Many indie devs feel like they're under pressure to make high-quality art that rivals that of big-budget studios -- with the smallest team size and budget possible.
At GDC 2017 The Molasses Flood's Gwen Frey, self-described sole animator and over-tasked generalist on The Flame in The Flood, discussed how to rapidly generate triple-A quadruped locomotion as an indie dev.
It was a video-heavy talk that focused on animation authoring and state blending for quadruped characters. According to Frey, these characters have unique foot sliding challenges and traditional solutions result in either poor fidelity motion or a bloated animator workload.
Frey shared some techniques for illustrating high-quality quadruped locomotion without the need for transition animations, using two different quadruped characters as examples - a boar with a rigid spine, and a large, gangling wolf with a procedural spine.
It was a fascinating talk, one that you can now watch for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!
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