Designing a Game: Ch, ch, ch, changes.

I had decided early on that the transformations that would take the place should look good. I wanted the characters transformations to be dynamic and done in action, not stationary. For instance if the character would become a cheetah he would be doing it whilst running, his back would arch down and his hand turn to paws as they stride forward.

In doing my research I quickly learned that visual changes like that were done using morphing which I really wanted to avoid as it's far too 'cheap' and over-used. There were examples of people changing into animals on YouTube but always using morphing or cheating by the character going behind a car and coming out the other side as a different animal. In the 1980's the TV show 'Manimal' had a man turning into animals and it used prosthetics and practical effects. Manimal transformation but the change was never dynamic. It was always completely static.

I struggled to find a way to show my transformation, the best way to do it would be to animate it frame by frame but that would take far more time than I had. So I drew a few examples of my main character in the transformation. I had to draw several stages of the transformation, as drawing just one would either look like a person, an animal or a hybrid and wouldn't illustrate the actual process of the change.

It took a lot of time as I had to draw each stage as a separate detailed drawing. I also had to draw the stages in a slightly different position to give the impression that the character is in motion.