Hey there! I'm Erikari.

I was looking around for a lively community about game design Q.Q__

So I do animations, 2D and I use Spine Pro. I wanted to showcase them a little so here they are:

On my site I put the link to get them if you're interested in using a rabbit inside your games, my question is: am I the only one using spine here? I hope not XD and in case what do you think about it? I personally love it though the program is full of little bugs but in constant developing... also I love the fact that it is so light yet it produces animations really fluid with much less effort than traditional animation (:

Your animations are clearly not made by a amateur, so there isn't much to say on the technical point.

From a artistic point, again it's very professional and feels very safe. Every thing shows a lot of practice and skill.

The only thing I can think is that walking bunnies isn't on the top of developers must have list.

This topic seems better for the "Your Announcements" forum.

I am familiar with Spine and used it, never past the trail, I find I can do all it does with Blender and as a 3D artist I feel more comfortable with Blender.

Oh I see, Lol and I'm not a professional at all, I just learnt this in my free time... thank you Scouting Ninja. Actually I did the bunnies just for my pleasure but I was wondering what would be on the must have of a developer haha, maybe some jetpack guy I guess?
Uhm if I posted to the wrong place I have no idea on how to move the topic but I'll do it >.<

Do you think it's easier to use Blender then? cause I never tried 3D and I'm totally unfamiliar with it but I do love animation in all its forms, I just have no idea where to start.
Also these bunnies were made in something like 6 hours, and they're my 4th try in spine, so I'm not really experienced yet-
I'll lurk for your portfolio XD

Hello. I wanted to ask about that pseudo-3D effect for the face details on the waving heads. You're animating position and scale to do that, right?

Yep! I got each eye and each part of the eye on a separate level and I'm doing both!
Actually I highlighted the animation for the eye behind when it walks and as you can see is reeeally simple (:
(but I did put quite a lot of bones there even outside his head to control each feature separately!)
[attachment=32421:bones.png]

Got it, thank you.

Technically if you sold some of your art, your a professional. :wink:

I understand what you mean, I earned money from my work for more than two years before I felt like I was really getting somewhere.

Your animations are really good and you clearly have working knowledge of the principles of animation, the secondary actions is the most notable, it's very hard to believe that your a amateur at this.

When making assets to sell to game developers I browse Steam greenlight, you can then see what developers need directly. Use the developers for inspiration.

As a artist you will often be forced out f your comfort zone, so I will recommend learning 3D animation. You already have a huge advantage in the fact that you know how to do animations, all you will need to learn is the different mechanics from 2D to 3D.

As for using Blender, I will recommend it before you go and buy expensive 3D software. Blender isn't the best tool for animations, it's one of the software's largest shortcomings. However as 3ds Max is expensive, especially if all you need is it's animation tools.

I will recommend using Blender until you can afford other software, even if you are a secret millionaire I will still advice you to give Blender a try. The difference between Blender and other software isn't worth the large price gap, especially because Blender is free and Max cost an arm and a leg.

Blender is also updating and improving, the more people support it the faster it will grow.

Here is a image of some motion capture data in Blender, as you can see it's similar to Spine with a extra dimension added in.

Thanks Scouting Ninja, you are really nice! >.<
I'll definitely try out Blender, I have some friends who already use it, I guess I'll ask them to show me the program a little bit so that I know where exactly to start from! :)
I agree that to be a complete artist one should be able to deal with very different situations, I think it's an interesting challenge!
It's still not totally clear to me what greenlight is on Steam, even though some people I know have their projects there, will do more research!