Soul Front

Hello again everyone!

I just wanted to tell you all about a project I've been helping out with for the ITGM (Game Design) guys.  Some of them approached the production club, looking for help with animation.  That's one of the nice things about SCAD is that you always meet students from other disciplines, related or unrelated to yours, and can collaborate to make a better project than what you started with.  For example, photography students will often meet with fashion majors to take pictures of the models wearing the fashions, to not only fulfill requirements they both need, but spread publicity for each other as well.  Well the same is true, maybe even more so, between Animation majors, Visual Effects majors, and Game Design majors.  While the game design guys aren't all in this building as often as animation and Visual Effects are, they do have their own little gaming lab where they test out games, and they have several classes in this building, so they are often around.

So the long and short of it is that a group of game design majors came looking for animators because they knew their animations weren't that great, and didn't have that time to finish the animation with them more important programming and testing they had to do.  That's where I stepped in.  With help from 2 other animators (Raymond and Andrew), we were able to put together new animations for all their characters.  With 4 characters, 7 animations each, plus tweaking and additional animations, we had a lot to do.  We haven't quite finished yet, but the animations are almost done.  Right now all the blocked in motion is there, and some tweaks are needed, but so far we have what we need for them to continue.

The game is called Soul Front, and it is a real-time strategy game where you control 3 characters (out of a choice of 4 archetypes) that you match up against another player (or a computer) with the same set up options as you have.  No out-leveling opponents here.  This is actually designed to be a mobile platform game, to work on the iPad and I believe Android.  Specifically, I coordinated the animations, working with Raymond and Andrew to decide what each character should do.  I then animated throw animations for each character, stunned/dazed animations for all of them, the attack and victory for one of them, and will probably be doing tweaks on many of the animations already finished in the future.  I will give more details about my role in this when the game is closer to a release.

While it is still in the works and might not be available for download yet, you can see their blog at SoulFrontGame.com.  Please check it out and make sure to check their Facebook and Twitter pages too for more updates.  I will also update here when the game is available for download.