Hey Starfinders ⭐
Last week we introduced the Golden Larva plushie. This week, we have one of our creative development challenges: how we built the animatics for Afterlight.
These are the motion comic sequences that play between acts, giving the story context and setting the tone before you take control. Here is how they get made.
Ideation, script, and rough sketches
The narrative team comes up with the initial concept for the animatic, taking into account what purpose it will serve for the story and flow of the game. After some discussion, we worked on some rough sketches or "thumbnails" of what would be represented visually on screen.
A fully fledged script is then made by the narrative team, followed by a more polished storyboard. Like the last step, this is a back-and-forth process, tweaking each of these on every step to better fit the narrative and technical limitations.
Storyboarding & Animatic
Once the direction was clear, we put together a rough animatic to check the rhythm of the scenes and overall storytelling pace. Also featuring extremely silly placeholder audio (we reserve that for the director's cut).
Final Art and Animation
Now for one of the longest steps of the process. When everything is locked in place, the illustrative work can begin to take shape, working on each frame that will be needed for the final product. After the art assets are ready, individual scenes are translated to the Godot engine, where, through animation players, it starts coming to life piece by piece.
Voice Acting and Sound Design
When visuals are done, only sound is missing to bring it to life. With our amazing group of voice actors and our sound designer, the animation quickly comes together. More on this in a future update.
A Last-Minute Adjustment
We were not 100% convinced with the result, especially at full screen. The pacing was off, and the animation at that scale was not quite working within our resources and style.
So we decided that, using the original scenes, we could rearrange them into a motion comic. The result was much more in line with the visual identity of Afterlight, and it looked exactly right.
Steam only allows 5 MB GIFs. Check out the final result: 🎬 Watch the full intro animatic on YouTube
Next Week:
We will reveal everything you need to know about the demo. Do not miss it! 👀
See you in the Drift 💫
The Epictellers Team
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