The Bard's Tale Developer Diary #6
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First, artists draw concept sketches of the character and then model it in 3D. The sketches and model have to fit to the idea for the original character -- maybe it needs to look big and scary, or maybe it should look small and quick. That's the first step to giving the player an idea about how the character will behave.
The next step, creating animations for the character, is what really makes or breaks it. Each movement a character does needs to be done through an animation. If the character tries to do something without an animation, or with an animation that doesn't read well, it will be really hard for the player to tell what's going on. So before I start on the A.I. for any character, I make a list of all the animations it will need. All the simple motions a character does, like standing still or running, need animations. So do the motions for unique behaviors, like casting a spell to summon minions. After I put together the list of animations, I sent it off to our animator, and he creates the animations the character needs.
