My Photoshop to Spine asset Pipeline

A few months ago I picked up work at JB Games making art for Grave Danger. I had never used Spine before or animated anything really since a few classes in After Effects about 10 years ago so was coming into everything pretty green.

One element that I needed to create a workaround for in Spine was how the Spine exporter script used Groups to signify "Skins". This meant essentially that I couldn't use layers while painting different sprites because to export you would have to flatten everything.

One possible workaround I considered was turning each sprite (asset) into a smart object. This would let me have as many layers as I wanted but still allow the Spine exporter to read the 'flat' layer correctly. The problem with this method is that when you are working on a character comprised out of 20 smart objects, your painting flow gets really broken up when you can't quickly jump around adding and tweaking all elements at once.

Below is my solution. It could be wrong, it could be unnecessary because I missed something - or because Spine has since gotten an update - however, It worked out really well for me here and in a few other odd pipelines for the project.

Hopefully, somebody will find it helpful!

Grave Danger - Flying Melee Enemey

This was one of my first concept rounds at JB gaming - so lots of range trying to figure out the right mixture of scary and goofy.

We needed a generic flying enemy for Grave Danger's initial development. I started out a few months ago with a blob enemy covered in tentacles but didn't know enough about Spine to make it work. Here I am coming back to a more general purpose design with a bit more work under my belt and things are working out better.

I decided to animate the wings by hand and not with a rig due to the complexity of the perspective and animation, so started up drafting a few tests in Photoshop before drawing out the sprites and putting it all together in Spine. 

Initial test.

Initial test.

Revision 2 with the body assets blocked in.

Blocked in the wings.

'Slow' 15 frame idle animation. The up and down strokes are held for a few frames and the tips of the wings are deformed with bones for a bit more organic look.

Here is the desert skin in the "Aggro" animation. The mouth can't open much larger than this at the moment.

Next stop will be to duplicate this project and create a ranged version with a projectile weapon below where the tenticals are.

Update: Removed the blur on the wings for now at the suggestion from a friend and I feel that it matches the game style much better than before. It was his opinion - and I agree - that the path blur I was using before looked more like a DoF effect and not like motion! Thanks, John!

 

Also tweaked the wing membrane color for the desert themed bat. Will hold final judgement for when he is in game.

And a bonus melee attack animation I forgot to export last time.

3D Printed Gift + Early Animations in Spine

I've picked up a contract working at JB Gaming - creating concepts and assets for their new title "Grave Danger" (Facebook Page)

It's taken a month to get spooled up to the title's art style and into animating in Spine but I'll be trying to post up more art as my time allows. Otherwise, check out the game's Twitter Account for frequent quality updates!

Below is one of the first animated units I created along with 2 other skulls (not shown). I'd consider these game ready, but 80% done. hopefully, I'll have time to polish them up as I learn more.

I am also creating a train level asset that will use various static sprites and spine animations working together to create external platforming environments. Internal environments will be created in Ferr2.

Second draft proposal for the train level colors and high level details.

Current working document. The top assets are a combination of sprites (folders with image generator names) and Spine animations (Linked smart objects)

The original design featured cog wheels that were supposed to be turned using a chain drive, but after a bit of deliberation, I wasn't sure that the effect could easily be animated in Spine so I am working on switching things over to a push rod system which will probably look way better in the end anyway. The gear was animated with 10 offset layers to achieve the illusion of slight 3D depth. Hopefully, it will all mesh together well!

Also, my friend Max surprised me with this 3D printed metal keychain of my signature block! He makes way more creative and wonderful stuff that you can find over on his facebook page.