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[sheep herd]

Slackromedia Slash and Rotoscroat are not games. In theory they are a pair of animation tools being made in GameMaker: Studio. In practice it's an excuse for me to make promotional graphics for a pair of largely non-existant animation tools.

Slackromedia Slash is a rigged/vector/tween animation tool. It is the least developed of the two (although there will be a lot of shared code). The plan is for a tool which is based around creating layered 'puppets' which can be easily manipulated and tweened. The main inspiration at the moment is 'Spine' however I am undecided as to whether I want it to have the 'mesh deformations' (is that the right term?) that Spine is famous for. That might seem like a weird idea, Spine without what makes Spine Spine, but it makes sense to me.

Rotoscroat is a rotoscoping tool. It's relatively far along. You can draw over images and you used to be able to play back what you'd drawn (sans image) but my focus is on developing the drawing tools and am yet to fix the playback so it plays nicely with the enchanced drawing (getting it back will be pretty easy though). It's got about 75% of its spiffy UI complete but about 75% of it isn't functional yet.

[sheep herd]

To commence I am working on a simple timeline and canvas, you will be able to move a circle around the canvas and move through the individual frames of the timeline. Then you can playback and watch the circle move before your very eyes 

this is some of the way done

after that my plan is to add keyframes and tweening

exporting is obvs important but as far as I can tell its going to be incredibly easy, you just draw each frame onto a surface and then you can save that surface as a .png. As far as I am aware there is no way to export video so you'll then have to import each frame into some other software. iirc synfig does it this way aswell.

following that I plan to add rigged puppets (which I think might well be the hardest part) and multiple timelines for individual puppets and un-rigged objects

then uploading images for the objects and puppets and being able to change them on the fly and backgrounds which will be able to pan.

My plan, although I'm not sure how to do it exactly, is to use a systems of 'resource packs', basically .txt files that tell it where to loads images from and what to do with them. There will be 'packs' for puppets, groups of objects, scenes and animations.

2 features I plan on adding eventually is the use of sounds (for syncing) and parralax backgrounds

the main challenge i foresee is being ensuring everything is kept track of all the time

[sheep herd]

I'm branching off into a rotoscoping tool, hopefully as well as the original but for the moment its way more interesting that the vectorless vector animation. It works kinda similarly and will be way quicker to get to something fit for purpose (a significant portion of what I need to do I've managed to crank out in around 30 mins) and I can re-use some old code if I can find it.

When I'm done with this there will be alot of stuff I can just carry over when it comes to exporting frames and playback. I might add in pan-able backgrounds which will be carried over as well.

The upside(?) of this is that if I complete both the vectorless puppet animator and the rotoscope animator I'll be able to combine them and have something that isn't so featureless as I planned.

The rotoscoper will allow you to import a gif which you will be able to flick through frame by frame. You'll draw over each frame, turn the gif image on or off and then export the drawings. For the moment I'm gonna just do line art but I'd like to give the ability to color but thats adds a layer of complexity that I don't wanna grapple with atm.

[sheep herd]

the future is here



e: after some pondering I've changed the focus of the project. Rigged 2d animation sucks and is ugly. Sure its super duper easy and can give quick results but its stagnant and smelly. I knew this going into the project but my laziness told me to persevere. Well no longer!

The plan atm is to focus on the rotoscoping (I think I've figured out how to easily colour stuff). I will then try to add the ability to import images and tweening, moving backgrounds and foregrounds. I might still add 3d enviroments and camera movement as I had previously planned.

[sheep herd]

I'm considering a new logo, I came up with this:


Not sure if I'm gonna roll it out with my next press release 

I'm considering changing the name to 'rotoscroat' which might render this entire endeavour as pointless

[sheep herd]

icons are go

[sheep herd]

I've been a bit ill, and still am a bit ill  



Most of this was done pre-illness and a lot of it isn't funcional as of yet.
As well as being able to select your colours via the colour square thing you will also be able to load a .txt that will be a list of colours to use as a palette.
The stuff at the bottom is the timeline and I intend of adding multiple layer capabilities and frame duplication. Rotoscope is typically very wobbly so being able to draw a stationary character or object once and then duplicate it until it moves again might be nice. Although some people seem to think those wobbles are an important part of its appeal.



I'm also thinking on returning to the original project as well. A lot of the stuff (rendering, timelines, playback, basically everything that distinguishes it as an animation tool) will be basically identical between the two projects so I hope it won't be too much work. If I were to re-ignite the original project I think I'd slap 'Slackromedia Slash' on the bad boi and use the previously mentioned 'Rotoscroat' for the rotoscoping tool.

I know I said that rigged/vector/flash animation is sterile and poopie but after watching some videos of people using the programme 'Spine' I've been forced to rethink it. I'd seen spine stuff before a while ago but in my new context as Animation Software Developer I look at it differently. I don't know that I'll actually incorperate Spines bendiness but I think the way it causes you to think could benefit rigged/vector/flash animation. As suchly I'd focus on creating a tool which encorages and streamlines this method of working.

edit: I spend more time working on brilliant promotional graphics than I do working on the project.

[sheep herd]

Work has slowed (read as: stopped) on this project as my focus has changed to a game I am working on. But fret not! The game will use hand drawn animation for the characters and so when I begin to add art I will return to rotoscroat project, which is pretty close to completion, to have the tools to do that. I will, however, be making some minor changes and postponing some features so as not to invest too much time in it (for the time being) and so it is better suited for character animation.

Whether I return to my original schemes in regards to this project is yet to be seen and really depends on what happens with the game I'm working on. I might end up switching the focus from general animation to specifically character animation. GM:S's 3D support is pretty rubbish so I've been having some thoughts about a pair of 3D tools, for character and level design, which would streamline modeling and animating spefically for GM:S. Whether my focus shifts from this project to that largely, as I've said, depends on what happens with the game I'm working on.

[sheep herd]

after spending about a bajillion years trying to get fill to work yesterday for the level editor of the game I'm working on, and failing, I decided to try and implement it on the good old rotoscroat and it took about 30 mins. Unfortunately it won't be a straight trade into the level editor because they have to use different data structures, but I doubt it will be too much work.

[Undomi12]

thought i'd visit yer work to see what it is.  so if i understand you correctly, this is an animation tool for game maker,exclusively? and when you say "save it to .png" do you mean for use in a flash or video or?  i'm not terribly familar with animation techniques so assumed .pngs were not animatable unless put into a sprite sheet and animated sequences are just snatched/created by a script. forgive my lack of knowledge

you're making a game? did you make a dev log here for it?

[sheep herd]

thought i'd visit yer work to see what it is.

It isn't exclusively for gamemaker but it is being made using gamemaker. So maybe it's technically a game?

And for animating .png files, it exports each frame of the animation as a .png file which would then have to be compilled into an animation.

I am working on a game at the moment but I haven't created a devlog yet, I plan on making one but it isn't far along enough at the moment.

[Undomi12]

thought i'd visit yer work to see what it is.

It isn't exclusively for gamemaker but it is being made using gamemaker. So maybe it's technically a game?

And for animating .png files, it exports each frame of the animation as a .png file which would then have to be compilled into an animation.

I am working on a game at the moment but I haven't created a devlog yet, I plan on making one but it isn't far along enough at the moment.

oh that's interesting! have you considered making it as a stand alone product?  one of the design problems in my game is,since the game is browser-based, it has to resize to whatever browser window size the player is using.  so even if your desktop res is gigantic but you want your browser window to only take up a small corner of your desktop, the game will resize to your browser size.  a normal gif animation will naturally resize but sprite sheets are immovable objects. the size is the size.  

[Pixelologist]

Is there a separate forum section for software dev logs that you can post in? I like what you're doing, but I don't think it belongs in this forum if you can't play it.

[sheep herd]

oh that's interesting!

thanks :D

Resizing actually something I've been thinking about today. I might end up, at least in GM:S projects, not exporting as .png files but rather as coordinates in a data structure. I'm not very familiar with web development, have you tried using .svg images? I assume they'll resize better.

Is there a separate forum section for software dev logs that you can post in?

I don't think theres anywhere else, at least not on tig source. I did think about it not being appropriate but I thought that the fact that its being made in GM:S it's probably relevant. It's a bit of an anomaly I guess and as long as it stays as such hopefully it won't negatively effect the forum.

Once I start a log for the game I'm working on I'll probably leave this one to die and put any updates regarding this on there as I'm going to develop this more for that game specifically, rather than a general animation tool.