Hey there! My name is Ibai Aizpurua and I'm the creator of Barraka.
Right now, I’m in the final stages of developing the game 🛠️.
If you’re reading this, I’m guessing it’s probably because you were drawn in by the game’s art style 🎨.
Barraka has a clay aesthetic. In fact — it’s entirely made out of clay! 🧽
Maybe not the most logical decision when making a game, but as a stop motion lover, you don’t really see many games created with this technique these days 🎬.
The game takes place in a small village (which could be your hometown or where you grew up). Everything happens in the village square and gardens, where you’ll find fairs and merry-go-rounds 🎠.
The witch’s curse gives me the freedom to include all sorts of worlds and enemies in the game. The monkey toy is one of them. We find it inside a classic claw machine — the same kind of sneaky machine that ate so many of our coins as kids 🎰.
Even though the classic monkey toy is very American, I’ve always been fascinated by it and it’s super fun to animate 🐒. That’s why I decided to create my own version and include it in Barraka.
Like with all elements in the game, after many little sketches, I like to define the character in a final illustration or piece of concept art ✏️🖌️.
Although I enjoy digital drawing, I’m definitely faster with pencil and watercolors 🖼️.
Since the monkey is one of the most complex characters to animate, I decided to animate it in separate parts. This gives me a lot more control over the work. Traditional stop motion can be tricky when you need to fix or adjust animations ⚙️.
First, I model all the necessary parts. Then I start creating the frames, lighting them, and taking photos in my small setup 📸.
Likewise, I decided to animate the arms and cymbals independently 🥁.
Once I bring the images to the computer, I clean them up by hand and start building the animations. In the case of the head, it’s animated “traditionally” with stop motion, frame by frame — except for the pupils, which are digital, just like the rest of the characters 👁️💻.
Since I didn’t put much effort into polishing the walking cycle at first, the first draft looks quite rough and confusing 🌀.
At this point, I take advantage of working digitally. I can warp and adjust the proportions of each part freely, achieving much smoother animations 💫. I also added an extra frame for the head to better match the rhythm of the body.
Finally, it’s time to complete this digital “Frankenstein” by putting together the arms and all the head frames. I also add digital shadows to make it look like everything is made from a single piece 🧩.
Honestly, I’m really proud of this little animation 🥹. With just a few frames, it manages to create the illusion of a pretty complex walking cycle 💃.
As you can see, the process I use varies depending on what I’m animating. I call it hybrid animation, since I combine traditional stop motion, cut-out, and sprite animation 🔁.
I hope you enjoyed this short read about the process behind one of the parts of Barraka 💖.
Ibai 👋
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3041440/Barraka/?l=spanish