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[HotGarbage]

It's interesting how crowdfunding has on a large scale essentially merged business expenses with personal expenses. Also interesting is how people react to these two entirely different beasts mingling together. It's a new phenomenon really. Fantastic article.

 

[cajunator]

Actually, I'm pretty surprised they can make this stuff for that cheap.

 

[joe2187]

So it costs less money to build an AIM-7 Sparrow ($125,000 out of pocket if you pay the US government rate , which many do if they can't buy missiles in bulk) and blow a multi-million dollar fighter out of the sky than it does to create a single character in a somewhat underwhelming 2d fighter. Obviously the cost relationship has nothing to correlate with each other, it's the ultimate apples vs oranges remark, but it really does highlight how ridiculous lowhighkang_LHK's statement was.

Spoiler

I would like to believe he was really commenting on the cost of healthcare in the US

Lets get crazier

ever been to a wedding? guess how much those cost
ever been to a funeral? even I couldn't believe how much those cost
ever been to a political fundraiser? They spend more on the party then they fund
ever seen a movie? I'm pretty sure you know how much they cost.

 

[cajunator]

Peoples time costs money. Its as simple as that. Games take time and talent and the vast majority of people do not work for free. Its incredible that full scale top tier quality games are priced at just 60 bucks.

 

[BurnOutBrighter]

I suspect much of this bloat is due to lack of economies of scale. Making 8 characters at the same time would be cheaper per character than just doing one.

 

[Warm Machine]

This doesn't surprise me at all. The unfortunate thing is that 2d animation takes a ton of time. You are essentially building a new asset every frame. Once that asset is done its flexibility for further use is limited.

If it was a 3d character the budget would probably be a lot lower. One model, one shader, about 6 map types and the asset is finished. You are look at a couple weeks for a top quality zBrush sculpt and a low poly model to apply it to depending on how seasoned the modeller is. Then comes the animation which is editable and flexible. Not confined to pencil and ink.

The two games I've worked on over the last two years, in a regular studio environment with full salaries, would have clocked in at about 200k. We scope control design and not make what we don't know how or require lots of outside help to pull off. Our stuff is night and day different.

Even a full 3d arena style MP FPS game would clock in at about 300k-400k. 3D is cheap and flexible to do. Tools have made our lives far easier. The tool these guys rely on is their drawing ability and the inate speed they can move.

These guys have a passion for what they are doing and they obviously knew how hard and expensive it was going to be to build this game when they started. Glad to see they care and that they are meeting their goals.

 

[Fewr]

Holy shit, I thought it was the whole game and it seemed reasonable but one character! No wonder Mortal Kombat had so many ninjas.

Haha. I hadn't thought of that, it is a very good point.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Peoples time costs money. Its as simple as that. Games take time and talent and the vast majority of people do not work for free. Its incredible that full scale top tier quality games are priced at just 60 bucks.

Some attitudes coming to the surface here just highlight: many, even most, people think "artistic" work is basically junk.

That may sound harsh. But at best, anything "creative" is just a silly hobby project for many persons, and if someone gets paid to do it, the deeply embedded attitude in society is that those persons should be grateful that their silly little hobby is earning them money.

This becomes even more confused and confabulated in the minds of the public because there are a lot of people with creative ability and skill who "give it away" - the people who work on stuff as an unpaid hobby and put it out there for the public to have. Instead of seeing what those people do as something very generous, it's like everyone instead sees it as mere proof that creative output is worthless. Why else would so many people just give it away? Do it in their spare time? Especially today, in the internet world where you can find so much online for the taking.

Could be why it's common to see the public bitching about how creative works given away for free should be updated, expanded, remade, to fit the demands of the audience already getting it for nothing. It is ironic that free PC game mods are being brought up in this thread - because of how one sees many users of said mods giving up no real thanks to the creators, and instead griping when something in the mod isn't to their personal taste. And maybe firing off an email to the maker telling them to do it better.

The fact that the programmers in the case of Skullgirls are making $600 a week (before personal income taxes?) while trying to live in LA, doing full time programming work, appears to be flying right over heads.

 

[nickp]

So you'd rather I just get pissed off at people who can't believe shit is expensive (especially 2D animation)? People will either keep believing it's false, or get to the point in which their own research/experience will make them realize it.

The article and the breakdown is pretty straightforward, so I rather not be one of the people ready to bite each other's heads off. *shrugs*

You've got a point. I think I'm just frustrated because it's difficult to tell who's joking about what at this rate. lol

 

[Risette]

I think common sense here is right.

They could justify however the fuck they want their $150.000, that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. $150.000 for one characters is way to much, they are clearly not optimizing their budget.

When you are an indie team struggling for money you have to be stupid to design a game that requires $150.000 for a single characters.

clearly they didn't plan their budget to the metal

 

[Dark Octave]

Didn't Capcom give a higher number for their characters?

One of the guys from Skull Girls mentioned that they pay about half of what other studios do for animation and clean up because they really don't have a choice.

 

[honorless]

Partly to show that even at 25% the number is absolutely ridiculous, but also partly because that's kinda the way it goes sometimes. Meetings, code reviews, documentation, training, etc. etc. are all things that wouldn't "count" as work insofar as the game goes, but it eats up days.

50% is probably a closer number. So, 1600 man hours.

I work in the IS department of a very large company. A typical project from our devs creating enterprise level software would cost maybe 600 man hours in a given quarter, and that's for a new project. Enhancement releases are at maybe half that.

Again, at a certain point you can't just be ok with that kind of thing. You gotta start looking at skills, tools, training, whatever it is that is acting as the roadblock. Keep in mind I'm talking solely hours here, not money, which is a wash because ~~~entertainment industry~~~

You understand how long it takes the devs you manage (who are, more than likely, making more than $600/mo) to program and test things that are not games.

No figures have been given, but based on the 2000 hours cited to create Cerebella in the video you presumably did not watch, it seems fair to say that most of the hours in this project will be spent on the character animation. Drawing simply takes time. A lot of time. Maybe more time than the programming and other integration will. I'm not an expert, but I do webdev for a living and minored in traditional animation. So I have a tiny bit of experience in both fields.

Could they speed things up? Sure, I'm sure you know how that works. You're a manager. Assuming you hired a good team to begin with—and frankly, there's almost no way Lab Zero could afford not to hire good people when they're such a small outfit—you can:
a.) Throw more people at the problem—people who need to be trained, supervised and most importantly, paid.
Or b.) Have your people cut corners wherever you can in order to finish within a tighter timeline, and hope no one notices or cares about the decreased quality of the end product.

 

[Krackatoa]

If it was a 3d character the budget would probably be a lot lower. One model, one shader, about 6 map types and the asset is finished. You are look at a couple weeks for a top quality zBrush sculpt and a low poly model to apply it to depending on how seasoned the modeller is. Then comes the animation which is editable and flexible. Not confined to pencil and ink.

3D animation on a fighting game character is a much more finicky endeavor than standard development, however. It involves very meticulous work that can end in a lot of man-hours wasted. EVen 3D characters tend to get animated frame-by-frame if you're building a competitive fighter.

 

[Air]

I read 2 pages of this thread and as an animator who owns his own studio, I am fuming. Sooooo much ignorance here. $150,000 is small beans for a studio.

 

[Uncle Rupee]

So what they're saying is Skull Girls had a budget of like $1.6 million based on the number of characters listed on Wikipedia?
You know how many amazing indie games could be made for that amount of money?

 

[Dark Octave]

So 2d art cost more than 3d?

If we're talking about equal genres, it costs more, it's more tedious and it takes longer.

The animation process for The King of Fighters XI and XII was worse than Skull Girls and probably every fighting game out today.

 

[Quackula]

Some attitudes coming to the surface here just highlight: many, even most, people think "artistic" work is basically junk.

That may sound harsh. But at best, anything "creative" is just a silly hobby project for many persons, and if someone gets paid to do it, the deeply embedded attitude in society is that those persons should be grateful that their silly little hobby is earning them money.

This becomes even more confused and confabulated in the minds of the public because there are a lot of people with creative ability and skill who "give it away" - the people who work on stuff as an unpaid hobby and put it out there for the public to have. Instead of seeing what those people do as something very generous, it's like everyone instead sees it as mere proof that creative output is worthless. Why else would so many people just give it away? Do it in their spare time? Especially today, in the internet world where you can find so much online for the taking.

Could be why it's common to see the public bitching about how creative works given away for free should be updated, expanded, remade, to fit the demands of the audience already getting it for nothing. It is ironic that free PC game mods are being brought up in this thread - because of how one sees many users of said mods giving up no real thanks to the creators, and instead griping when something in the mod isn't to their personal taste. And maybe firing off an email to the maker telling them to do it better.

The fact that the programmers in the case of Skullgirls are making $600 a week (before personal income taxes?) while trying to live in LA, doing full time programming work, appears to be flying right over heads.

Pretty much. Hell, it's the main justification I've seen from a few habitual pirates I know.

I don't like that attitude.

 

[HK-47]

Lots of know nothings thinking they know something in this thread.

 

[radios shipping overview]

So what they're saying is Skull Girls had a budget of like $1.6 million based on the number of characters listed on Wikipedia?
You know how many amazing indie games could be made for that amount of money?

When the project was in full production, they likely had economies of scale to take advantage of.

And if you want to make an indie game for a fraction of that cost, and pay yourself and your team a living wage while you do it, you're welcome to explore how to find and allocate the resources to do so.

 

[Warm Machine]

3D animation on a fighting game character is a much more finicky endeavor than standard development, however. It involves very meticulous work that can end in a lot of man-hours wasted. EVen 3D characters tend to get animated frame-by-frame if you're building a competitive fighter.

Absolutely. I worked on Dead Rising 2 so I know how much time and iteration there is on attack animations and combat trees in a game where the one on one fighting is only a fraction of the overall gameplay and not the focus. While lots was mo-capped by the end of it it is pretty much all hand animation.

The point is that once a frame of 3d animation is done and needs to be tweaked the whole animation or laborous frames within doesn't go in the bin like a move in 2d that isn't working. That is where you can get the mileage out of what you are doing.

 

[Kai Dracon]

So what they're saying is Skull Girls had a budget of like $1.6 million based on the number of characters listed on Wikipedia?
You know how many amazing indie games could be made for that amount of money?

You know how, for years, fighting game fans demanded that a company should give them the game they deserve, which is a "Beautiful, HD, hand drawn fighting game like Street Fighter 3 - how real games should be made!"

Well here's the reality of the technical and labor barriers to creating a beautiful, HD, hand drawn fighting game with the same or more frames and precision as Street Fighter 3.

There's a reason why indie games tend to use cheap, efficient visuals like 8-bit sprites, a small number of large matte painted backdrops, or stylized 3D visuals using tricks like flat shading, cel shading, etc.

Because there are certain kinds of asset work that, if crafted to a professional level of quality, require a huge investment of labor and money.

 

[Wyndstryker]

Having worked for a publisher, these costs sound about right.

People want flashy graphics with voice work for every piece of dialogue, it's gonna cost something.

 

[neonille]

Don't even get me fucking started on this right here. You have no idea what you're talking about. The vast majority of the 4k isn't going to the actor anyway.

No i don't, thats why i am asking. Enlighten me....

It's a fighting game, it's not a sequel to Heavy Rain...

 

[Risette]

There's a reason why indie games tend to use cheap, efficient visuals like 8-bit sprites, a small number of large matte painted backdrops, or stylized 3D visuals using tricks like flat shading, cel shading, etc.

They also tend to be bad and unrefined.

 

[Marty Chinn]

So it's worth pointing out that most people generally think of outsourcing art (or QA, or anything else) as being less expensive than having in-house artists perform a task. Not always true. For iterative tasks, such as art, having a proper high-quality outsourcing house do the work can be extremely expensive. The cost goes higher the more revisions you request--we're talking thousands of dollars per revision for something as simple as a 2D concept. The higher you want to set your quality bar, the more expensive it's going to be. The more content you want to tackle, the more likely you'll need to resort to outsourcing to meet a deadline.

$150k doesn't seem unrealistic to me at all.

Ya, outsourcing isn't cheap like people imagine it is from the stigma of the typical job being outsourced to other countries. As someone who works at a game development house who constantly is hired by other companies to help out on games, without giving numbers, it would blow people's minds how much it costs to hire us and we've been hired by all the big publishers. What we offer though is experience, expertise, and none of the overhead or setup costs it would be to try and hire someone to fill the role. Heck, just ask around for anyone who does software contract work how much they charged. You'd be amazed at how much they get per hour.

 

[HeresSomeWeapons]

Some of the responses in this thread are simply infuriating. These are industry professionals trying to develop a quality addition to a balanced fighting game, and they're even going to give it to you for free. And yet people in this thread are so arrogant and entitled that they would suggest that the developers shouldn't even be paid reasonably for their work. I have no words.

 

[Master Milk]

The point is that once a frame of 3d animation is done and needs to be tweaked the whole animation or laborous frames within doesn't go in the bin like a move in 2d that isn't working. That is where you can get the mileage out of what you are doing.

I'm pretty sure Skullgirls only had between one to three (hahaha) moves that were animated and not used.

The character being made now likely won't have any wasted animations.

 

[wonzo]

It's a fighting game, it's not a sequel to Heavy Rain...

Hrm yes, nothing says high quality voice acting work like Heavy Rain.

 

[Warm Machine]

No i don't, thats why i am asking. Enlighten me....

It's a fighting game, it's not a sequel to Heavy Rain...

Vancouver industry rate for an actress for a 4 hour session is around $2400. For Orbitron: Revolution we had a girl come into the sound studio at $500 for 1 hour of work. That wasn't even union either. Union probably would have been a guaranteed 4 hour session whether she is there that long or not and lunch built in.

It isn't like actresses are working 8 hours a day 7 days a week. The cost is to cover the time when they are not working.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

Some of the responses in this thread are simply infuriating. These are industry professionals trying to develop a quality addition to a balanced fighting game, and they're even going to give it to you for free. And yet people in this thread are so arrogant and entitled that they would suggest that the developers shouldn't even be paid reasonably for their work. I have no words.

To be entirely fair, what I'm noticing more is a naivete/close-mindedness in regards to budget prioritization. Sure, there are some asinine "modders do this crap for free" posts in here, but I think a lot of the critique just boils down to the "people are spending money on stuff that doesn't strike me as important" from people who don't really know any better, particularly when we're talking about stuff like the voice acting budget. See also questions such as "Why would someone buy a brand new Porsche when a used Honda Civic is perfectly adequate for getting from point a to point b?" "Why would someone take out a 30 year mortgage on a $400,000 house when they can save so much money renting out a 900 sq. ft. apartment like I'm doing?" "Why does anyone buy designer clothes when clothes from Target are perfectly adequate?"

Edit: A better comparison might also just be someone questioning why a shutterbug would spend thousands of dollars on high-end SLR cameras/specialty lenses when they themselves take what they think are perfectly serviceable pictures with their cell phone cameras or their $100 point and shoot.

 

[Kai Dracon]

To be entirely fair, what I'm noticing more is a naivete/close-mindedness in regards to budget prioritization. Sure, there are some asinine "modders do this crap for free" posts in here, but I think a lot of the critique just boils down to the "people are spending money on stuff that doesn't strike me as important" from people who don't really know any better, particularly when we're talking about stuff like the voice acting budget. See also questions such as "Why would someone buy a brand new Porsche when a used Honda Civic is perfectly adequate for getting from point a to point b?" "Why would someone take out a 30 year mortgage on a $400,000 house when they can save so much money renting out a 900 sq. ft. apartment like I'm doing?" "Why does anyone buy designer clothes when clothes from Target are perfectly adequate?"

Edit: A better comparison might also just be someone questioning why a shutterbug would spend thousands of dollars on high-end SLR cameras/specialty lenses when they themselves take what they think are perfectly serviceable pictures with their cell phone cameras or their $100 point and shoot.

This is a fair point to bring up.

But in turn it makes me wonder: could part of the general naivete be that many people don't know why the nice things in games are nice?

i.e. everyone groans at terrible, stilted voice acting from people who can't act. But hiring good voice talent, depending on availability and schedule and your region, may cost a pretty penny.

 

[MYeager]

Given the complicated history going on behind scenes (Autumn Games legal issues, Reverge to Lab Zero, etc) I think it's amazing that there is even an opportunity like this at all, much less how awesome the crowd support has been. 48k for 8 developers for 10 weeks seems absurdly cheap to me and I wonder how much these guys are going to be eating ramen just to make ends meet just to make this happen.

I don't know why people are taking what to me appears to be a fantastic and positive story about fan support and developers who are trying hard to continue a product they obviously love, and instead being negative over costs that really don't appear out of the ordinary at all.

I hope they reach Big Band levels.

 

[-PXG-]

Concept, rough frame, line clean-up, gray scale, matte color, color detailing, animation, collision, sound, VA, sound programming, UI, testing, more testing, even more testing cert, ect ect ect...

I'm probably missing shit too.

Hand drawn 2d animation is serious shit. Now take into account over 1000 frames and missing sure reach and everyone is flawless....

Game development on general it's nuts. The more I've learned the less I'm sruprised why it costs so much.

 

[HeresSomeWeapons]

I don't think $4000 is unreasonable for voice acting, considering that has to pay for at least one VA, studio, equipment and engineer. And you always want to budget conservatively so that don't end up SOL if something doesn't go according to plan.

If you consider the fact that they will probably also be bringing in the other character VA's for character specific dialogue's, it really doesn't seem expensive at all.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

This is a fair point to bring up.

But in turn it makes me wonder: could part of the general naivete be that many people don't know why the nice things in games are nice?

i.e. everyone groans at terrible, stilted voice acting from people who can't act. But hiring good voice talent, depending on availability and schedule and your region, may cost a pretty penny.

I would say that's entirely it. To go back to the photography example, I'm glad that we have pictures of our wedding, but I'm not entirely sure if it was worth the $3,000 my wife insisted we needed to pay for the photographers she wanted to get. And that has everything to do with the fact that I just don't "get" the art of photography despite the fact that I can look at a picture and tell you whether I think it's a good picture or not.

In turn, she doesn't really understand the benefit of the $300 graphics card I insisted was necessary.

 

[Manbig]

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 a year, even if I had to do a lot of learning along the way, and 150k is more than I could ever dream of making in even a year.

And I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job of balancing the character amongst the rest of the cast too while you're at it.

 

[beril]

I think it's also a matter of a game not originally intended for crowdfunding appearing on indiegogo.

Most devs are pretty conservative with what they ask for on kickstarter, and they plan the projects to be doable on a relatively low budget. Double Fine only asked for 300k originally for their game. Now people have become a bit more confident, and some of the most established devs are asking for about a million for some seemingly very ambitious projects. But here's a team that most people had thought of as indies asking for 150k for just a bit of DLC. If Tim Shafer can make an entire game for 300k surely an indie dev shouldn't need anywhere near that much. But it's not an indie game, and it's not designed to be made on a shoestring budget, and they can't really change their workflow or the level of quality now.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

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?

 

[njean777]

The problem with the "Modders do it for free" argument is that it is simply not true. Most of the time, Modders have an end goal in sight when they are creating mods, and that is to be able to use that mod in a portfolio as to get hired by a publisher. Technically yes you are getting it for free, but there is an ulterior motive.

2D animation is expensive from what I have learned, and if you want it, you have to pay a price for it. Art is not only a hobby when it is being sold, and if you want good art, pay up.

 

[Haly]

Very insightful post Raging Spaniard, good read.

 

[-PXG-]

I've seen the cleanup process myself for Skullgirls. It's not easy, it's not fast and it isn't fun. Do that hundreds of times over and over again, and then think about all of the other components that make just one character.

Edit

Basically, anything Raging Spaniard says, just shut up and listen.

 

[Moonlight]

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 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 the 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 for new page. Awesome post, Raging Spaniard.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Edit: ah already done, thanks!

 

[Yasae]

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 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 the 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 a lesson every creative professional learns eventually. Your post will go unnoticed by too many heart surgeons.

 

[Violet_0]

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

 

[TheOGB]

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 especially puts things into perspective; I certainly didn't even consider the extra work to be done because of multiple stances.

Great post, and godspeed.

 

[daegan]

I work in the IS department of a very large company. A typical project from our devs creating enterprise level software would cost maybe 600 man hours in a given quarter, and that's for a new project. Enhancement releases are at maybe half that.

So what you're saying is you don't make games and have no idea how making a game works, or why it would be more complex to code a game than any other piece of software? Got it.

Raging Spaniard, I am buying this game and donating when I can because of your post (and also thanks to the number of people in this thread who have no respect for fighting games). Thank you for your work.

 

[sorakirosaki]

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 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 the 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?

...My god this post O_O You have my utmost respect sir i will be buying the steam version when released

 

[SummitAve]

Working on a fighting game sounds terrible.

 

[Axispowers]

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 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 the 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 is really puts things into perspective. Outstanding post. I am now putting 30 on the game.