eli5: how do video game developers bring handrawn animation into a game?

Question

If video games are all cgi how is the hand drawn animation brought to the actual game

In: 0

Answer 1

So “hand drawn” can mean a couple of different things. I think usually games down in a hand drawn style are still digital illustrations. It would be possible to scan in traditional illustrations and mask out all the pieces in theory, but that would be incredibly arduous.

The premise is more that all the art assets are illustrations. In a visually simple 2D game, a simple animation (like say the idle animation for a character) might only be a few frames long, and plays on a loop. In a hand drawn game, the designer would illustrate each of those frames individually. This is in contrast to a more typical AAA title where the character model has a skeleton and animations are made by manipulating that. A hand drawn game also can’t rely on, for example, dynamic lighting and shadow, or physics for interacting with objects from the game engine.

Old sprite-based, pixel art games (think the NES and GBA) operated fundamentally the same way. The only difference is now we have the tools to make more detailed sprites at a crisp, high resolution, with more frames of animation, etc.

Answer 2

So “hand drawn” can mean a couple of different things. I think usually games down in a hand drawn style are still digital illustrations. It would be possible to scan in traditional illustrations and mask out all the pieces in theory, but that would be incredibly arduous.

The premise is more that all the art assets are illustrations. In a visually simple 2D game, a simple animation (like say the idle animation for a character) might only be a few frames long, and plays on a loop. In a hand drawn game, the designer would illustrate each of those frames individually. This is in contrast to a more typical AAA title where the character model has a skeleton and animations are made by manipulating that. A hand drawn game also can’t rely on, for example, dynamic lighting and shadow, or physics for interacting with objects from the game engine.

Old sprite-based, pixel art games (think the NES and GBA) operated fundamentally the same way. The only difference is now we have the tools to make more detailed sprites at a crisp, high resolution, with more frames of animation, etc.