This week i have finished the animation for our last enemy to the game.
I have made references to this enemy before in an earlier blogpost called ”Vecka 4, Show me your moves”, where i called it ”Gammelgäddan”. The name was just a placeholder for whatever horrible beast that we could come up with!
After a few ideas about giant octopuses, actual pike or maybe a shark, we came up with something. As this enemy is suppose to be a one hit knockout we had decided to give the player a lot of feedback when this enemy is about to appear. So the actual attack of the enemy had be quite quick and brutal, as our other enemies didn’t even come close to the same damage that this one did. Another fellow student in the group, Kevin Alonso* created the original concept, unfortunately i do not have it available . So what i’m going to show you is the original with a simple animation added!
And here it is: 
We decided to go with a Moray eel, the reason we did that was because of their behavior and how ”snappy” they appeared when attacking its prey. We also found out that ”tiger moray eels” exist, and god were they scary. Perfect for our enemy!
The only thing a bit off from our initial idea and the moray eels behavior is the movement. It will only appear full size in the back of the screen as a warning to the player, so that it does not match reality doesn’t bother us too much.
I added a dark tint to it to make it a bit more mysterious while it’s in the background, like this:
For the actual attack animation, here it is: 
As i mentioned earlier in this post, the attack was suppose to be ”snappy” and brutal, and i think the result is quite good! The teeth helps a lot i must say!
The animation is based on five simple frames
First thing i did was, to use the lasso tool in photoshop to just cut the image and separate the jaws to create a new image with its jaws open, ready to attack, this makes up the first frame. After that i got two frames with its mouth shut, followed by trail effects going from big to smaller, transitioning to the last two.
Last two frames is more or less still-images to give a lot more feel to the impact, where i added a blink effect to the eyes, to give a perception of time, and a bit more life into the end of the animation!
*Kevins Blog: https://kevinmalonso.wordpress.com/
Kill your darlings design 
Hi Oskar!
I find your blogpost really interesting and well structured. I find the fact that you show us yours / your group’s entire chain of thought, from octopuses and sharks, to the final animation, to be a good thing. And I also enjoy the amusing way you write, it makes everything way more interesting to read.
I actually find your post pretty flawless so let me check of the bullet points. Is it clear what has been done? Yes. Is it clear why it is done? Yes. And I find the post valuable.
It is clear how it is done and the fact that you showed three different animations from different steps is good. It really helps one understand the process behind the final result. You wrote in just the right amount of detail about how you did the actual attack animation. I really like the snappy movements in all the animations.
The only way I think the post could be improved, would be if you added some reference pics of reel eels, so that one could see where you got your inspiration from. But it is really not necessary, it would just be interesting to see.
But overall, great job and best of luck for the last days before final!
/Thea
GillaGilla