Sorcery Unto Bondage: Mildred animations (Patreon)

Good morrow, folks. Today I have another preview for you, of progress I am making on our protagonist's animations.

One of the things that I think is valuable in this kind of game is having a great variety of animations for various actions the player might want to take. Struggling in various ways to escape from different restraints; attacking or standing or moving while bound in different ways; interacting with a range of devices or tools, and so on. However, in a videogame where you can wear a wide range of items, that's going to slow down the production to a ridiculous degree. In order to make one new item I'd have to spend ages drawing that item over dozens of animations, and I am but one guy with no art team. This is a problem that I largely failed to address in The Bondage of Eliza, and so that game does not have a lot of animations.

For Sorcery Unto Bondage, I have started experimenting with some automatic art generation in order to solve that problem. That's right: I've been making our main character Mildred in 3D and placing her into this pixel art world. This should allow any number of clothes and bindings and accessories to be draped upon her, while easily allowing her to take on any number of animations and poses. This could allow proper animations for e.g. moving about with a spreader bar, or being bound in a way that requires crawling, while properly displaying whatever combination of cursed items currently afflicts her.

What has also been necessary is presenting these animations in a way that fits the pixel art style of the rest of the game. Much like Eliza is an imitation of my actual pen drawings, so too is Mildred an imitation of my actual pixel art. To this effect, I have deployed some tricks such as forcing the protagonist to only be drawn with the colours I normally use for pixel art, and for the animations to be a little choppy as though each frame had to be drawn manually. Therefore when we see her e.g. take a nap in a catsuit & harness or writhe in strappado wearing a ballgown & gas mask, it should not stand out too much against the genuine pixel art in the rest of the videogame.

I have prepared some examples of how an armbinder, legbinder or frogtie might affect Mildred's movement or lack thereof. Wheeeeeeee look at her go!!!!!!!!

All listed is subject to change e.g. in case of feedback, and the attached image is partly an example for demonstration purposes. Items & animations are demonstrative examples rather than planned features