Support NeoGAF

[Branduil]

stuff

What he said.

 

[Roubjon]

I really appreciate that post Raging Spaniard. I hope it sheds some light onto some of the ignorance here.

 

[Yasae]

You guys really needed that much assurance? Kind of proves his point. But I'm all for more support.

 

[Beast Legacy]

I hope folks are starting to understand why animating and implementing a 2D fighting game character isn't just a palette swap away. Like others have said, a lot of it has to do with a lack of understanding and respect for the art of animation and balance of a fighting game.

For me the best part about this whole thing is getting the PC release. I really hope the positive attention and awareness that Skullgirls has been getting these past few months spurs more fighting games on PC. For the members of the team reading this thread keep up the great work.

 

[Lijik]

Excellent post Raging Spaniard, hopefully it puts things into perspective for people

 

[Steve Youngblood]

I really appreciate that post Raging Spaniard. I hope it sheds some light onto some of the ignorance here.

All I'm reading is that it sounds like 2D fighting games need the Bobs from Office Space to come in and clean some house in regards to these massive inefficiencies. I think they could benefit from developing their 2D fighting game in much the same way that we develop insurance claims software where I work, an industry not at all similar to 2D fighting games, or even video games for that matter. But trust me: $150,000 could get you a hell of a lot more in terms of features for our product than one measly character!

And just in case it isn't clear, yes, I'm being completely sarcastic. I won't even spoiler tag this paragraph.

 

[joe2187]

You guys really needed that much assurance? Kind of proves his point. But I'm all for more support.

Well when someone calls the work you do not worth the price it's kind of hard not to get angry.

Mr X from the skullheart forums threw out this link that's pretty interesting.

KOF's character creation process

1 person, 1 character = 16 months at 1/3 the resolution and 1/3 the frames of Skullgirls

 

[Captain N. Tenneal]

Here is some reference from my own experiences. Typically I dont like to share these kinds of details with people who just DEMAND information they havent earned, but discussion has shifted here a bit and its good to see.

I was one of the contractors, well, still am! I did some of the cleanup animation. By the time I got an assignment, the animation rough had been approved by Kinuko and at this point it could make the final game or it could not (thats all in the testing, balancing and memory management) Smartasses in this thread have questioned the need for engineers in a game thats already "done" and thats a big mistake. The original game had to have animations cut because we had run out of memory, so on a technical standpoint, how the fuck are we gonna add more characters? Well shit, good thing theres engineers on the team to figure that shit out, huh? Thats only one of the challenges too.

But anyways, to the point. You may get a short animation (6 frames aprox), medium (12, 15 ish) or large (20 plus) theres also varying degrees of importance (normal move vs animation that only triggers when two duplicate characters hit each other with the same move) and theres also character design details to add to the difficulty (Valentine is more simple than Painwheel, for example). One extra wrinkle is the level of sketchiness in the animation rough. Some animators will make the drawings so tight that theres no room for improvisation while others will basically blank out the face and all of a sudden you find yourself animating faces from scratch!)

For an outsourcer, since you dont have access to the team at your immediate need, its important to be diligent with the reference materials. Very few artists draw like Alex or Kinuko and its our job to make our art look exactly like theirs. If you look at my art youll find that my style is not really close, so I cant just start on the task right away, I need to study the reference provided carefully and make sure I "get" the character before I start.

So once you start, the first deliverable is to digitally ink all the frames. Im a clasically trained 2D animator and have a fulltime art gig, so eventhough Im fast I can only start working on this when I get home. This is another of the unfortunate realities that come with an ambitious project like this, that a lot of outside help already has other projects going on, so they cant give you 8 hours a day. I came home at 7 after drawing all day and spent another 5 hours doing Skullgirls work. Typically after two days I would send a medium sized animation over for approval from Richard, who is the awesome cleanup genius at Lab Zero. Approval usually takes about a day because Richard is getting deliverables from the outsources, who if you have seen the credits are way more than 20 ... So basically Richard is art directing 20+ people AND doing cleanup work himself, meaning he basically doesnt get to go home (so its great to have to listen to assholes here tell me that he needs to justify his $600 a week) I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months back and hes going gray already, haha.

So yeah, approval. While I wait for that to show up I get started on the next frame. Very rarely does the linework get approved on the first try. Usually something is inconsistent, a weapon looks weird or the shapes are a little flat. Depending on the damage you may have to do 20% percent of work or maybe even up to 50. Its important to get this stuff approved because otherwise you cant move on to shading and coloring, which are the next steps.

Once youre approved and do the shading and color pass (which take about 60% of the time it takes to ink) you send those off for approval as well, make some last minute touch ups due to feedback and THEN the animation is done on your end. Before it ends in the game proper, chances are Richard has fixed some things himself ... So Id say on average I could get about 60 ish frames of animation a week, and seeing how the character with the FEWEST amount of animations has about 1500 then you start to get an idea of how just one step of the process works.

THEN we look at Squigly. What a lot of you arent realizing is that she has MULTIPLE STANCES. What does that mean? TWICE THE ANIMATIONS.

Can you start to see how the hours pile up and have NOTHING to do with proper managing? A fighting game is unlike any other game. A character in a fighting game is the equivalent of a character + level design + the game design of any other game.

But hey yeah, lazy devs, right?

Take this, and then add in the additional thought of having to put in hundreds or thousands of hours of time before even becoming a professional artist to build your skillset up to the point of even being able to get these jobs. And then think again about how you are saying these people making $600 a week or less to do this are being overpaid.

 

[Aaron]

considering that Double Fine Adventure was initially planned with a budget of 400k while it costs 120k just to make one fighter it kind of makes sense that we get so few fighting games nowadays. Other game types just seem to be much more cost effective

Double Fine Adventure was never going to cost 400k. They have since said they wildly underestimated the cost of the project, as well as the cost to them to ship out the rewards goods. If they had only gotten 400k, it would have probably been a flash game with little to no animation, and been about fifteen minutes long.

Indie games seem cheap because they're usually made by a few people over the course of years, while they live off ramen and run themselves into the ground. The final budget doesn't include the blood, sweat, and tears involved.

 

[Yasae]

Well when someone calls the work you do not worth the price it's kind of hard not to get angry.

Yeah. What about it?

The problem is: the ignorance never goes away. So you can key a few people in and get a few extra sales, but then there comes another thousand fools who also didn't and probably don't want to know better. The cycle repeats and frankly it gets tiresome.

From a gaming and industry standpoint his explanations are worthwhile history and great information to pour over. From a consumer's standpoint? From a low-rent employer's standpoint? They're never going to be valuable. And that's fine, it's the way things are.

 

[Warm Machine]

Love hearing the reality. Thank you for your post.

 

[RyougaSaotome]

Here is some reference from my own experiences. Typically I dont like to share these kinds of details with people who just DEMAND information they havent earned, but discussion has shifted here a bit and its good to see.

I was one of the contractors, well, still am! I did some of the cleanup animation. By the time I got an assignment, the animation rough had been approved by Kinuko and at this point it could make the final game or it could not (thats all in the testing, balancing and memory management) Smartasses in this thread have questioned the need for engineers in a game thats already "done" and thats a big mistake. The original game had to have animations cut because we had run out of memory, so on a technical standpoint, how the fuck are we gonna add more characters? Well shit, good thing theres engineers on the team to figure that shit out, huh? Thats only one of the challenges too.

But anyways, to the point. You may get a short animation (6 frames aprox), medium (12, 15 ish) or large (20 plus) theres also varying degrees of importance (normal move vs animation that only triggers when two duplicate characters hit each other with the same move) and theres also character design details to add to the difficulty (Valentine is more simple than Painwheel, for example). One extra wrinkle is the level of sketchiness in the animation rough. Some animators will make the drawings so tight that theres no room for improvisation while others will basically blank out the face and all of a sudden you find yourself animating faces from scratch!)

For an outsourcer, since you dont have access to the team at your immediate need, its important to be diligent with the reference materials. Very few artists draw like Alex or Kinuko and its our job to make our art look exactly like theirs. If you look at my art youll find that my style is not really close, so I cant just start on the task right away, I need to study the reference provided carefully and make sure I "get" the character before I start.

So once you start, the first deliverable is to digitally ink all the frames. Im a clasically trained 2D animator and have a fulltime art gig, so eventhough Im fast I can only start working on this when I get home. This is another of the unfortunate realities that come with an ambitious project like this, that a lot of outside help already has other projects going on, so they cant give you 8 hours a day. I came home at 7 after drawing all day and spent another 5 hours doing Skullgirls work. Typically after two days I would send a medium sized animation over for approval from Richard, who is the awesome cleanup genius at Lab Zero. Approval usually takes about a day because Richard is getting deliverables from the outsources, who if you have seen the credits are way more than 20 ... So basically Richard is art directing 20+ people AND doing cleanup work himself, meaning he basically doesnt get to go home (so its great to have to listen to assholes here tell me that he needs to justify his $600 a week) I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months back and hes going gray already, haha.

So yeah, approval. While I wait for that to show up I get started on the next frame. Very rarely does the linework get approved on the first try. Usually something is inconsistent, a weapon looks weird or the shapes are a little flat. Depending on the damage you may have to do 20% percent of work or maybe even up to 50. Its important to get this stuff approved because otherwise you cant move on to shading and coloring, which are the next steps.

Once youre approved and do the shading and color pass (which take about 60% of the time it takes to ink) you send those off for approval as well, make some last minute touch ups due to feedback and THEN the animation is done on your end. Before it ends in the game proper, chances are Richard has fixed some things himself ... So Id say on average I could get about 60 ish frames of animation a week, and seeing how the character with the FEWEST amount of animations has about 1500 then you start to get an idea of how just one step of the process works.

THEN we look at Squigly. What a lot of you arent realizing is that she has MULTIPLE STANCES. What does that mean? TWICE THE ANIMATIONS.

Can you start to see how the hours pile up and have NOTHING to do with proper managing? A fighting game is unlike any other game. A character in a fighting game is the equivalent of a character + level design + the game design of any other game.

But hey yeah, lazy devs, right?

Quoting again because the thought of somebody missing this post fills me with a deep, deep rage.

Awesome post dude.

 

[kuroshiki]

In any industry, the most expensive part of the project is labor.

If you have say, 10 people working on the project for 2 month, that would be already close to $60,000 given that you are paying $3000 per person, which is not a lot by any means.

If you add insurance and other equipment fees, that quickly escalate into six figure range.



Although I would never buy skullgirls (art style is just is not my liking), I understand why it would cost so much to create just ONE character. Game is not cheap to make fellas.

That's why it's fucking amazing that one single guy made vanguard princess. O_O

edit:

Since we are talking about development, it would be good idea to think about the cost of localization.

Usually there are 2 translators, and 1 programmer, and 2 testers. If you give $4000 per person and it takes 2 months, (depends on the project, usually 2 people can translate things fast.) that would be $40,000. That is not including licensing and everything.

So if you sell the game for $19.99, and it sold 10,000 copies, assuming local company gets around 50% after licensing fee and etc, that would be $100,000 income, minus $40,000. so that would be less than $60,000 net income.

God damn that's not a lot at all. WTF.

 

[jrDev]

Wow! They need to get this game on as much platforms as possible so they can make back that cash and more...

 

[sorakirosaki]

In any industry, the most expensive part of the project is labor.

If you have say, 10 people working on the project for 2 month, that would be already close to $60,000 given that you are paying $3000 per person, which is not a lot by any means.

If you add insurance and other equipment fees, that quickly escalate into six figure range.



Although I would never buy skullgirls (art style is just is not my liking), I understand why it would cost so much to create just ONE character. Game is not cheap to make fellas.

That's why it's fucking amazing that one single guy made vanguard princess. O_O

OT: Vanguard princess was super impressive i wonder what happened to its sequel though :/

 

[Wyndstryker]

That's why it's fucking amazing that one single guy made vanguard princess. O_O

Well, it also helps that the one guy used Fighter Maker to make that game.

 

[RiccochetJ]

My mind boggles at what Noogy went through with Dust:AET.

 

[kuroshiki]

Well, it also helps that the one guy used Fighter Maker to make that game.

That's just the engine. One still need to make every animation which is the HARDEST part.

 

[Wyndstryker]

That's just the engine. One still need to make every animation which is the HARDEST part.

Not disputing that. Just saying it helps a lot having an engine as specific as Fighter Maker. And going solo does have some advantages.

 

[Wasp14]

The problem with a lot of the comments regarding this is pretty simple. They are posted by kids, teens, and some adults with little education in typical business subjects. They lack any form of business acumen yet presume they have the authority and expertise to comment "factually" on matters such as this.

Armchair business men. I have little time for them.

This post is not elitist at all.

I didn't find his post elitest at all considering the sheer amount of rage inducing ignorance present in this thread. It was more along the lines of telling it how it is. There are people in the gaming industry and a voice actor who worked on this actual game being ignored after backing up what the article stated. There are so many comments repeating the mantra of "I could do this for X amount cheaper", "they didn't budget properly" or "the voice actors should've been hired from a website" (!)

Games/films are big endeavors that require a large investment of time and money. I trust these people's expertise over those who've never been involved with any type of game development in their entire life.

 

[Servbot24]

Then start.

If you can design, model and animate a character equal to the quality of your average Skullgirls character in a week, you could post it here, blow all us out of the water and maybe get a job while you're at it.

OK, fine. Here, this took me about 2.5 hours:

Now obviously this isn't quite the right style (I don't play this game or usually draw in this style), the design could be a bit better, it's not as polished as the official art work, but you get the idea. It doesn't take very long to design a character. I have better things to do than model this, but it's a pretty easy process that an experienced 3D artist could definitely do in a couple days. Animation obviously would take a lot longer and I never said I could do that in a week. That would take close to a year.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

A 3D artist? You think the characters in the game are 3D?

 

[Servbot24]

A 3D artist? You think the characters in the game are 3D?

No but isn't a 3D model used for reference for drawing all the poses?

That said you worked on it so you obviously know better than I do how much time it takes. Just makes me want to have a go at it, lol

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Nope, some of the weapons were done in 3D and then we drew over them ... But thats about it.

 

[Teknopathetic]

Here are your original posts, servbot.

"I don't get those prices at all. Pretty sure I could design, model, rig, animate, do a theme song, record some grunts and do testing for single character in well under a year, and 150k is more than I could ever dream of making."

"But that's not the point. The point is that these Skullgirls characters are very simple. Design and model should easily be done in a week. I understand that the animations will need to be very fine tuned and precise, and I don't have in depth experience doing that, but still... boggles my mind that it could cost such an incredible amount. :/"


The key thing to note is: They're not trying to release this "in a year." So it doesn't matter that it took you 2.5 hours to do that. I'm not even sure how you can acknowledge that it would take you a year (rough estimate) to animate it all but then say you don't understand why it costs so much when they're trying to release it within months.

 

[Yabdbadbdadbda]

OK, fine. Here, this took me about 2.5 hours:

Now obviously this isn't quite the right style (I don't play this game or usually draw in this style), the design could be a bit better, it's not as polished as the official art work, but you get the idea. It doesn't take very long to design a character. I have better things to do than model this, but it's a pretty easy process that an experienced 3D artist could definitely do in a couple days. Animation obviously would take a lot longer and I never said I could do that in a week. That would take close to a year.

thats honestly a better design than all the Skullgirls minus the chick with the umbrella

is she supposed to be shark themed because the boots could use less claws more finned affair

also lose that oven mitt thats way too meta

 

[Noogy]

Wow do they really sit there and draw every image? This is the 21st century lol. Surely there are tools which can take a image and animate it using simple parameters? Like for example you could highlight a mouth, create some vectors and manipulate it in a given way then track the changes to create an animation.

If there isn't I'm going to look into writing one, could be a earner

This might be the craziest thing I've ever read, people honestly think there is software that can magically do this? Even Disney is just starting to dabble in this sort of tech, but it's a LONG way from being some automated thing.

Around here, 2D = cheap. It's a sad mentality that probably won't ever go away

Exactly, most people are completely clueless at the amount of manhours it takes to make this stuff. I'm afraid to tally up how much it would have cost to develop my game if I hadn't done it myself.

People thinking that these characters are simple to animate and clean up clearly have not done much 2d animation before, if at all. Consistent detail and line thickness across all the outsourcers, making it look like one artist did all the drawings for a character when in reality its closer to 20 ... Im used to being taken for granted by non-artists, but when somebody who should know better spouts this stuff, its pretty disheartening.

It's pretty sad. Not that it should really matter to the end user, but it's clear that most kids have no clue what it takes to see even the simplest game through production.

Jesus, this thread.

Tell me about it. I'm glad this discussion is happening though, and kudos to Patrick for the article.

Btw, $150k a pop means the character budget for this indie game was $2.85 million.

Nope, you can't add it up like that. UI, networking, basic infrastructure. I'm sure it costs more to do a single character after the fact, but it's already been established that much of the $150 has to cover other expenses. Testing and cert are extremely costly. It's easy to spend hundreds of thousands before a single art asset has even been created.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Servbot you must be thinking of KOF. One of the selling points of SG is traditional 2D animation! Thats a big assumption to make on your part.

Oh btw thank you all so much for the replies on this page, really glad that it can get some more people to support the game.

 

[Shouta]

This might be the craziest thing I've ever read, people honestly think there is software that can magically do this?

Someone would make a fortune if they designed a piece of software that did that.

It's probably not outside the realm of possibility now, I think. But the program would need to be really complex and there still would be additional clean-up afterwards.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Just as a tangential question from a jackass who knows nothing about any of this stuff, what is the effort required of current high-end computer animation now versus hand-drawn animation? And what I mean is that I know in the mid 90s, a big part of the appeal of gambling on a feature-length film from Pixar was that it took far fewer people to animate Toy Story than it did to animate a Disney hand-drawn film. But what's the comparison now? What would the projected number of man hours be to make Toy Story 4 for instance for a 2016 release versus, say, The Lion King 3 for a 2016 release?

 

[Servbot24]

The key thing to note is: They're not trying to release this "in a year." So it doesn't matter that it took you 2.5 hours to do that. I'm not even sure how you can acknowledge that it would take you a year (rough estimate) to animate it all but then say you don't understand why it costs so much when they're trying to release it within months.

When you put it in terms of doing it 5 times as fast as I like to imagine I could and almost certainly couldn't (10 weeks instead of 52) at 3 times the price I would realistically charge, it does sound a bit more sensible. And of course you're getting actual professionals instead of an internet dude who hasn't even worked on a real game.

My previous posts were a combination of sticker shock and my competitive personality, so apologies for being reactionary. oops! :>

 

[Ragingnight]

who is cristina vee and why is she in skullgirls?

 

[sorakirosaki]

who is cristina vee and why is she in skullgirls?

Shes a voice actor i think she was known for being the dubbed voice for Haruhi

 

[Captain N. Tenneal]

Just as a tangential question from a jackass who knows nothing about any of this stuff, what is the effort required of current high-end computer animation now versus hand-drawn animation? And what I mean is that I know in the mid 90s, a big part of the appeal of gambling on a feature-length film from Pixar was that it took far fewer people to animate Toy Story than it did to animate a Disney hand-drawn film. But what's the comparison now? What would the projected number of man hours be to make Toy Story 4 for instance for a 2016 release versus, say, The Lion King 3 for a 2016 release?

The effort is similar, it's just a different skill set. Highly skilled 2D animators aren't very common, it requires an incredible amount of drawing skill and understanding (and patience) that many people just don't have. Simply keeping a character on model (the term for ensuring the character looks consistent from frame to frame) while they rotate and act in 2D animation is very challenging and requires a lot of skill, talent and training.

I recall the original Lion King feature release had about 450 animators working for 4 years if my memory serves me correctly.

 

[Branduil]

Just as a tangential question from a jackass who knows nothing about any of this stuff, what is the effort required of current high-end computer animation now versus hand-drawn animation? And what I mean is that I know in the mid 90s, a big part of the appeal of gambling on a feature-length film from Pixar was that it took far fewer people to animate Toy Story than it did to animate a Disney hand-drawn film. But what's the comparison now? What would the projected number of man hours be to make Toy Story 4 for instance for a 2016 release versus, say, The Lion King 3 for a 2016 release?

I don't think a high-end CGI film is going to be any cheaper or less labor-intensive than a traditionally animated ones, but there are conveniences and workflow differences between the two formats. In CGI it's trivial to alter a camera angle, for instance, and in general you have much more freedom to change the staging of a scene in CGI. Of course CGI films also require tremendous rendering time, as opposed to real-time video games.

 

[Slamtastic]

Hire this man.

 

[kenta]

I feel like I had a reasonable idea as to how much this kind of stuff costs and why it costs what it does, but what blows me away is the salaries these guys are taking. Seriously, $600 a week? You guys are worth more than that and it sounds like you're burning yourselves out to boot. Is it really worth it?

 

[Shouta]

I feel like I had a reasonable idea as to how much this kind of stuff costs and why it costs what it does, but what blows me away is the salaries these guys are taking. Seriously, $600 a week? You guys are worth more than that and it sounds like you're burning yourselves out to boot. Is it really worth it?

They love the game and want to do more work for it. Dedication, yo.

15 bucks an hour is the bare minimum they needed so, that's what they asked for. Considering the talent you need to do that work, 15 bucks is well undervaluing their skill sets.

 

[Aquamarine]

Here is some reference from my own experiences. Typically I dont like to share these kinds of details with people who just DEMAND information they havent earned, but discussion has shifted here a bit and its good to see.

I was one of the contractors, well, still am! I did some of the cleanup animation. By the time I got an assignment, the animation rough had been approved by Kinuko and at this point it could make the final game or it could not (thats all in the testing, balancing and memory management) Smartasses in this thread have questioned the need for engineers in a game thats already "done" and thats a big mistake. The original game had to have animations cut because we had run out of memory, so on a technical standpoint, how the fuck are we gonna add more characters? Well shit, good thing theres engineers on the team to figure that shit out, huh? Thats only one of the challenges too.

But anyways, to the point. You may get a short animation (6 frames aprox), medium (12, 15 ish) or large (20 plus) theres also varying degrees of importance (normal move vs animation that only triggers when two duplicate characters hit each other with the same move) and theres also character design details to add to the difficulty (Valentine is more simple than Painwheel, for example). One extra wrinkle is the level of sketchiness in the animation rough. Some animators will make the drawings so tight that theres no room for improvisation while others will basically blank out the face and all of a sudden you find yourself animating faces from scratch!)

For an outsourcer, since you dont have access to the team at your immediate need, its important to be diligent with the reference materials. Very few artists draw like Alex or Kinuko and its our job to make our art look exactly like theirs. If you look at my art youll find that my style is not really close, so I cant just start on the task right away, I need to study the reference provided carefully and make sure I "get" the character before I start.

So once you start, the first deliverable is to digitally ink all the frames. Im a clasically trained 2D animator and have a fulltime art gig, so eventhough Im fast I can only start working on this when I get home. This is another of the unfortunate realities that come with an ambitious project like this, that a lot of outside help already has other projects going on, so they cant give you 8 hours a day. I came home at 7 after drawing all day and spent another 5 hours doing Skullgirls work. Typically after two days I would send a medium sized animation over for approval from Richard, who is the awesome cleanup genius at Lab Zero. Approval usually takes about a day because Richard is getting deliverables from the outsources, who if you have seen the credits are way more than 20 ... So basically Richard is art directing 20+ people AND doing cleanup work himself, meaning he basically doesnt get to go home (so its great to have to listen to assholes here tell me that he needs to justify his $600 a week) I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months back and hes going gray already, haha.

So yeah, approval. While I wait for that to show up I get started on the next frame. Very rarely does the linework get approved on the first try. Usually something is inconsistent, a weapon looks weird or the shapes are a little flat. Depending on the damage you may have to do 20% percent of work or maybe even up to 50. Its important to get this stuff approved because otherwise you cant move on to shading and coloring, which are the next steps.

Once youre approved and do the shading and color pass (which take about 60% of the time it takes to ink) you send those off for approval as well, make some last minute touch ups due to feedback and THEN the animation is done on your end. Before it ends in the game proper, chances are Richard has fixed some things himself ... So Id say on average I could get about 60 ish frames of animation a week, and seeing how the character with the FEWEST amount of animations has about 1500 then you start to get an idea of how just one step of the process works.

THEN we look at Squigly. What a lot of you arent realizing is that she has MULTIPLE STANCES. What does that mean? TWICE THE ANIMATIONS.

Can you start to see how the hours pile up and have NOTHING to do with proper managing? A fighting game is unlike any other game. A character in a fighting game is the equivalent of a character + level design + the game design of any other game.

But hey yeah, lazy devs, right?

This post deserves a fucking medal.

 

[Servbot24]

I feel like I had a reasonable idea as to how much this kind of stuff costs and why it costs what it does, but what blows me away is the salaries these guys are taking. Seriously, $600 a week? You guys are worth more than that and it sounds like you're burning yourselves out to boot. Is it really worth it?

It's a very competitive field full of people who love their work, which means that oftentimes people work for less than they should.

 

[Yasae]

They love the game and want to do more work for it. Dedication, yo.

15 bucks an hour is the bare minimum they needed so, that's what they asked for. Considering the talent you need to do that work, 15 bucks is well undervaluing their skill sets.

Definitely. Not a very uncommon price of admission, however.

 

[Copenap]

Ok, so I have no idea about programming, game development and so on but just comparing to other businesses and projects I am puzzled how it can take 8*10*50=400 man-days excluding additional outsourced work (!!!) to make a character. I don't even doubt the cost but the assumed man-days seem astonishing to me.

 

[Noogy]

Just as a tangential question from a jackass who knows nothing about any of this stuff, what is the effort required of current high-end computer animation now versus hand-drawn animation? And what I mean is that I know in the mid 90s, a big part of the appeal of gambling on a feature-length film from Pixar was that it took far fewer people to animate Toy Story than it did to animate a Disney hand-drawn film. But what's the comparison now? What would the projected number of man hours be to make Toy Story 4 for instance for a 2016 release versus, say, The Lion King 3 for a 2016 release?

As both a traditional and CG animator, it's hard to say one is easier than the other. I tend to believe that traditional animation is much more tedious and time consuming, but it's not like CG is a walk in the park. Here's a rudimentary breakdown of how each method would approach a scene in a film.

Prepping the backgrounds:
CG: A set is built and lit, once. The camera can be changed at any moment during production of the scene. This set can be used multiple times.
Traditional: The layout, lighting, and camera angle are agreed upon for each shot, and a background artists paint the scene. This needs to be done for every new shot.

Prepping the characters:
CG: Lots of time spent modeling, rigging, texturing and mapping a model. But you really only do it once at the beginning of the project, and it's usually not done by the animator.
Traditional: Not much to do here beyond the design of the character. Nothing created during this phase will ever be seen by the audience.

Animation:
CG: Animation takes time, but iteration is quick. And you only need to do keyframes.
Traditional: Animation takes time, and iteration means you might be redoing a number of frames, if not the whole scene. Depending on the complexity and speed of the motion, the lead animator could be roughing every frame. Even within a single frame, iterating something like a leg would require redrawing several joints, whereas you'd be moving a few dummies in CG.

Inbetweening:
CG: You watch the computer do it. The character is always perfectly 'on model' (looks exactly as he should.)
Traditional: You painstakingly tween every frame. This is normally handled by a team of animators who have to work very closely with the lead animator to make sure each drawing is on model. A single mistween can break the illusion of the motion, and depending on the amount of time between keys, could mean a lot of redrawn frames.

Rendering:
CG: Lighting artists prepare the scene, once, and then the computer renders it out.
Traditional: These days every frame is manually cleaned up and colored digitally, at least we aren't using cels and paint anymore. Well, us sane ones anyway. It's extremely tedious either way. An artist has to manually clean and color every line, fill character with appropriate colors, and through various methods apply shading, which itself had to be hand animated.

Compositing:
CG & Traditional: With digital tools, this is where the two are actually pretty similar. Just a matter of layering the artwork. There's more manual work with traditional, particularly if the camera is really dynamic, but otherwise the steps are nearly identical.

As you can see, CG requires more prep work (modeling, lighting, etc), but once those assets are done, it's relatively quick to push out scenes since the computer handles a lot of the dirty work. Traditional animation pretty much requires the same amount of work for every shot, it's not like you can create a set of assets and reuse them over and over again (without looking cheap.)

The biggest difference between the two, for me personally, is the ability to iterate after a sequence is complete. Don't like the camera angle used? Wish you had given your lead a bigger jaw? Decided to backlight this scene? If you had done it traditionally, there's no easy way to make these changes.

They are both great artforms. It's unfortunate that there's this perception that traditional is somehow cheaper and easier to do.

 

[Irnbru]

OK, fine. Here, this took me about 2.5 hours:

Now obviously this isn't quite the right style (I don't play this game or usually draw in this style), the design could be a bit better, it's not as polished as the official art work, but you get the idea. It doesn't take very long to design a character. I have better things to do than model this, but it's a pretty easy process that an experienced 3D artist could definitely do in a couple days. Animation obviously would take a lot longer and I never said I could do that in a week. That would take close to a year.

Let's do some math here, it took you 2.5 hours to do this, and giving a super conservative only 2000 drawn frames to be made at a rate of 2.5, thats 5000 hours. Only for the drawings. And people are being ignorant about time and costs, jesus h christ

 

[Guess Who]

Here is some reference from my own experiences. Typically I dont like to share these kinds of details with people who just DEMAND information they havent earned, but discussion has shifted here a bit and its good to see.

I was one of the contractors, well, still am! I did some of the cleanup animation. By the time I got an assignment, the animation rough had been approved by Kinuko and at this point it could make the final game or it could not (thats all in the testing, balancing and memory management) Smartasses in this thread have questioned the need for engineers in a game thats already "done" and thats a big mistake. The original game had to have animations cut because we had run out of memory, so on a technical standpoint, how the fuck are we gonna add more characters? Well shit, good thing theres engineers on the team to figure that shit out, huh? Thats only one of the challenges too.

But anyways, to the point. You may get a short animation (6 frames aprox), medium (12, 15 ish) or large (20 plus) theres also varying degrees of importance (normal move vs animation that only triggers when two duplicate characters hit each other with the same move) and theres also character design details to add to the difficulty (Valentine is more simple than Painwheel, for example). One extra wrinkle is the level of sketchiness in the animation rough. Some animators will make the drawings so tight that theres no room for improvisation while others will basically blank out the face and all of a sudden you find yourself animating faces from scratch!)

For an outsourcer, since you dont have access to the team at your immediate need, its important to be diligent with the reference materials. Very few artists draw like Alex or Kinuko and its our job to make our art look exactly like theirs. If you look at my art youll find that my style is not really close, so I cant just start on the task right away, I need to study the reference provided carefully and make sure I "get" the character before I start.

So once you start, the first deliverable is to digitally ink all the frames. Im a clasically trained 2D animator and have a fulltime art gig, so eventhough Im fast I can only start working on this when I get home. This is another of the unfortunate realities that come with an ambitious project like this, that a lot of outside help already has other projects going on, so they cant give you 8 hours a day. I came home at 7 after drawing all day and spent another 5 hours doing Skullgirls work. Typically after two days I would send a medium sized animation over for approval from Richard, who is the awesome cleanup genius at Lab Zero. Approval usually takes about a day because Richard is getting deliverables from the outsources, who if you have seen the credits are way more than 20 ... So basically Richard is art directing 20+ people AND doing cleanup work himself, meaning he basically doesnt get to go home (so its great to have to listen to assholes here tell me that he needs to justify his $600 a week) I had the pleasure of meeting him a few months back and hes going gray already, haha.

So yeah, approval. While I wait for that to show up I get started on the next frame. Very rarely does the linework get approved on the first try. Usually something is inconsistent, a weapon looks weird or the shapes are a little flat. Depending on the damage you may have to do 20% percent of work or maybe even up to 50. Its important to get this stuff approved because otherwise you cant move on to shading and coloring, which are the next steps.

Once youre approved and do the shading and color pass (which take about 60% of the time it takes to ink) you send those off for approval as well, make some last minute touch ups due to feedback and THEN the animation is done on your end. Before it ends in the game proper, chances are Richard has fixed some things himself ... So Id say on average I could get about 60 ish frames of animation a week, and seeing how the character with the FEWEST amount of animations has about 1500 then you start to get an idea of how just one step of the process works.

THEN we look at Squigly. What a lot of you arent realizing is that she has MULTIPLE STANCES. What does that mean? TWICE THE ANIMATIONS.

Can you start to see how the hours pile up and have NOTHING to do with proper managing? A fighting game is unlike any other game. A character in a fighting game is the equivalent of a character + level design + the game design of any other game.

But hey yeah, lazy devs, right?

I honestly had no interest in Skullgirls but this post is seriously making me want to buy it. Let me know when that PC port's coming out.

 

[Feep]

By the way, in addition to all the other expenses, Squigly requires TWO VA's: the girl and the snake.

 

[NoirVisage]

By the way, in addition to all the other crap, Squigly requires TWO VA's: the girl and the snake.

I don't think thats actually helping -__-

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Captain N. Tenneal, Branduil, and Noogy, thanks for the responses. And in regards to your post Noogy, that was more info than I was anticipating, and was a particularly good read. Thanks again.

 

[joe2187]

Ok, so I have no idea about programming, game development and so on but just comparing to other businesses and projects I am puzzled how it can take 8*10*50=400 man-days excluding additional outsourced work (!!!) to make a character. I don't even doubt the cost but the assumed man-days seem astonishing to me.

The guy that posted the character he drew said it took him 2.5 hours to draw. Now do that more than 1500 times...

I honestly had no interest in Skullgirls but this post is seriously making me want to buy it. Let me know when that PC port's coming out.

$30 bucks donation nets you a soundtrack, Steam Code, PC Beta access, Exclusive TF2 Hat and your name in the credits.

 

[kenta]

They love the game and want to do more work for it. Dedication, yo.

15 bucks an hour is the bare minimum they needed so, that's what they asked for. Considering the talent you need to do that work, 15 bucks is well undervaluing their skill sets.

It's a very competitive field full of people who love their work, which means that oftentimes people work for less than they should.

Okay but... Let's say I as a consumer love the game they make and want to support them so they can make more of it. What in the world can I do? Spend fifteen freaking dollars and walk away? I personally don't think they're seeing nearly as much of a return as they deserve, and yet I feel like I can't do anything about it

Basically, if I'm a fan, seeing these numbers kills me because I worry about the team in the long term. But they're doing it to themselves and I don't want them to! They/you seem to accept these salaries whether by fear of internet outrage or peer pressure or whatever, and I feel like that would only do more harm than good. There's got to be another way!