Modius, on August 08 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:
The reason I commented on this is because I found it difficult to create movement without placing the mech in action scene. I ended up relying on environmental elements such as wind, rain, dust/particles and visual foley to represent movement. Its a difficult topic i guess
Yeah, I agree with your post, Modius, and it highlights my point about the mechs in Hawken. The mechs themselves do not react to momentum. They are much more like cosmetic bricks than actual machines. Now, I know this is fine for a shooter, but when it comes to artwork, an implied movement is far more visually engaging (and difficult to pull off). A boxer throwing a punch is eye-catching, but the way a boxer shifts his weight and tenses just before throwing a heavy punch is captivating. In order to pull that off, there needs to be a combination of center-of-gravity, momentum, and elasticity that people recognize in the subject's movements.
With Hawken right now, the mechs are just animated hit-boxes that fly, land, and twist their torsos a little. Dashing changes the posture of the mech, but the mech is otherwise unaffected by such a gigantic acceleration. Center-of-gravity, momentum, and elasticity are all absent from the mechs' movements in the game, so we don't have a common movement pattern to draw on that someone else would recognize as being a movement that preceeds a pattern.
A good example of this is falling. Picture a Hawken mech standing. Now, what would that mech look like as it falls from a side-impact_ From a rear-impact_ We have no reference points for this, because Hawken mechs do not carry the momentum of an impact. Different people will picture this differently, so if we draw the mech staggering from a side-impact, any given person may interpret the drawing differently. What happened_ Did it get hit_ Is it performing the death animation_ Is it standing up_ Is it leaping_ Is this a badly-drawn dash_
From a visual perspective, this means you have to demonstrate the movement rather than imply it. I'm not saying that Hawken should completely change the visual style and model animations just to satisfy my personal inclincations, but I am saying that Hawken mechs are pretty static subjects. Motion-blurring and mid-step poses are both pretty explicit approaches that I would prefer to avoid.