Last July, I was part of a small production team that developed a flash online boxing game.  The game was made for Warner Brothers and Mochi Media, in association with DC Comics, as a promotional brand extension for Warner Brothers Animation's hit animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  The team consisted of Writer/Art Director Michael Lapinski, AS3 Programmer H. Stephen Mead, and I as Animation Director.   The game is currently being distributed on the DC Beyond games website and can be played here: http://dcbeyond.kidswb.com/games/batmanbrawl.

All three of us are fairly new to the gaming arena, but not new to design or animation.  Most of our backgrounds are in 2D animation for broadcast and web.   Last week, our team spoke about some of the challenges we faced in making our first game, to a group of gamers in New York City.  I would like to write about the animation aspect of this game, as I applied the techniques and rules of animation that I learned throughout my schooling and career to this new medium.

Firstly, I would like to talk about the huge role observation plays in animation.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a professional boxer.  While animation is acting, and many actors will train to undertake a role like this, I decided to take another route.  In order to understand basic boxing punches and techniques, I used online training videos and practiced moves in the mirror.  I made note of the way my body moved, what parts twisted where, the contact points for where the punches landed, and the stance positions of the legs.

From there, our team chose a basic set of moves for each character: blocks, a jab, an uppercut, and a body blow.   Each character was then prepared for animation in Flash, where each moveable body part was put on a separate layer.  All poses were drawn and cleaned up, each move keyed out, and then in-betweens were added.  The animation involved animating each basic move from a hero boxing stance to the move back to the hero.  These were each specifically labeled and symbolized, and a library was set up with each move in its own symbol.  We were able to streamline the process a bit by having characters with similar builds, use the same symbol names, thereby allowing us to use the same animation, but adjusted for the different costumes.  It saved some time, but in other cases it was better to start from scratch, if the costumes were too different from character to character.

Some of the most interesting animation in this game was in creating the underwater effect for the Black Manta level.  Both characters had to be animated much slower, to create the illusion that they were pushing against the force of water.  The challenge was to make it harder but not so frustrating that the viewer just gives up.  Ultimately, this was done by animating on threes and fours, and using smaller movements.

This game was a lot of fun to work on and we look forward to working on many more.  It was really exciting to try something new for all of us.  Something that relied on our skills in other areas, but yet, taught us all something new.  We each had specific roles on this game, but we all learned from each other in our struggles and challenges.  Coming from TV series animation, where the work is done in terms of scenes with each telling a story, it was strange to animate in bits and pieces for the game, where each animation had to connect to any other, depending on what the computer and player chose to do.  There is a story but it’s in the game as a whole, or by level, and not by animated scenes.  Understanding the logic of a game and all the possibilities of what happens where and when can be really interesting but very different from understanding the arc of your animated short.

Our team now has a website at www.uppercutanimation.com. Please check it out when you get a chance.  We would love to hear your thoughts on the game.  If you have any questions regarding the animation, or in general, by all means, please post them here and I will do my best to answer them.