Restitched: From The Vault | Stuffy's First Steps (Patreon)

Welcome back to another edition of 'Restitched: From The Vault'! In our previous Restitched: Dev Diary 'Animation' we focused on team animators Brennan and Luke, including their workflows and experience. However, in this post we'll be going right back to the very beginning of Restitched and looking at how we created Stuffy's literal first steps.

Conceptualizing The Run

Before any animating was actually conducted, we had a discussion regarding how Stuffy would move. Would they move on their own in a more naturalistic manner, or would they behave more like a cartoon with exaggerated movements? ...or maybe even move as though a child is holding them and playing?

Conceptualizing the run cycle involved a lot of team discussion and several ideas being chopped before we could proceed. Did we want a loose, flowy movement or a tight and agile one? Most of our animating depends on how the player will actually move in gameplay. You can't have quick and tight controls with the visuals of a clumsy ragdoll... it just doesn't work!

However, we had no proper character movement at this point and so we decided to prototype it around the animation instead. To aid in visualizing our different ideas, our then-animator Michael created the following concept (dated July 24th, 2020):

As you can see, this concept showcased six potential running styles for our previously-chunky plush friend:

• Lil Monkey King This run style moves Stuffy's arms out of the way, giving them a more 'care-free attitude'.
• Stuff-Boy A more traditional run, this is the one we ultimately decided on at the time.
• Pelvis Pivot A much more cartoon-inspired run, though as Michael's notes state: 'didn't turn out as well as I hoped'.
• Tilted An experimental concept - this one appears more like if a child were holding Stuffy and trying to make them walk. Ultimately, it was decided this would look too wobbly for when Stuffy was quickly running.
• Retro Inspired by 8-bit and 16-bit games, this run limited Stuffy's arm movements but kept their legs running at normal speed. Michael notes that he likes the appeal of this one, but that it could look too 'boppy'.
• Ragdoll This was an extreme case, with limbs flying everywhere as Stuffy ran. This would have looked too intense for a simple run, and Michael notes that it would be 'annoying to control'

Running With Our Choice

After the team chose a more traditional run from the concept, Michael set about creating the animation. Below you can see the progress made by July 31st, 2020:

As evident, it's not fully blended and is a bit choppy... but this gave us a nice idea of what Stuffy would look like in-game!

After this animation was developed further, it was imported into the game and Stuffy finally came to life - though we quickly ran into several issues. You can see the result of this early animation in our aforementioned Dev Diary.

Although these animations are from the very first stages of our project, it's inspiring to compare the progress we've made since. We love the learning environment that development brings, and trial and error have positively reshaped the game. Since this, we've completely redesigned Stuffy's player model twice - including a new rig that makes animating easier and more expressive!

Our Final Sprint

We're fortunate to have improved from past mistakes and passed-down knowledge. The result of today's run cycle is one we're all pretty pleased with, and we feel that Stuffy's character expression is clear through each frame.