Art Pass 1

Just a general update on my progress towards the new premium version of First Cut.

I've been recreating the character animations from scratch, and have now finished drawing all the original keyframes in the new style.

For those unaware of the animation process, keyframes are the main poses of the character when performing an action. With these poses completed I have moved onto drawing the 'in-between' frames that connect them and give each animation its timing and fluidity. The original First Cut animations were created hastily and have few frames of animation, so I've been focusing on increasing the frame-rate of each action for a smoother visual experience, as well as increasing the number of colours used for a greater sense of depth.

The original walk cycle had 8 frames, and this has now been doubled to 16.

On top of that I have been animating the character in more layers than before to allow for a greater amount of customization for the fighters, and more unique looking AI enemies. Initially I chose a robed character because it was much easier to animate a character with hidden legs, but this time around I'm putting more effort into the anatomy.

With this new style I'm hoping that each fight will have a more convincing sense of motion, and a more cinematic look.

As for the original version of First Cut, I'm hoping to release an html5 browser version sometime in the near future. I've been experimenting with it and so far it works surprisingly well, aside from 3 issues which need addressing (the mouse needs to lock inside the window, the pause function doesn't work, and the shove doesn't connect). I've been asked a lot to create a version of the game for other operating systems but haven't had much luck, so I'm hoping a browser version will allow for more players to access the game.

Thanks for reading.