[h3]Greetings! Today we wanted to remind you that There is No Light is releasing just in one week, on September 19 on Steam! [/h3] [h3]And in the meantime, you can preorder the game with bigger discount AND an exclusive skin for the Hero's companion![/h3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1132980/There_Is_No_Light/ [h3]And to make this announcement more interesting for you, we'd invited our friends from the [url=https://instagram.com/toadanimation]TOAD Animation[/url] team to make a behind the scenes post of our release date trailer wich you probably saw on the IGN a few months back. Hope you'll like this update![/h3] Croak to all! In this article, we ([url=https://instagram.com/toadanimation]the TOAD Animation team[/url]) would like to share our experience in creating an animated teaser clip for the game There is no Light. In general, every studio can produce a piece about their own work pipeline and some aspects of it, big or small, will always differ. Even from project to project, within the same team! It depends both on the artists themselves and their approach to problem solving, as well as on the customers of a particular project. This work was particularly easy thanks to the game's developers, who knew exactly what they wanted from the clip and provided kind of a draft storyboard with a description of certain details that concerned the game’s lore and mechanics. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/8a2fb45268df7af7dc73d6b1124365d8ea212159.png[/img] So, as there was no need to do the storyboard separately, we jumped straight to the animatic (i.e. the first draft clip which includes not only visuals, but also timings of all scenes). Animatic allows us to estimate more precisely the amount of work, complexity, number of scenes and make that_table (the holy table of any project) where we will mark completeness of all scenes. Because it's still just a draft, animatic doesn't look that impressive, but it allows you to present the reel, plus it’s a generator of funny faces. As they say, "expectation" and "reality": [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/665961dcebea620ed830ae23de30adb1e5aa9986.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/11d9ea1a72d518986f530c6db3c5d86ae073958e.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/4c2c9b26ac830585ac752a264b9a82fa80fbc632.png[/img] Parallel to this (at least in our studio), the concept work is underway. Creating the protagonist and forming the style of the video itself are definitely one of the most important parts of the production. We usually spend quite a lot of time on that stage. And in general, it's difficult to estimate the pre-production timeframe, because it’s not always possible to hit the bullseye with the character design right away (the main thing here is, as with everything else, not to get discouraged and keep working with trial and error)! And the devil may also be in the details here: change the shape of a head or hair a bit, add a shadow, and the character sparkles with new colors, becomes original/attractive/interesting. Working with a pixel character that becomes a "cartoon" has its own undeniable advantages. Good design decisions are already incorporated in a pixel game model, with some leeway in the matter of forms – because a silhouette of the pixel model is not that complicated, you can experiment, add various refinements to the design of clothing or weapons. And here go these endless evolutions of the main characters: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/80a2528cdddd7d29908f8876bc4f52df6b23b9e3.png[/img] And when our main character was found, after a pompous celebration of that emportant event, we began to design the other participants of the clip. And, based on the already finished and approved concept, the work with the remaining villains (and they were mostly the protagonist's enemies) went faster. But you never know what dangers might await you at the turn! For example: the helmet of a large and intimidating villain who emerges from the darkness of the tunnel, glowing with blue flames. There were so many variations of his head that we could easily create an entire CCG out of them. Here are just a few, the most desperate and forced out of them all: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/f75fcba365c334d031b3f5cb6282e2ab6fd83526.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/91674dca0132d815069e6b9cb8bebd3744452ecd.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/093d136c9306520359a4c744d2dfee6ae1024f8a.png[/img] And of course an important detail of any production - the color script (оr kind of a guideline for background designers and composers). This is where the search for colour solution is done. The feel of the picture. The way the character would fit into the environment. On this project, we had three main options that we came up with and eventually settled on the first one! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/f890dd69e82f16e090ab5803e96a76ee48eee19d.png[/img] After that goes the most favourite part, which is assembling the now-ready material to recreate a test frame of what the project should look like in the end. Here's the recipe: we take one finished layout that's already rendered according to approved scene with approved designs, then we take the finished (with color script taken into account) background, paint the layout and throw it all into kitchen blender. Or any available program with suitable functionality, like Photoshop. Sprinkle a few effects on top and voila~ [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/0ea1b979050d20fb7dd61dd9f3eb11b9cd17a05b.png[/img] When the animatics, designs, colour script and test frame of the project are approved, we’re getting down to the quieter part. The part where you board the train called "production" that rides the rails, where the team brings the project closer to its finish line, scene by scene. From the layout to the final result, when the whole material can be safely handed over to composer (sometimes it seems that composer just presses the "make it look good" button and the whole picture acquires the longed-for depth, gets effects, but in reality it is a painstaking and long job). If we were to describe all the subtleties of animation to this article, I'm afraid it would turn into a book, so to make it clear, here's a gif with one stage of production following the other. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35623874/05b9bd6a184758b4d93d1a76567ad6ba3b397452.gif[/img] And so the video has reached the finish line, taking its shape. Working with such great designs and such an atmospheric game is an unbelievable pleasure! We tried to keep the dark tone of the narrative while adding bright, almost neon accents to the picture. The whole team is waiting for the final release of the game to enjoy its gameplay and the colorful pixel art. In conclusion, I'd like to say that there's no single "how-to" rule for anything, probably. Any creativity is inherently freedom of artistic thought, and how that work is diced is a purely individual decision, which depends more on the team itself. We only tried to cope with this work as well as possible, and please not only the client, but also future viewers. Yet if this text managed to somehow lift the veil of production or help to understand how a full-fledged animation video is born from an idea, we were very glad to share it! And voilà! here is the final result, if you had missed it 😉 [previewyoutube=5Vu4XJTAHnI;full][/previewyoutube] [h3][url=https://instagram.com/toadanimation]Follow our social media accs[/url], croak to all, and thank you very much for your attention![/h3]