Dead Water artwork (mainline)

[thespaceinvader]

Either way is fine. And both those attacks look good.

As many like that as you can come up with, really, including a downward smack, would be good. This guy's going to be making lots of attacks, and we want to avoid him getting boring to watch if possible.

[Mefisto]

Currently I'm making proper blocking of first attack animation, I should post it today or tomorrow. I would like to ask how to name the different styles of melee attack? You propose at least three, maybe four (both tentacle sweeps, one or two smashes). When I worked on cuttlefish I was asked to use terms "melee" and "ranged" only for tentacle and ink attacks respectively.

[pauxlo]

As I understand, the different animations here would be part of the same melee attack, for each strike one would be chosen randomly (or by some algorithm).

If your question is how to name the frame file names, I have no idea.

[beetlenaut]

The thief has multiple defense animations, and they are named thief-defend-1-1, thief-defend-2-1, and so on, but that is confusing. I would suggest using a letter for each different style, then numbering them normally: kraken-melee-A-1, -A-2, -A-3; and kraken-melee-B-1, -B-2, -B-3.

[Mefisto]

Okay, I will use this style of numbering. Here I present the blocking of animation "melee-A", I mean right sweep. There is still room for improvements, I can see something wrong with his left tentacle but now I am slightly tired so I let the others to comment.

[Boucman]

As I understand, the different animations here would be part of the same melee attack, for each strike one would be chosen randomly (or by some algorithm).

if no other condition is applied, it's chosen randomly... you could however be very creative with the engine (no left tentacle strikes against drake, have a "finishing blow" animation, special anim against flying units) At this point it's very rare for someone to imagine an animation that can't be done with the current animation engine, the only limit is the art available....

[pauxlo]

I thought about something like "if last strike was with left tentacle, the next should be with right". But I think random strikes will do.

[Mefisto]

I'm afraid i need to correct the base frame. The left tentacle (kraken's left one) looks like broken. I think I will do this (and post the corrected blocking animation somewhere in next week). I think I can also design the rough sketch of smash animation.
My timeline would be like that:
1. correct the first attack blocking and make the shading and texture (next week)
2. make the first sketch of smash animation (it should be quite quick work)
3. make the first sketch of defend animation (I don't like previous one and want to begin from the scratch)
4. finish both first attack and defend animation to have most important animations done.
5. work on the second sweep and smash animation
6. lowest priority - death animation. It should be easy.

What about ranged attack? Will kraken have one?

[beetlenaut]

It has an ink attack like the Cuttle Fish. I think for that one it should spread its arms like the cuttlefish does during its melee attack.

[Mefisto]

So it needs three basic animation, not two. OK. Back to work.