I spent a lot of time making this little teddy of mine move. And I’ve also been going back and forth on names for the game. I had an initial idea of “My Hero Teddy” but that felt too wordy. I had settled on “Teddy Knights” for a few days until I remembered Shovel Knight so that was out of the window. So far the one at the top of the list is “Knight Bears” or “Night Bears” depending on how much pun I want to put in.
I must also stop double spacing after a full stop!
As I said in a previous post, Teddy was rigged using Unreal’s ART tools which make rigging a breeze! Here’s a little picture:
I started off with a simple idle loop, just standing still, breathing, and ready to fight. Luckily the way the ART tools do the rig it makes it easy for me to paint weights as I animate. Doing a range of motion animation is OK but you’ll only really see the spikes in practice. The idle loop took roughly two or three days. You sit there wondering what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling, and if you are not over thinking it!
The walk cycle then took another day or two to get done. Again this was rife with indecision about HOW he should walk. I eventually decided to look at Mario since he is of similar stature and I really liked his run. It has an element of urgency, it was a little cartoony, and the quick staccato steps appealed to me.
I do have a small problem with the contact poses in both the walk and run cycle. The heels connect at the same point the motion of the feet change direction. I really feel that the feet should already be returning backwards before the contact. I’ll talk more on this in the next post.
Here is his run cycle:
Angry Postman Games 