Who created the creature cardboards?

[andretchen0]

Just wondering. Any idea what tools they used? (And if they can do some sprite animations for us?)

[DreadKnight]

A list of main contributors can be found over here -> https://ancientbeast.com/contribute/#artwork, but to give some overview:

Most units were existing ones created by Katarzyna Zalecka, a polish girl living in Chicago. I made them into cardboards when I've seen angles and perspective fit. Financial crash happened and I wasn't able to earn enough to pay her. I also failed at getting some decent funding so far for the project. I thought her about open source. Initially she was using Photoshop, but started using Krita and some Gimp. She can also animate, 2d and 3d. If we scale and project becomes profitable, I could probably lure her back in.

Indre Lelertaviciute (velvetcat) contributed quite a few existing creatures as well. I think she uses photoshop and might take commissions, not sure.

Other big chunk of cardboards are done by Ashirox, a russian artist that remade some of Kathy's units into nicer versions, though he has a pixel art sort of style, detailing things a lot. He vanished when my country started having war related tension with Russia. I tried reaching out to him before and he also has no activity online since, so not sure what happened, but I fear the worst...
He was into open source and creative commons, so he was proficient with Krita and Gimp from the start.

First prototype was coded by turjuque, a french artist, great 3d modeler. Last I know he was working for Blender Foundation, as a coder. No reply from him last time I tried though. He made some great 3d models in Blender based on the artwork, top notch stuff, way over my skill level.

Bottom line is: when project will be in better shape and scale with funding as well, it will be easy to get lots of great artists going on, as I'll focus on that stuff way more, especially once online multiplayer will be up and running. Usually coders are the ones expensive and hard to find overall and project really needs a bit more love on this side.

We could either go the 3d route with prerendered sprite sheets or 2d route, either that Rive.app or even Krita, as it has timeline.

[andretchen0]

Cool. Thanks for the rundown. Nice to know the history.

Krita, as it has timeline

I've only briefly tried Krita's timeline. It'd probably be difficult to make a whole project using it, but who knows?

[DreadKnight]

Yeah, probably not the best route to go for this project, as it lacks a lot of very important features that Rive.app provides.

[andretchen0]

Rive

You'd be locking up your anim data in a proprietary format. There's a free tier limited to 3 files, but it's only free as long as they keep it that way. That's a hard "no" for me anyway.

I personally like the look of sprite animations. Nearly any game framework that supports graphics will support them.

[DreadKnight]

Rive

You'd be locking up your anim data in a proprietary format. There's a free tier limited to 3 files, but it's only free as long as they keep it that way. That's a hard "no" for me anyway.

I agree regarding data locking, that's awful. Regarding the free tier and 3 files, might be able to work out a partnership.

I personally like the look of sprite animations. Nearly any game framework that supports graphics will support them.

Yeah, if going the 3d route with Blender as initially planned, we made an addon to render unit animation into spritesheets.