the game and I hope that you all are looking forward to seeing everyone else at Trixel Creative's hard work."

Luke: "Animating can be fun for more than just the act of doing it. Like any artist, having your art recognised and praised by the community is an intense inspiration to keep going and to do even better. While that works as a good short-term motivation, for me, it’s most fun due to the very act of bringing something to life. I could easily pose Stuffy in a jolly pose and feel good, but if I were to see them physically bounding into the air for joy - that would fill me with far more glee. I can bring a piece of art to life, and that is always satisfying. And of course, Brennan is the biggest motivation for me to animate on Restitched. He’ll post an animation in development to the team - and when he does, all I think is “Now I really want to animate!” He’s a great guy and we often joke about things whilst animating. It’s great motivation to have someone who is so like-minded about a hobby you enjoy."

But it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and stitch together some key details for animating.

The Animation Process

Now, both Luke and Brennan will be discussing key points about animating, along with tips to make life easier while animating. No one ever gets it right on their first try!

Each animation starts with the keyframes, which are the most defining parts of an action. This process is called “blocking”.

Here is an example of keyframes in an animation:

Kicking animation made by Brennan. Note how each pose tells its own story; you can read what Stuffy is doing in each shot.

Blocking is one of the most important parts of creating an animation, as it presents exactly what the character will be doing, and more importantly, when. Our team's animators make use of this technique in nearly every piece of their work.

Luke: "A while ago, I used to genuinely not care about blocking, just freestyling every animation I created. It allows me to just get on with it. Although, I always found myself at the end of the animation thinking “I’ll just tweak this” or “this doesn’t feel right”, and repeating that process for up to literal hours to try to adjust things. By blocking, I’ve saved myself an ungodly amount of time."

If you can play back a blocked animation and feel the timing is right, then you move on to step two: inserting the in-between frames. This helps to smoothen out the character’s movement, putting each keyframe together to create an animation - turning the work from a slideshow into… well, an animation.

Stuffy "Kicking" animation, after both a blockout and polish pass.

Below are more examples of in-between frames, they don’t look like they make an action by themselves, but are vital for a smooth final result.

Updated Thumbs-Up emote and Running animation made by Luke. In order, Stuffy just after raising his hands up, moving them forwards to make the animation more lifelike, and Stuffy getting his feet into position to land.

Brennan: "I always start each animation with the action itself. The tweaking and the characterization comes after I know I got a solid template.

Once that is complete, the tweaks come in, making fine adjustments to make the animation more life-like. During this process, we focus on making the character bouncier, rather than stiff and robotic."

Once the animators have received feedback from the team (and made any necessary adjustments), the animation is complete! Aftward, we pass the work on to our Lead Modeler to be imported in-game.

First Steps

Before we had our lovely animators Luke and Brennan, we had one dedicated animator on the team named Michael, who studied animation professionally. Having animated both our original, clunky Stuffy model and the more recent and refined version, Michael laid the foundation of basic movement on which Luke and Brennan have based their work.

Below is a gif of Michael's more recent and polished work from his time on the team. As you can see, Michael also utilized blockout frames when creating a run animation for the newest Stuffy model:

Way back near the start of development (February 1st, 2020), Lead Modeler Ozy began conceptualizing the keys for facial expressions, coming up with the below sketch and stating:

"...I think we could stick with this snout as a built-in shape, knowing teddy bears/stuffed animals generally don't differ from this base snout shape (which tends to be rather round). The idea of the sketch here is that the mouth movements could be controlled traditionally via the use of Blendshapes (aka Shape Keys) to mimic phenomes and mouth movements that can be controlled via animations in Unity (or maybe even in a script). If need be, you can put in bones to add in higher variety near the brows and mouths if you want to have more expressions."

Below is a capture of the first-ever animation when it was added into the game on September 20th, 2020, by then-animator Clem. As you can see, this is using the old Stuffy model, and the animations aren't perfect, but it used the above-mentioned methods and was a massive milestone at the time that lead to lots of excitement within the team - Stuffy was finally moving!

Here's another little insight into blending the animation keys. This clip was shared with the team on January 7th, 2021, and shows how context can speed up, blend, and slow down animations.

We began creating a proper rig, shape keys, refined topology, improved textures, and more. Our animator was extremely pleased with how easy the new Stuffy model was to work with, and they were able to put their full talent on display as they brought life into Stuffy in a way we'd never seen before.

Below is a prime example of the issues we ran into when animating the early Stuffy model. You can see how far we've come since then, with this media dated November 20, 2020!

As you can see here, the old Stuffy model was extremely awkward to work with. You can see more about our reasons as to why we re-modeled Stuffy in our Dev Diary 'Restitching Stuffy'. With this brand-new player character made from scratch, we could finally give it the love it desperately needed.

Difficulties With Animation

As mentioned, when working on Restitched, it’s paramount that the animators give just the right amount of bounce to Stuffy’s movement without making it too over-the-top or stiff. Some of the toughest challenges to do this with are usually the legs or fingers, as both of them are surprisingly more complex than you’d think!

But this doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. It is vital as an animator to focus honing on where you struggle. One animator could be a master at running animations, but if they never do facial expressions and lip-syncing, then you’ll find intense inconsistencies throughout the animations and so the whole thing falls apart.

In Restitched, Stuffy has mittens/paws, not individual fingers. That makes animating the hands a lot easier, but limits animation in other ways. For example: How do we get stuffy Stuffy to make the peace symbol? These are interesting little things that the animators have to work around.

Brennan: "If we struggle to animate something well, it doesn’t mean we’re bad animators."

Luke: "They say it takes 10,000 hours to truly master something. When it comes to animation, both Brennan and I agree that we are far from perfect. We have our specific strengths and weaknesses when it comes to animating anything. As for me, I find myself excelling at smoothing out animations and making them more bouncy/lively, whilst I’d personally say Brennan is far better at blocking than me. I find it actually makes the dream team!"

It’s all practice, practice, practice! If you decide to ignore working on specific parts of the animation that you’re no good at, it greatly limits your potential as an animator. Our animators are constantly learning new things as they continue animating on Restitched, both in relation to animation and the program itself. One thing that helps is to be curious. Curiosity may have killed the cat - but it actually helps animators! (If you’re a cat that animates, the two effects cancel out). 

Curiosity leads to so many new methods and styles to animate in, and always helps in the long run. Be curious. Don’t be afraid to experiment with parts you’re weak at!

Collaboration

Restitched is a team effort. If everyone was working on their own miniature project, it would create a slew of inconsistent assets, game builds, and animation styles. Restitched is a tightly-woven team of passionate people who need to work together in order to deliver the best vision possible. Of course, this goes for animation, too! Some animations take a lot of work to finish, and often times they need more than one person to work on them. 

Although most of our animations are done individually, it's not a competition. If an animator ever needs help with something, then we ask for it. Both the running and the idle animations were worked on cooperatively by Luke and Brennan, as they're vital to the game and should be executed just right. We find that each developer brings their own skillset to the table, ultimately improving the final product. 

Additionally, each animation gets reviewed by other members of Trixel Creative, so anyone who wants to give notes can do so! Each critique and suggestion can be taken into consideration for the most definitive final product. Communication is very important!

Brennan: "Although we do most of our animations individually, some animations require a lot of work that requires both me and Luke to pitch in and play to our strengths."

Luke: "Before I worked on Restitched, a lot of my animations I’d make for fun were just uploaded without any peer review, and with that method you can only listen to any adjustments you could’ve made AFTER the final product has shipped. So when working on Restitched, it is insanely helpful to have so many people willing to give feedback as to what to improve, and what they like. I feel like a lot of the animations wouldn’t be the best they could be if it wasn’t for the team effort involved in creating them."

Here is evidence of collaboration in effect. Below is an unused work-in-progress "Thumbs Up" emote made by Luke:

The team recommended changing up the pose, with Ozy creating a quick sketch showing how to bring a more dynamic and lively element into it:

What We've Learned

Brennan: "I’ve learned a lot of programs over my life as an animator, and I had hardly used Blender before joining Trixel Creative (as I was taught Maya in college). The differences weren’t too staggering, but the controls were hard to adjust to. I even changed some of the controls in Blender to match the controls in Maya. I’m glad I learned Blender - because not only is it free, but it’s helped me improve as an animator drastically."

Luke: "I’ve used Blender since 2017, but have used other programs in the past like GMod, and even Mine-imator. Whilst I’d say I’m somewhat competent at using the Blender software now, Restitched has given me the opportunity to learn even more about the program. When making animations for a game, it’s quite a different process than just generally animating whatever. If anything, I’ve learnt how to be far more efficient in the program and have become a better animator for it."

Working on Restitched is a constant learning process. For example, at one point both Luke and Brennan were struggling with something as simple as deleting an Action in the Action Editor (where they store all the animations for the game).

Here they are being relieved that their list would no longer be so cluttered:

You could know a program inside and out, but if you don’t know how to apply these tools in animation, then you’re back to square one. Being an animator isn't just about animating - it’s also about being creative and curious. Two key themes that are, again, closely related to Restitched itself!

Wrapping It Up

We hope you found this Dev Diary informative, entertaining, as well as motivational. Animation is hard, yet fun and rewarding work. We all want Stuffy to look and feel as lively as possible!

Brennan: "Animation is tough, and it requires a lot of patience. Sometimes you’ll do the same mundane actions over and over again, but it’s not for nothing. Animation is an art form, and all art starts with a blank canvas. It’s up to the artist to turn that canvas into a beautiful painting. For every animation I’ve made, there’s always been a sense of accomplishment, and that feeling only gets stronger the harder the animation was to make. We’re not in it for the ride, we’re in it for the destination."

Luke: "There are times when animating really grinds your gears - when you just can’t get that little thing to look right. But after all is said and done, looking back at your work makes it all worth it. People have asked me for work-in-progress animations and images before, and I am always hesitant to send them. Work-in-progress 3D animations can look pretty rough until the last couple of hours of work, but nothing should ever be judged until it is finished. The biggest critique of your art is yourself. Keep a steady head, and always see it through to the end. I’ve saved countless amounts of animations from being deleted where I thought “This really doesn’t look great”, but stuck with it, and they ended up coming out even better than my initial expectations. It is intensely rewarding."

Animation is yet another cog that turns within the machine of making a game. Without it, the whole machine would break down. 

We hope you are looking forward to the release of Restitched and enjoy the endless love and care we're pouring into the game.

Stuffy looking up at post curiously (cosmetics animation).