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Dreamons Scenes - Proof of Concept

10 months ago1,840 words

A project I've hinted at for a while has finally manifested in some form! Though this is far from the first time I've made something like this...




It's this 2-minute video! Did you watch it? What did you think of it?? Did it amuse you?? Could you even read the text boxes???

What I'm demonstrating here is a format; the scene itself is just silliness to act as a proof of concept without having to worry about final content. The actual aim - were I to do more with this - would be to use this format to tell episodic stories (or non-sequential scenes) related to the Dreamons game that I could - and this is the important part - quickly produce, hopefully regularly. Something that's been a holy grail for me for quite a while.

I'm unsure how the format could be described, or whether it's been done by others before. It's mostly written dialogue lines, but each line can store facial emotes and keyframes for characters' individual rig bones (so one line might contain a keyframe for just the head, another might have keyframes for the left hand, chest, and head), which those bones tween to when that line is said. Other lines can have full looping animations that I create in the Unity editor rather than a separate program (the line stores a list of keyframes), and as such they're unique to the scene - and that specific line - rather than baked onto the model. (If any of that makes any sense!)

So it includes animation, but I wouldn't call it an animation in the sense that something like ∞ The Amazing Digital Circus ∞ is. Those take teams months to make; I can make a scene using this format in an hour or less now that all the technical setup is done.

Webcomics are the closest format I had in mind, especially considering the unvoiced dialogue. Are they mostly over on Webtoons these days? Or is that something different entirely? I've never visited that site or service or whatever it even is. These days I mostly see comics over on ∞ r/comics ∞, where the technical quality tends to be surprisingly low? I don't know whether that's because the artier types are elsewhere or because art skills are rarer than I assumed.

Even then, though, this being in a video format would probably disqualify it from that category, especially in those comic artists' eyes.



It's the latest iteration of a format I've attempted numerous times since... 2016? 2017? Something like that?

While at university, I made several 'talky things' - where static images of characters exchanged text-messages-like words - to deal with loneliness and the need to revise academic content for tests, though I have a lot of mixed feelings about them here in the future (cringing combined with pride, mostly). I quickly abandoned most of them because I was more focused on social and academic stuff and the IMPENDING BRAIN SURGERY back then than creative endeavours.

The one I remember the most is a thing featuring the same Miasmon characters from that first video, which I think I made like a week before I had brain surgery? I dug it up:




I recall regarding that very insecurely back then, though I rewatched it a few days ago and was really proud and impressed! It's hardly perfect (smackslabs?? Also it drags on a bit), but it could be worse. I think the brain surgery immediately afterwards was the only real reason I did nothing more with it.

I returned to a similar format a few times years later with characters from Divine Dreams:



...and then characters from Atonal Dreams, with this being one example I think I've linked to several times since then:



That was 4 years ago?? Wow. Feels more recent than that. Alarming.

I don't even remember why I didn't do more with those, though. Maybe I just felt that technical limitations (characters had to stand in fixed spots with no camera shot changes) would mean they'd grow stale quickly?

Since then, I've experimented with the format across a few iterations of personal projects that I keep to myself. Usually I'll start a new project as a distraction from my 'main project' when I'm feeling burned out, dabble with it for a few days or weeks, give it up, then try again a few months later with a new iteration that builds on the last. Most of my enjoyment of the results come from the fun of the creation process, and I don't share them because I don't want to worry about others' opinions or having to stick with them when my interest inevitably fades.

In those three old examples, the models had a fixed set of idle animations that were made in Blender, and each dialogue line could contain commands for characters to switch to different ones. Eyes, eyebrows, and mouths could all be controlled separately.



For a later iteration, I experimented with a Unity feature called Animation Rigging, which exposed rigs and allowed them to be manipulable within the Unity editor. I made use of that to code my own simple animation system, ∞ which made its way into Dreamons just a few months ago ∞, and which has allowed me to quickly make expressive situational animations for that game that I'd like to talk more about in another post soon.

Creating animations where multiple characters physically interact with one another (eg punching someone in the face, shaking hands, hugging) is tricky if each one is rigged and animated in its own file, and I've never figured out how other games do it; I think most non-AAA ones just don't (or they restrict it to cutscenes that use different animation systems). Animated films must have ways to do it, but that's a whole world I'm not familiar with. Using Animation Rigging to manipulate models already placed in a Unity scene - to create animations unique to that specific scene - means it's possible to create interacting animations without much difficulty. There's a lot of value and potential in that (BOY HOWDY!).



I've been hinting at some 'non-game project' for the past few months, since I was struck by bolt of inspiration in the midst of a depressive episode. (I'll keep the specifics to myself for now in case I decide to reuse them later.) I had a Unity project for it mostly set up and working, using aforementioned custom animation/posing system, but wasn't happy with how it was turning out. Who would have thought that being in a depressive state might lead to dissatisfaction with the creative work it inspired??

When that spell of depression lifted, the motivation to work on that project left with it, though I didn't want to waste what I had and wondered whether I could repurpose the project to use the Dreamons characters I'd recently redesigned instead.

The thought was that it could be kind of like an accompanying mini animated series I'd release alongside development of the Dreamons game, to keep up interest both for any interested players-to-be and myself.



I tried planning and then making a new model of Spryad, more detailed than the one I had in the game, though I was dissatisfied with how it was turning out and didn't even finish it.

Then I got distracted by the counselling course, my mental illness, and general life woes, and couldn't really focus on much of anything creative for weeks. (I finished replaying FFVIII though!!!)



I already had the aformentioned custom animation system incorporated into Dreamons (which I've been working on a lot recently), though, and wondered whether I could just add a few extra things to allow me to create these talky scenes within that game rather than a separate project.

So I did, which only took about a week even with all mental health stuff distracting me.

This meant I could make use of the models already in the game, and because those models work the way that they do - shared assets, simple pixel faces - I'd have way more characters that I could potentially use, and adding new ones would be relatively trivial. It took like ten minutes to make both the Zaffre and Cerise characters used in the video at the top of this post. They don't look as impressive as the more detailed models, but do they look good enough? Especially considering the art quality the creators on r/comics get away with. I suppose that's up to others to decide.

(I can also use the also-easily-created area maps as sets.)

Even if I don't produce episodes for their own sake, I could at least use what I've made for in-game cutscenes.

I made some other short, stupid scenes while testing features as I implemented them. Here are a couple of examples (very compressed to reduce filesize as they're hosted on this site; the first few frames are black, so you'll need to play them to see anything):




The quality of the animations really depends on how much time I spend on them, and for those I didn't spend much at all, as that wasn't the point.



I intend to make a few of these scenes starring the Dreamon characters, particularly Spryad, both to get a feel for how they actually talk (I've yet to decide) and to maintain interest (mine and hopefully others') in the project. The hardest part will definitely be writing characters and scenarios people actually like!

Based on what I know about psychology, even if you don't find what I've shown here compelling, by maybe the third or fourth I show familiarity would begin to set in, and you'd probably see them in a different light. I would have liked to have had a few scenes of the characters I intend to show for this post for that reason, but didn't have time due to (as usual) mental illness stuff; it's probably best to have them spaced out anyway.



So yes. That's what my hints at some 'non-game project' have turned into. Is this something you see any value in? I'm curious to know what people think (though bracing myself for rejection).

(...Actually apparently I've been putting off actually posting this - despite finishing writing it days ago - due to fears about a negative response (largely due to lingering mental health stuff), so... There's only one way to collapse the probability nebula, though, I suppose.)