Animating Water for a Background

Running water turned out to be tricky to animate!  We needed a suitable background for the waterfall level in our game, but it needed to be a small enough number of frames, be looping, and also not be too distracting from the action in the foreground. 

I’ve spent a lot of time drawing things OTHER than water most of my life, but luckily we have a lot of streams and rivers near our home, so I went out to do some sketching and observe the flow.

Some time recently I got an iPad with a pencil, so that allowed me to work with color and maybe get some of the subtle changes. But I’m not a painter by trade, so these clumsy attempts are more about observing and trying to intuit what color should feel like when you see it onscreen.

At first I thought this rushing river would be really cool! But I had the scale all wrong. There’s so much motion happening, and at the scale of the gameplay the animation looks choppy. It would distract from the motion of the action in the foreground, and would make the whole scene look way too messy. Back to the drawing board!

I’ve settled on this calmer scene, which isn’t the rushing river I really wanted, but it won’t compete with the foreground sprites for attention. The animation is much smoother too, except for the waterfalls which still may need work.

Making animations for Unstable Scientific has been one of the most challenging experiences I’ve had as an artist so far, but I feel like I’m learning so much in the process!