DodgeBawl Online: Art Direction & Sprite Animation

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A few months ago, I had the chance to work on DodgeBawl Online, a great indie game project for Android. I worked on the charadesign, backgrounds, created some promotional illustrations and directed all the animation of the game content. It was an enriching experience to work closely with the BreakTheRules' team, so I hope they will succeed in creating a big community of players for this first project!

The game is finally available in english and french on the Google Play store here, and it's free to play! So feel free to download it, and spread the word to play with your friends ! I hope you will like it :)
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Preview of the multiplayer game mode, and 5 different backgrounds fitting in the different atmospheres and musics of the game: Playground, Ice, Desert, Fire, Street...

I created 8 playable characters classes. Each one has 5 evolutions , from the basic avatar to the premium outfits.The ultimate evolution is for the special power attack and includes particles and a floating aura around the character. You will find below some of my preliminary sketches for the outfits and proportions of the characters :

ANIMATIONS:

I also directed all the animation part of the project, from the characters to the special effects of the attacks. Considering the number of animations (If I recall, around 130) I had to optimize my work to fit in the mobile game size limitations, without

overshooting the budget. Animations usually don't exceed one second, to be smooth but very short.

For the characters, I created 3 different builds with interchangeable elements. So it was possible to switch some animations and re-use them to ease the process.However, each character is different with a strong personality, so each one has unique facial expressions and animation for its profile.You can see some previews below, and more in the following video:

Each character has a special power attack, determined by it element. It confers a malus on the opponent once it is touched by the projectiles. I had to create those 8 special effects added above the hint animations. I made a combination of frame per frame animation and flash animation.

In closing, I share with you the official trailer of the game, and the link to play !

As a sweet extra bonus, I thought it could be interesting to share my vector process while I was working on one of the promotional illustrations, so here is a timelapse video. Once again, everything was made with Flash. I hope you'll like it! :)