Giant Mask Warrior Animation work preview + Update to the free Pixbattler Stan SV preview! (Patreon)

Hello!

Today I want to share with everyone how progress is goign with the upcoming Giant Mask Warrior battler! Like I've been mentioning lately I've gathered enough insight to apply all the training I did to our actual assets and I feel the giant mask warrior really highlights that, lets take a look!

Idle/Ready

First up the Idle animation! The masked warrior is meant to feel like a lively fellow, which really opened up possibilities for a characteristic idle pose, you can feel he's part of a warrior tribe , very agile, right off the bat I think!

Attack A

We start off strong with attacks, for the first attack I wanted a spin attack, but one with enough personality to it to inspire you to make all sort of skills and effects to go with it! I feel the motion sells that idea.

Attack B

For the second attack I wanted something a bit more general use, but still loaded with flair, so even though this is a standard slash, it still uses all the latest techniques both in drawing and animation, to get there.

Attack C

For the third attack I was thinking really hard what would bring variety and spice to the mix, and I decided to go for a stab attack, but not just any stab attack, somethig with enough substance to keep the agile masked warrior motiff, and this was the result of that.

Skill

Even though I operate under the assumption that you will end up configuring your skills with any of the avaialble 3 attack motions above, in recent releases I have also decided to incorporate a fourth dedicated "skill"animation. For the masked warrior, a simple but effective spear throw felt the most fitting, given how melee his overall kit is.

FrontStep-Backstep/Dash-Evade

before Dash and evade used to be still frame motions, with recent releases I decided to upgrade that into Frontstep and backstep animations, for a number of reasons, depending on the developer, this hopping can actaulyl add new layers of options to the presentation of their battles, or if used just as they are, they still very well serve the function of selling the motion of evade or dashing into a position. It was tricky to figure these out at first but they've become second nature sicne their debut with the Ancestral Giant Wild Boar!

Guard/Damage/Defeat/Sleep/Victory/Weark Idle

Last but not least the utility loops which keep the flow and state of battle going!

The Masked Warrior is also the first animated battler to debut with the Basics label, rather than boss, meaning he's part of the more general combat oriented battlers which will make up the bulk of that line in due time, please look forward to this release!

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In other news and parallel to the work im doing for this release, and also as part of an upcoming update to the sample project(because I want these new battlers to debut preconfigured with a more inspiring sample battle showcase and skill configurations) I have been doing an update to PixBattler Stan's SV sheet

the changes are not wildy radical, but they do improve the initial versions and settle the visual direction I want for the pixbattler asset line once the current focus on backlogged Animated battlers wraps up! As annouced a while ago I dont intend to get sidetracked with non full release backlogged content, so stan's update is just a very special case to highlight the latest animated battlers better!

That said, the new pixbattler sheet does animate very nicely as well!

Busy weekend but I figured there was a lot worth sharing!

Please look forward to both the Masked Warrior Animated Battler full release and stan's update!