Animated Character Framework

[yiiii777]

Here I want to collect and discuss guidelines for creating a graphic base of the main character. It is the graphic part (animation), and not its character, the process of growth or internal states that affect the process of personality development.

In the demos we have already shown a couple of states of the dolphin: "connecting" and "connected". I suggest making a list of basic requirements and a list of states / animations here. You can talk about the format of bitmaps or workflow interaction with the artist (s).

I suggest the following links as a reference:

1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/lwef/agent-states - about character design for Microsoft Agent. Here is an interesting list of his states, we do not all need them (our character does not work with a microphone and it seems like it is not necessary for him to "listen", although this animation could be used to "listen" to radio waves). Some states are interesting, such as do magic 1/2, which are called immediately before any action.
2. https://urokikino.ru/emotion_theory_1/ - a list of basic emotions. It would be very cool to draw all these states. The red graph can be used as a list of transitions between states, but this will already be an outrageous burden on the artist / animator.
3. https://skillbox.ru/media/design/kak_sozdat_personazha_vosem_etapov/ - basic rules for character creation, which would also be nice to use.

I do not attach a list of poses from the Kama Sutra, and it will be difficult to draw a dolphin with all these poses. But I would like to ...

For an artist / artists, if there are a lot of them, you can try to make rigs:

1. converter of animations in 128x64, with different dithers and filters. Then they will be able to finish what they need pixel by pixel, and before that, let them use their favorite animation packages with morphs and bones.
   2.player in HTML5, where you could upload animations and metadata for them

I suggest using GIF as the final data storage format used on the device - it provides acceptable compression, allows you to crop unused areas of the image, supports animation and timings between frames. As the icing on the cake, you can add a few proprietary frames to the format containing data on the states of the character and the transition graph: such a file will easily play all animations in the browser, but few can edit it, a kind of challenge for future hackers.

[yiiii777]

А еще надо подумать о том, что какой-то конкретной программе могут понадобится особенные анимации (к примеру, изменяемые эмоции дельфина с прогресс-баром, как было на Кикстартере). Конечно, можно дать канвас и рисовать все самому, но это некрасиво. Впрочем, добавлять кастомные анимации в систему тоже как-то не очень.

[yiiii777]

А еще можно подумать о изменяемом окружении дельфина, где он находится.

[glitchcore]

Please, split this issue by two: about Dolphin (this issue) and about animation toolbox

[yiiii777]

I created this issue only about animation framework, not about Dolphin personality. Added clearing in main post.

[yiiii777]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA5ZM_UTZgk - our dolphin needs some environment, this can be part of our UI framework. I don't know, how closely we will build UI and Character animations, what will be part of what.