by Avila Armstrong
Thought Process
My main hobby (besides design) is playing competitive video games and going to various video game tournaments for fun. I’m not very good relative to professional players, but I’ve met a lot of very close friends throughout my time playing and have so far gotten to experience many things I would not have otherwise had the chance to experience. One of my favorite characters in one of my favorite games, Super Smash Bros. Melee (the one on the GameCube, which is still very much played), has a technique where you can stall and become temporarily fully invincible, which gives you time to stall for time, think, strategically prepare for a good hit, etc. This technique is found annoying, but I find it quite useful as somebody who likes to have time to think in high-pressure situations.
When I thought of what poster to make for this assignment, this was one of the very first ideas I had, along with other similar depictions of other fighting game scenarios. But, the depiction of Final Destination, a well-known and extremely popular stage to play on in competitive Smash Bros., came to mind, and the thought of “give me some space” just clicked. After drafting this situation with the various characters that can do similar techniques, I went with sheik partially due to her being one of my favorites but also because the other characters were harder to illustrate, to be honest.
Programs
As much as I would have ideally used Illustrator for the… illustration… I ended up using Photoshop for all of the illustration and initial composition purely because that is what I am most comfortable with. especially when paired with After Effects.
I used After Effects for all animation. The video is at 6fps – I use 12fps often purely for the aesthetic so I figured that less frames would be a bit easier considering the other projects I have to finish this week, and also it being divisible by 6 makes it a smoother transition from the standard 60fps when working with an originally-60fps animation (which was pretty much traced, handpicking 3 specific frames from the animation in question)
Problems
The process was honestly pretty smooth – the biggest issues I had were with getting eyejack to work but once I figured it out via trial-and-error things seemed fine from there. That being said, the audio never played from eyejack no matter what I did. In the video itself, there is a sound effect from Melee that plays – albeit not in this situation – but from the same character at a similarly-common time.
Credits –
Super Smash Bros. Melee; audio, image inspiration
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; image inspiration