Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10-22.
The Color Overlay effect can work wonders on photographs, too
Make it Move
Now explore the contents of the
Chapter10/Characters
directory on the CD. Here, you'll find all
the various body parts that are available to you to create all the different characters and monsters
in the game. Making your own characters is a little more involved than creating environment art
and will also require a copy of Anime Studio Debut, which costs about $50. However, it doesn't
necessarily require animation skills, as we've provided a whole range of animations for you in the
Chapter10/Animations
directory and all you need to do is swap out the body parts to create a new
animation for your character. In this section, we'll take you through the process with a simple
example: creating a new pirate walk-cycle animation for a pirate with a clam for a head.
Making a New Pirate Walk-Cycle Animation
1.
Load
Mad Pirate Heads.psd
into Photoshop from the
Chapter10/Characters
directory.
2.
Use the Crop Tool to select the area enclosing the clam head in the top left corner of
the image and press
Enter
to crop.
Now, save the image in
.png
format to somewhere on your PC using the file name
PirateHeadClam.png
. You can now minimize Photoshop.
3.
Launch Anime Studio and select
File, Open
to load
PirateWalkCycle.anme
from the
Chapter10/Animations
directory on the CD. If you are asked whether you want to use the
basic version, select
No
, as we will quickly need to access one of the features that isn't
available in basic mode. The interface should now look like Figure 10-23.
4.
5.
If you press the small Play button beneath the pirate image, then you will see the walk-
cycle animation playing. Notice the moving red vertical line within the timeline
beneath the pirate. This shows the current frame.
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