Making the Poacher Evil

Jenny had redesigned the poacher based on the interim feedback and our chosen precedents. It was now more evil. It also had a bigger gun. 

I spoke with Lucas and we decided to change the way the poacher acts in the game. We decided he wouldn't run around but there would be trees throughout the level and he would pop up from these. He would still have a shooting and idle state.

The appearing animation would be the poacher popping up from the bush. I wanted to make him look as creepy as possible when he did this to create the feeling that he was a villain, he was sneaking about and that he was dangerous. I had him slowly pop up from the bush and then when he was fully up his gun would rise up and complete the image. Having his gun pop up after he did further re-enforced that the poacher was doing bad.

As his gun was bigger in the new iteration, I felt that the impact of shooting the gun needed to be more pronounced than in the prior animation. I had the barrel of the gun draw back quickly, then the poacher and the rest of the gun would slide backwards as if pushed by the force. The effect was that the gun was really powerful which is what I wanted to get across. I also animated his hat, eyebrows and mustache to tip slightly with the force, it made him look slightly silly which I think the children would enjoy, however as it is a looped animation, the silly-ness is not overpowering.

I used his original idle animation, but replaced the pieces with the new poacher parts, this saved time since the original idle animation was still suitable for the evil poacher.