Above you can see how Nintendo and Next Level Games’ video game ‘Mario Strikers: Battle League’ heavily utilises squash and stretch for its character animation (in comparison to other Super Mario titles, including recent entries in the franchise). Typically with characters from the Super Mario franchise, and even other Nintendo franchises, a more typical and basic animation style is used to ultimately fulfil the basic necessity of requiring some degree of animation, to be used for things like gameplay movement and avoiding the characters looking lifeless. However, Next Level Games took their character animation a step further than the usual Nintendo fare by making it feel bouncier, cartoony and full of life for their game Mario Strikers: Battle League. This approach really elevates the pre-existing cast of iconic characters – it manages to bring a whole new layer of expressiveness and joyous wonder to the exact same characters we’ve known for decades without majorly changing any of the design fundamentals of said characters. This leads me to believe that even if I keep my character design exactly the same as I always have since their conception, the style of animation applied to them can really elevate their feel and look.
Another game that utilises fun and expressive animation is Hoyoverse’s ‘Zenless Zone Zero’ (or ‘ZZZ for short). The character animation used in this video game is on a whole new level, where, even as a lover of animated movies, I’d go as far as to say many animated movies pale in comparison. Above is a trailer for this game that introduces the viewer to a playable character (Billy) through the game’s in-game animated cutscenes, where the use of pushing a variety of animation techniques including squash and stretch to as high of a degree as possible result in brilliantly pushing the character’s matching personality of eccentricity, high-energy and youthful playfulness. Seeing this style of animation is almost enough to make me want to go back and design a new character that could utilise this style of animation, but I must remind myself that it is the product of a large team of animation professionals and I am a lone animation newcomer, so I’ll humble myself and continue with what I have already progressed with.
References:
- Nintendo (2022) Mario Strikers: Battle League – All Characters Animations [Video game gameplay recording]. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTyfCHyMuFA [Accessed: 09/08/2022]
- Hoyoverse (2024) Zenless Zone Zero Billy Character Demo Showcase Trailer [Video game trailer]. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oTJ3N1Ty30 [Accessed: 28/05/2024]