MOBA Guest Champion Art Jam

JearBear The Mighty

Hey all! 
I find it hard to come up with project ideas sometimes, which leads me to play videogames instead of make videogames (very important distinction). I also found that completing a project in competition with my fellow classmates, back in college, helped me improve greatly and pushed me to complete projects that I either never would've completed or would've completed at a slower pace. In an effort to improve and stop procrastinating, I've decided to post my latest project in my own topic in hopes to find other, better, artists to "battle" against in the pursuit of getting better. Project is posted below, and I'll start posting my progress soon. -JB

Project Summary:
Create your own "Guest" Champion for a MOBA. A "Guest" character entails taking a character from a non-MOBA game (or even a character that exists outside of games) and inserting them, figuratively, into a MOBA as a Champion. I got the idea from Heroes of The Storm (since all of their characters are guest characters). For myself in particular, I am trying to emulate the animation style of the MOBA, League of Legends (since their animation style is hella dope and their team pumps out some of the best animations in the industry), so that is the universe that I'll be channeling.

This project is meant to challenge your creativity by having you take a un-related character, with lore and existing abilities/personality, and plug them into a different, established universe with an established animation style. In addition, this project is also meant to offer strong guidelines and constraints by placing your character in said established universe, thus allowing you to have lots of reference and also freeing up your focus from creating a unique style or fumbling with gameplay specifications (like how many attacks/abilities, or what perspective should I be animating to etc.) so that you can center on purely making animations.

Deliverables (stuff you post):
Character Animation Set Doc (wall of text as a post is fine) - should include the rundown of your character's background, how they got into this new universe, and most importantly the descriptions of all of their animations.
Character Rig Pics - pictures of the rig you are making or ripping.
Animations Previews/Playblasts - show me what you got!
Implementation In-game (i.e Unity) - for the over-achievers. 

I'll be doing this project regardless of if anyone joins in, so don't feel pressured or anything. So if you wanna just pop by and see my progress then that's totally kool. I'm also probably gonna do this project multiple times each with a new "Guest" Champion. Lastly, since I'm using LoL as my MOBA Universe, I'll post my League refs that have guided me so far. Post any questions you have. Hope to see some of you on the other side. Cheers!
-JB

JearBear The Mighty

LoL Anim Rules:

- Cannot move and use ability/attacks.

- Attacks must come out quickly to be responsive; so back-load your anims (short anticipation, long follow-through/settle). You can indulge longer follow-through/settle because the attacks would be cancel-able in-game during the settle or return-to-idle.
- Strong posing that is clear at a distance.

- Game is to be viewed in a fixed perspective (emulate that perspective/camera angle in 3d software package).
- Use squash & stretch, and "C"/ Reverse "C" techniques.

|Isaac Clarke LoL Champion|

Bio: Isaac Clarke (Dead Space 2) was a ship systems engineer working for the Concordance Extraction Corporation and the main protagonist of the Dead Space franchise. Prior to the Second Aegis VII incident, he was part of an emergency response unit of the USG Kellion, sent to the USG Ishimura to investigate and handle the ship’s mysterious communications failure. Apparently the sole survivor of the incident, Isaac became stranded in space for a long period of time before he was rescued by an Earth Government ship. For the next three years, Isaac was held in an asylum on Titan Station and was diagnosed with dementia, resulting in haunting illusions that taunted him throughout the game.

Standard:

- Idle -- holding heavy pistol, with slow, heavy breaths (sucks in 

with bowed back and hunched shoulders).

- Fidget -- Adjust suit, stretches out sore shoulder. (If I had the skill I would have him reveal is face from inside his helmet, but I alas I don't) 

- Look Around -- Very cautious and fearful, like he keeps hearing sharp noises all around him.

- Run -- Heavy, weighty  jog. Plasma Cutter is heavy in his hands.

- Death -- Shaking off mini-necromorphs then falling to knees and 

being sunk into the ground.

- Auto-Attack -- In 3 parts. He shoots the plasma cutter 2 times 

and then pulls out the detonator for the final hit. Final shot, spins with 

detonator and shoves it into the ground. Blast exlpodes in an 

AOE.

- Recall -- sits down to rest, air lock breach in Ceiling, freaks 

out, holds onto ground while the air tries to suck him out, 

finally loses grip and is pulled away. 
- Recall Landing -- he uses his jet booster to land like Ironman.

- Emote -- Spawns work desk via Wrist touch pad, sets pistol down on

workbench, twists gears and tinkers with pistol, raises pistol to 

the heavens once finished, pistol flickers and goes limp, slams 

pistol back down on workbench, bashes it with a wrench flurry, 

pistol misfires and destroys his other weapons, face palms and 

shakes head.

Abilities:

- Dash Forward -- Zero G Jet thrust forward, include landing return to 

idle.

- Dash Back -- Zero G Jet thrust backward fires one plasma cutter blast (like in 

the concept art)

- Stasis Blast -- Kinesis grabs boxes and force pushes them out, pushing enemies 

back.

- ULT -- Pistol Whip Combo with AOE Stomp (might be too similar to Auto-Attack finisher)

AnthonyAnimation

Dang dude, a single character's anim set takes quite a while, let alone multiple.

Sounds like fun! I don't think I'll have time, definitely not a whole caharacter, but maybe I'll try a move or two.

JearBear The Mighty

Haha IKR?!! I'm not too busy rn, finishing up school, so I gots some extra time. But yea, regardless of how many anims you make, I'm excited to see what you come up with!:D

JearBear The Mighty

Quick Preview of my Idle and first two parts of the auto attack. Might look a little unsmooth and jaggedy, but I'm using a new type of rig that requires the Curve Editor...and I don't know how to use the Curve Editor lol

|Idle|


|Auto-Attack|

_adamturnbull

This sounds like a super fun project, looking forward to seeing the progress on this!

Rmunday

Oh man this sounds so cool, if there is no time limit I am totally getting in on this. I am no where near to the level of the animators from LoL but I bet it will be an awesome learning experience. Going to be lazy and copy/paste your post layout.

Will update if and when I can get around to doing these in my evenings!

|Nemesis champion|

Bio: After destroying Racoon city and unleashing countless abominations on the people of the world Umbrella reached their ultimate goal. They had figured out how to move matter across other planes of existence. Although this tech was still experimental and were not willing to risk the lives of their greatest scientists, there is a being they could risk. He had proven himself and killed many Stars members before succumbing to defeat, with the DNA still available it was time to make Nemesis 2.0. With that Nemesis was created again and sent through the void to discover, if anything what was on the other side. Using his bio sensors to feedback data to Umbrella labs he entered an entirely  new world where everyone was now a hostile.

Standard:

[Idle]: Wide stance, heavy breathing standing strong and firm
[Idle Break]: Rage induced stomp and roar (subject to rigging the mouth up nice)
[Look around]: Methodical scanning of the area, sharp looks with longer holds
[Run]: Nemesis doesn't run, a slow heavy walk with strong exaggerated chest/arm movement
[Death]: Grasping head as the Bio-mechanics in his head malfunction with one final roar of pain falls to the ground with a thud
[Auto attack]: One, two punch with heavy final kick (Small knockback)
[Recall: Small look down like he is listening to someone, small nod to confirm followed by a large leap into the air offscreen.
[Recall landing]: Large land onto his knees with a steady stand up (Super hero landing yay)
[Emote]: Pull out the dead body of Jill Valentine from... somewhere. Hold her up by the throat study her closely for a brief moment before throwing her body to the side where it sinks into the ground.
 

Abilities:

[Leap]: Similar to recall, leaps up into the air and lands on screen elsewhere for swift movement to cut enemies off
[Rocket fire]: Fire a volley of 3 rockets into the air on a targeted location dealing AOE damage.
[Rage punch] : Nemesis charges up a punch which then propels him forward towards the enemy
[ULT]: Grab combo, grab enemy by the head/face then repeatedly slam 2 times before throwing the enemy up, leap then a slam back down into the ground

Now I have typed all this out this is so much animation so will contribute when I can and open another thread for feedback to de-clutter this thread!

Can't wait to see some stuff from everyone.

JearBear The Mighty

@_adamturnbull
I'm having a lot of fun so far! I hope I do you and your team proud, yall have created a great animation style.

@Rmunday
Woah that's so kool dude! Your emote sounds killer! But yea man, there's no time table for this at all so chip away at your leisure. I'm pretty excited to see your ideas in motion. Haha, I'm the same too man; I look up to the League animators soo much, I'm just gonna put my best work into this and hope to do right by them. I'll be on the lookout for your feedback thread.

Rmunday

Got me an Idle done think I am going to do the idle break and look around next, probably tackle each animation in the listed order!

JearBear The Mighty

Lovin' it man! He really feels alive! I need to make some headway into make mine smoother like yours.

Rmunday

JearBear The Mighty said:

Lovin' it man! He really feels alive! I need to make some headway into make mine smoother like yours.

If you are not use to the graph editor it can be a bit daunting, it helps to always have it open and docked so you can clean as you go. Work on one axis at a time to make it even simpler and then even offset each axis by a frame or 2 I find can add a lot extra rather than having all rotations/translations start and end at the same time.

JearBear The Mighty

Interesting....thanks for the tips dude! I'll definitely keep this stuff in mind as I try to figure it all out.

JearBear The Mighty

Rmunday

@JearBear The Mighty  it says image not found on the embed

Got an early block in for the Auto attack. Still early days, not offset anything and just thrown the walk back into idle in until I can refine it or think of something better to get back to idle!

https://gfycat.com/InexperiencedDownrightAfricanfisheagle

JearBear The Mighty

Looking good dude. I think the silhouettes read pretty strong, especially that final kick. I didn't realize how long his limbs were until you started swinging them around lol. 

Rmunday

Thanks man, it is my first real time doing something with such over the top quash and stretch as well as smears using vert movement so I imagine a lot of refining will be needed to get nice arks!

Rmunday

Made more progress on the Auto attack, still some more I can do to push it I reckon.

Rmunday

This is still going on! Been super busy with work but managed to find a couple of hours to start the walk animation, got a good base to build from here I reckon.

 

JearBear The Mighty

Sweet dude!
I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to this personally; I just got hired at a studio and I'm getting slammed with work.

Rmunday

Congrats on the studio job! What position did you manage to earn?

What lunch breaks exist for but I will make sure to keep this thread updated over time I am sure, still plodding towards the final goal!

JearBear The Mighty

Thanks dude! I'm a Character Animator for a small studio, they've been working on an mmo for schools. I didn't think I'd like being in the edu-tainment space, but the project they got cookin' up is awesome! I've been having a blast every day animating all of their heroes and villains.

Yea I gotcha dude, I still feel the animation bug on when I'm on down-time, but I try to store it for later lol.