Now that the crazy rhythm-sports game Super Dodgeball Beats is out on PlayStation four, let’s take a appear back at how the appear-and-really feel of the game’s insane ensemble came about.
When generating a game, we constantly set out to locate reference material that matches a style we want to nail down. We spent ages searching at rhythm games, arcade classics from the 90’s, and just began placing out sketches like crazy. Just after some failed attempts, we identified our style in the vein of anime and manga-ish ideas. There is a lot of influence from old Toriyama stuff, as effectively as from some much more contemporary series. As Spanish developers, I assume deep down there’s even a tiny bit of classic Spanish comic-operate in there!
After we had our references clear, we had to establish our personal style and story. We wanted the primary driving force of the visuals to be humorous and absurd. Characters had to be bigger than life and more than-the-major. That gave way to characters like Sir Goldzillo, a rather posh gentleman in a dinosaur suit, which you cannot support but wonder “why are these guys even playing dodgeball?”
The only exception to this rule is the primary characters, as they had been made at a incredibly early stage, even prior to we had the name of the game. We wanted our heroes to be standard and grounded in reality. We made use of our primary heroes as the “bottom line” everybody else had to appear crazier and wilder than them — or they had been thrown out!
Some of the characters had been a lot much easier to conceptualize than other folks. I keep in mind spending practically two whole days just drawing ideas of Roboombox (a giant robot boss character) till we identified one thing we could operate with, although Tengu was greenlit even prior to I completed the initially sketch! In the finish we had to discard a lot of cool tips, but it was lots of enjoyable to see our roster take shape and develop in colorfulness and wide variety. It was 100% worth it.
Of course, as soon as a character was provided the green-light the subsequent point was to bring it to life. We viewed as some selections right here: To use skeletal animation was more affordable, faster and could generate some smooth and fantastic sufficient benefits. Going 3D was also viewed as for a incredibly brief although, but we eventually decided that to bring property the point of old-college anime and manga, there would be no improved choice than classic frame-by-frame animation.
All in all, I’m quite confident designing and animating the characters in Super Dodgeball Beats has been the most enjoyable I have ever had functioning on a project. Conveying the quirkiness of each and every character by way of its animations was really a challenge, but a incredibly enjoyable a single. Here’s to hoping every little thing goes effectively and we can operate on a further batch of characters someday!