BA2 Animation - Solid Drawing

Good Example: Mirror's Edge

I think that Mirror’s Edge does a very good job with its human character models. Everything in the game is done in a photorealistic way. This is especially noticeable with the characters you interact with. When the player is talking to another character face-to-face, or if they are engaging enemies in hand-to-hand combat, where all the slight nuances of the figure's apperance become apparent. Proportion, anatomy, three-dimensional shape, volume, balance are all done to a high standard. I have played games by DICE in the past, and can say that put a lot of detail into their human figures. They have a particular ‘true-to-life’ style, that is typical of past DICE games also. Games such as 'Battlefield 2142' from 2006, still looks very accurate and realistic.

Faith targeting an enemy in close combat

Talking to Celeste

Meeting with Faith's sister

Watch a video of close-up weapon disarms:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtre935U6eE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Bad Example: Custer's Revenge

A horrible, offensive, ‘adult’ game, in which your goal is to navigate General George Custer from one side of the screen to the other. Where upon he proceeds to rape a Native American women, tied to a stake. Danger comes in the form of the constantly falling arrows, or spears, which the player must avoid being hit by. The animation is awful. The depiction of each character is diabolically bad.  With a small collection of coloured squares made to represent the two characters, and the landscape. Needless to say, this game does an extremely poor job of imitating the human form.

Released Oct. 1982



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBcnl3h2alw&feature=related

BA2 Animation - Follow through and overlapping action

Good Example - Mirror's Edge

Bad Example - Command and Conquer : Red Alert 2

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 is a brilliant rts game, which was made over ten years ago. It’s still fun to play, and considered a classic by some. However, it cannot escape it’s own technical boundaries. A basic unit of the game is the Soviet Conscript. He has to be stationary to fire his sub-machine gun. When he remains still, he only has two ‘positions’; ‘firing’ and ‘not firing’.  It is a shame that there is such rigidity when he alternates between these two forms. The animation stops dead too often, there is no smooth follow through. Obviously there can be literally hundreds of these conscripts on screen at any one time, so certain limits have to be put in place for the game to run adaquetely.

BA2 Animation - Slow in and slow out

Good Example - Age of Empires 3

Age of Empires 3 is an organic and beautiful looking game. Most ranged units have at least two modes of attack; ranged, and hand-to-hand. Musketeers, a staple unit of the game, has good slow in, slow out’ when he attacks in close quarters. He will swing his gun like a club, or jab with the bayonet. This can also be said of many units within Age of Empires III. The only drawback to the animation, being the need to sacrifice graphical quality for so many units on screen at one time.

Musketeer

Spanish Rodelero

Bad Example - Batman: Arkham Asylum

However tight the combat is in ‘Batman: Arkham Asylum’, it can still look ‘too quick’ at times. With Batman pulling off counters almost instantly, with no realistic speeding up and down with moves. I realize that this is necessary, when the player is fighting a large group of enemies at once, and there is no room for gradual build-up of momentum, what with so many assailants to deal with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikb52OYCFgg

BA2 Animation - Staging

Good Example - Bioshock

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trTuGSHBZk0

Bad Example - Age of Empires 2 : The Age of Kings

In Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings, the game has a hard time trying to ‘set the stage’ well. Being an rts, everything is seen from a god-like perspective. So, when there is an important scene in a campaign mission, with character’s talking, interacting with each other, the game’s own limitations make this problematic. As character’s, which are often famous historical figures, with personalities and emotive stretch’s of dialogue, are obscured by the long distance of the camera. The player simply can’t see all the important emotions, gestures, movements, which would be apparent in a game with a much closer viewpoint. In later games, the series would address this problem with staging.

BA2 Animation - Secondary Action

Good Example - Resistance: Fall of Man

In Resistance, the enemies you encounter react dynamically to your actions, with many events being performed all at once thanks to the many processors present in the PlayStation’s CELL processor. The Chimera realistically dive out of the way of incoming explosives. When your character throws a grenade into a group of Chimera, they will instinctively dive away from it, trying to escape the blast by hitting the ground. The way in which they do this is fast, agile-like and is animated to a good standard.

Chimera Hybrid

Bad Example - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham Asylum is an overall fantastic game. One of the best parts of the game is the awesome combat sequences. Unfortunately small thing that stands out is the poor secondary action when the bad guys are knocked out. When the player has just delivered the final blow, to the last enemy in a room, the camera quickly zooms in, to capture the moment of impact. This is all done well, apart from when the last enemy becomes unconscious. He will reach up with both arms, bent at the elbow, and seem to ‘clasp’ his head in agony. His fists simply both remain parallel to his temples, as he falls over. The fact that the camera actively tries to highlight this action only makes it worse.  

BA2 Animation - Anticipation

Watch the video (examples at 2:00   4:56  6:35  7:18  7:38  7:52)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOKZTCwSlM4




Anticipation bad example - Call of Duty 4, onwards

From at least the forth game onwards, the player's character model has an odd animation when they throw a grenade. The animation is two separate ones, one for the first-person perspective, and another for other players seeing the animation in third-person. The first-person animations look great. Unfortunately, in multiplayer, many of the animations the player executes, appear simplified to the point that they lose their realism and believability. One such example, is the grenade pull and throw. Viewed externally, the player takes a few seconds to finish the animation of priming the explosive, and then pulling his arm back to throw it. You can release the grenade in first person before your third person model finishes the animation. So, in essence, the anticipation is off, as the two animations do not seemlessly match up.

BA2 Animation - Timing

Tekken6 Gameplay Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHozRkjQyes&feature=relmfu

Mortal Kombat compilation video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9e_w_CYrrk