Guía didáctica enfocada al proceso de animación para personajes jugables en un videojuego 2D con género de lucha.

Abstract

Introducing the context of videogames into the area of 2D animation brings several additional challenges to beginner animators, who might only be familiar with traditional animation for storytelling. Therefore, an investigation and adaptation of the existing animation terms, methods, and principles were used to create a pipeline for the development of fully animated playable characters for a 2D fighting game. This process was applied in the creation of a character for an original game called Citizen B, and fully described in an instructional guide focused on 2D character animation for videogame mechanics. The guide narrates the preproduction and production stages of the animated character assets for Citizen B, as well as the evaluation of their in- game functionality within an alpha version of the game. The project was finished with one playable character with thirty-three original animations, allowing him to move, attack, and react in several ways to the attacks. This work provided confirmation that playable character animation requires a similar skillset to traditional storytelling animation but applied differently. Videogame animation workflow also requires more flexibility and several phases of in-game trial and error. All animations, asset source files, and Unreal Engine 5 alpha will be published on the platform itch.io, so they can be freely downloaded and studied by anyone interested.