Animation Style

I want to munge a few things together:

• "HD" graphics/art
• stylized, sculpted characters

• rendered out to 2D sprites

I'm thinking of a workflow similar to this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97311#9

I'm going to start finalizing this look and feel tonight/tomorrow -- I see this thing as being clearly HD, sculpted, looking nice, but it will never feel like we're trying to 'fake' 3D. It will be obviously 2D, and I want to embrace that. Hence, this type of animation:

• Classical animation principles + pixel art expressiveness
• I want every animation to pop and to feel snappy and immediate
• most sports games have floaty mushy mocap-looking stuff
• I want this to feel like an arcade game
• animation style will have more in common with fighting games
• key poses are the most important!
• legibility
• Paul Robertson is the king of this kind of thing:

• http://probertson.tumblr.com/post/82062175084/mercenary-kings-animations
• Paul Veer is also awesome at this:
• http://superpietepiet.tumblr.com/
• I want every animation to be as expressive and as minimal as possible
• with every animation, we ask what's the fewest number of frames we can do this in?
• what will make this pop?
• what wil make it as legible as posible?
• my nightmare is the mushy old 2D 16/32-bit Madden games
• no no no no no

THINGS THAT WE LEARN FROM THAT ARE GOOD TO LEARN FROM:

Skullgirls @ GDC:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020017/Animation-Bootcamp-Fluid-and-Powerful

King Of Fighters character animation gallery:

http://kofaniv.snkplaymore.co.jp/english/info/15th_anniv/2d_dot/gallery/character/index.php

They go over the workflow here:

http://kofaniv.snkplaymore.co.jp/english/info/15th_anniv/2d_dot/creation/index.php

It's insane. I love it.

Features

In App Purchases/microtransactions

• Content
• teams
• base (free) game only comes with 5? 6? teams, we sell you the rest
• coaches
• each coach brings his own playcall style/playbook
• spread offense guy/Chip Kelly
• old school ground and pound guy/Vince Lombardi
• option guy
• run and shoot guy
• etc
• players
• various players available to make your team better
• variety of pros and cons
• rookies have better physical stats, less intelligence
• veterans have much more intelligence/savvy, less stamina/strength
• maybe a middle group of average dudes? IDK, seems to muddy the water
• uniforms
• throwbacks, alternates, etc
• Consumables
• challenge/instant replay
• a 'do over' for a play that didn't turn out as planned
• audible
• change the play at the line of scrimmage
• others I'm not sure about
• buffs for individual dudes
• supercharge your kicker! etc
• team-wide buff? don't really like this
• item-based upgrades
• stickier gloves for receivers
• better cleats to run better in the rain/snow
• cold weather gear
• outright buying upgrade points for your team/dudes?
• IDK
• Expansions
• Mutant League
• obviously can't call it that, but it will be MLF in spirit
• skeletons, robots, aliens, mad max dudes, orcs, etc
• cratered, booby-trapped fields
• death
• as much of this stuff as we can cram in with mostly just a re-skin

Kicking

Pretty self-explanatory:

This will apply to Field Goals, Points After Touchdown, and kickoffs -- which will only consist of onside kicks. One of the things we need to figure out is how to turn onside kicks into something makes sense, looks/feels familiar, and has a high enough success rate to not automatically ruin players' games. Onside kicks will be HUGE in scenarios where players must come back from 2+ scores.