Zity - Graphics

Graphics update woohooo! I usually don't even bother with updating the graphics since I know my art skills are far inferior to pretty much any collegiate artist. However, today when I was pondering how to make my zombies attack I realized that I needed to make some decisions on what the zombies would look like. I wanted the attacks to feel meaningful instead of just - if zombie is close enough damage is done. So I whipped out the colored pencils and started scribbling on some graph paper. The idea came quickly that I would need the arms and hands as a separate, dynamic, animation. My final decision is that the arms and hand segments will be in two sections and will be placed according to elbow, hand, and shoulder locations. This will allow a lot of fluid like movement with the arms and make the zombies feel less like walking GIFs.

So on to implementation! As I was pondering about the arms I ALSO realized I wanted to split the zombie up into segments: Head, Torso, and Legs/Feet. The head would look left and right independently of the torso both while idling and attacking. The torso would keep the collision shape and direction of the zombie while also rotating towards the direction the head is facing while walking. The feet will face the direction of the torso until walking, where they will face towards the target (like the head). All of this was decided by walking around my home and observing how my body looked while turning, hitting poles, and reversing; which makes it scientific.

On to art! I quickly drew up a circular head and applied some hue and brightness jitter to a brown color to create a hair like texture (in Photoshop CS5). I then added some eyes and moved on to the torso which is simply an ellipse. The feet are curved rectangles that have been animated by moving them forward and backward. Put them all together by almost completely rewriting the physics, animated sprite, and altering all classes that had used them; and we end up with a pretty decent looking zombie prototype sans-arms.