Live2D Animation - Grave Game
Back towards the end of summer I participated in a game jam where I contributed to my group with some 2D animations. Since hand drawn 2D animations isn't really my comfort zone I decided to try out Live2D for the first time and I think it turned out okay. I learned a lot of new things in working with Live2D and it was overall an enjoyable process.
The Game Jam lasted a week and these animations were done over the course of three days.
I recently went back to get them properly implemented in Unreal Engine 4 and render out a video of them. Although it turns out that working with 2D sprites in the Unreal sequencer is a bit different than working with 3D assets and moving cameras, so it took me a bit longer to render out the video than I expected.
The Illustrations that I rigged and animated were done by one of my teammates during the game jam, Moa Bruus.
Please check her artstation out too! https://www.artstation.com/moabruus
Video showcase
Live2D hierarchy and parameters for one of the Enemies.
It is pretty simple but still gives some nice range of motion to both the monster and the mist surrounding it.
Live2D hierarchy for the large Enemy.
At first I planned to separate the arms into two deformers, but it after testing a bit i decided that it wouldn't be necessary.
The Live2D hierarchy and parameters for the main character.
Animation state machine for the monsters.
State machine works well while playing, but in order to record the cinematic I bypassed it and instead updated the animations with a custom event in the Sequencer.
Overview of the keyframes in Unreal Engine Sequencer for this short video.