I've always adored the sheer attention to detail in the animations of Jak and Daxter more than any other platforming character or duo. Their variety and expressiveness boggles my mind to this day (at least for the gaming industry). Thanks for the breakdown!
Jak 1, 2, and 3; The *only* games I would buy a PC/PS4 Remaster of. On a side note: Not finishing Jak and Daxter is my biggest gaming regret. Finished 2 & 3 multiple times, though.
+Extra Play I was kind of hoping you'd mention how he Jak different wading animations for different depths of water, but it never came up, I think it's one of the more interesting extra things they did for the game.
+Extra Play It occurred to me that perhaps the weird preparation animation before Jak does the uppercut is because they're trying to give the illusion of anticipation? There's no actual time for Jak to do a long preparation to bring his arm back and leap upwards but if they make Daxter look like he's flying back as though Jak did do it, then we'll think he did take the time to prepare?
+Extra Play I'm so happy you showcased the "slam dunk" animation. One of my favorites. It shows how much you can get away with when something is moving. When Daxter's on the apex of the jump, his arms clip through his head as he catches the Precursor, and then as he's coming down, his jaw goes into his chest at an unnatural look. But without it being slowed down, one wouldn't even really notice it. I think, even in motion, that goofy T-Pose still works with the motion of being thrown back up into the air. B)
+terracannon876 I think the reason it looks weird is because it's meant to be done after the regular punch, by jumping at the end of it, so the beginning frames of the uppercut are the ending frames of the punch
Honestly, I played this game as a kid... and I think thats why everything is so 'busy'. I loved this game because it never let me get bored. I didn't moan and groan when I had to listen to people talk and give me missions, stuff like that. Honestly, I think it's meant for kids, and kids don't get 'subtlety'.
+Nujum Key (Hearthstone & Let's Plays) Not a water level, I think they're talking about the shark that acted as a boundary for the ocean. Misty island (I think), and the town area where Dan was is right next to an ocean that you could swim out into but if you got too far out a shark would come and eat you, to keep you from hitting the actual boundary wall.
n00bist723 ya exactly, whenever I accidentally fell in the water, and my death was inevitable, i would drop the controller and run out of the room for like a minute to ensure myself to not see or hear what happens.
I know it's been said, but you're really nailing it with this series. It's easy to overlook how important these animation touches are when playing these games, but man do they make a difference.
As a rigger who's used both bones and blend-shapes for character faces, I have to say it surprises me that blend-shapes are so out of vogue these days. I mean, I get using bones for stuff like the jaw, eyes, eyelids, even the eyebrows - that is clearly superior - but I've always found blend-shapes work so, SO much better for lip movements. They let you do a whole lot more delicate work when it comes to how the mouth movements effect the muscles and skin around them while simultaneously automating those very effects for the sake of the animator; it's both easier to get right AND easier to animate with. My preferred method of facial rigging has basically no joints below the one for the jaw. I dunno, maybe that's just like, my opinion man ... SLEAZY PLUG: go look at my channel for examples of what I was talking about~
+Norvolo I tend to like a bit more precise control for shaping expressions and phonemes, so a blend of bones + blendshapes always feels ideal when I'm animating. At a certain point, it does come down to preference. That and how WELL the rig or blend setup has been built.
Yeah that makes sense. I guess from a rigger's perspective relying solely on blendshapes just makes it quicker/easier to get the facial deformations to look right - although, I also prefer to mostly use blendshapes when animating as well. To each their own!
I'd say that last uppercut animation looks weird at the beginning because it can be triggered in another way by punching and jumping while the punch advances. That way, the stretchy Daxter blends better with the previous animation.
+javierbg1995 Yeah, when seeing it frame-by-frame, it looked to me like they were using the same first few frames as a regular punch, probably to tie the combo together (or maybe just to save data space).
Oh, there it is, you found the funny attack additions I thought you missed in #1! On the subject of the upper cut, the posing at the start of the move suggests that it's something that was originally intended to happen after the normal forward punch, which is something you can do in the game. When doing it crouching down, the transition doesn't work because of that. Something you may find interesting is that the animation for a move was changed for Jak II and 3. It's the high Slam-Bounce move that happens when you hold X while doing the ground pound move. In Jak One Jak does the splits in mid-air similar to the crouching High Jump. In Jak II however he does a mid-air tuck-roll type of move that looks way prettier (and goes well with the longer hair he has in that game). Naughty Dog themselves didn't use bone animation all the time. Apparently for Crash Bandicoot they found bones too limiting on PSone for the cartoony animation they wanted. So they animated the vertexes instead! Obviously time-consuming, but the effort shows in crazy death animations where Crash flies around like a deflating balloon, or is atomized, or falls to the ground in charred ruins after being burnt by fire.
The slam dunk was also my favourite power cell animation, and I never even noticed the T pose Daxter makes towards the end. Makes me really want to play the game again.
so something I noticed was most of Jakes signiture mores after getting a precursor cell is the exact same and that it is Daxter that mainly animates the duo. also just starting out on development this particular series is amazing!
I'm majoring Computer Science & Engineering in college and I'm not in any way an expert in animation, though I find your explanatory videos so much entertaining and so educational. To be honest, I've learned quite a bit of subtle things in Jak & Daxter's animation that I even had no idea back when I was playing these games as an 11 or 12 y/o. I kept admiring the work and effort the animations team put in the animation of Jak & Daxter as you explained the subtle details as in the principles of animation they've adopted and everything. I've noticed so much that I haven't even noticed back then. Thanks for making such videos, please keep up with the good work!
Please keep up this series, Jak and Daxter is such an amazing game and really left an impression on me at 14. I now work in the games industry as an animator and I aspire to this kind of animation quality.
One thing I noticed about the power cell animations is that Jak and Daxter rarely change poses in unison unless there's a bit of a buildup and they snap to the same poses. It kind of juggles from a change in one to a change in the other.
15:30 For Jak's uppercut animation, I believe that it starts out a bit weird because another way to activate it is from a punch to the uppercut (Square, then immediately X, and he'll do the uppercut.), so that weird couple frames is the transition from the punch to the uppercut. I just wanted to say that.
One specific animation I remember from this game is that Jack can trip in some places. I think its very rare and happens only in peaceful places like the village but is a blast when it happens.
Really enjoying the new style of these animation videos, they seem more direct and less like a play through. Play throughs are great, but this series is about animation and you've done a really good job!
Hey Dan, I'm not sure if you're able to do a DS game for one of these, but have you considered doing an animation analysis video of the game "Ghost Trick"? That game has some *insane* animation. I don't quite have the expertise to articulate what makes it so note-worthy. It seems... too smooth, sometimes, I guess? I'd love to know why it feels the way it does. All I can tell you is that it's really beautiful but also really funky, so I'd love to hear your take on it.
I think the reason the uppercut has such an odd start is due to it linking from his standard punch if you punch, then immediately jump. Judging by the start, my guess is that the uppercut was initially only planned to be a follow up to the punch, but later the option of doing it from a crouch was also added. Considering the multitude of animations in the game it was probably a change late enough in development that they didn't feel the need to polish it up.
Wow... Never seen these games in action before. This was really eye opening to me. I can see now how easy it must have been to fall madly in love with this game right from the start.
I've two things to point out: the swimming animation is a modified breast stroke since it's the only stroke that you can complete with your head above the water. Two, the threading water animation sort of works, but it's inefficient.
I will always remember the cat/tiger/lion/ model in World of Warcraft. So few polys but the animation was so good you could always feel the feline grace in those edgy prowlers.
Just to let you know - from memory you could chain the upper-cut animation from the regular punch. The animation - with the way Daxter's stretched out behind, is likely a hang-over from that combo, rather than the crouch upper-cut. Someone at ND probably went "eg, it's good enough, we don't need to animate another one!"
Watching the uppercut I think the strange frames at the start are because that animation can be entered from a punch, they probably built it around that first and only added the ability to do it from the crouch later to make the attack easier to do.
I LOVE making blend shapes. Animating them isn't so bad either, although bones are way, way more intuitive especially if you have a great rig. That said, getting bones to work properly in really finicky areas like the face is a NIGHTMARE.
I already watched almost all of your animation in games videos and as someone with a technical background and who had Kingdom Hearts and Jak & Daxter as his first games on the PS2 and already back then enjoying the really awesome animations, I more than enjoy your detailed, informative and cool insights into the animation principles and techniques! Regarding Jak & Daxter, thank you for pointing out my favorite getting-the-power-cell animation :D Furthermore, there is another really cool variant of the spin attack animation, where Jak does the spin attack while running and keeps running after performing the attack --> Daxter will sometimes land on Jak's face and Jak will rip Daxter off from his face and throw him back onto his shoulder pad, all while running. Only shows all the sweet little details in this game :) Keep up the awesome work! Looking forward to whatever next principle and game you're going to tackle! (Also thanks A LOT for that channel recommendation!!! I'll definitely gonna check out some of their videos as well!)
15:45 I think the few weird frames are there because they don't actually belong to that animation. This uppercut can also be casted by jumping right after punching. So I guess what you noticed here is a part of the punching animation that doesn't happen when crouching.
Wow. A series about my favorite aspect of videogames, starting out with three of my favorite franchises. This is pure gold. About games that I would like to hear you talking about, MGS2 and 2D fighting games. Specially KoF XII and Street Fighter III 3rd Strike.
Those weird first few frames of the uppercut are there because it is also a follow up attack after the forward punch, that is why Daxter is already stretched out.
I feel like a lot of modern video games miss the boat on expressive faces. Blend shapes kind of intrigue me, though I kind of understand why they might not have much of a place in modern tech - I would guess they're harder to use with a customizable face (eg, Fallout, any MMO), and maybe are a bit more prone to collision situations where part of someone's face intersects in a weird way. That's only my prediction though. I'm also partly guessing that the extreme over-expressiveness of the characters is to make up for the game originally being on relatively low-resolution displays, and even very small TVs before many people had a 40" HDTV. A lot of those reactions would make sense to just be a lower-eyelid-raise and a slight head tilt, but then those small gestures would be so small as to be unnoticeable if you're not playing on something pretty big. Even today there's times where an animator like me is prone to worry about "Well, now it doesn't look noticeable" - but it can be hard to admit that's not quite true, and sometimes the little animation nods are best appreciated when they hit the right subtlety; they can even contribute to someone's appreciation of it at the back of someone's mind when they don't notice it directly.
The blend shape method seems great for very cartoony animations, where the faces can change very heavily. Also, ClassicGameJunkie has a video about how they made the water in Super Mario Sunshine? I HAVE to watch that. The water in Super Mario Sunshine is amazing.
I'm enjoying the animation videos, but I'm also curious if anyone else on the Extra Credits team can shed such a fine light on their particular areas of expertise. In part because I'm not sure who all is on the team or what their areas of expertise are.
You can actually do the uppercut move by throwing a regular punch and while the animation is playing you can jump to connect into the uppercut move. If I'd have to guess, this is the reason why the startup of the standing still uppercut is so fast and kind of wonky looking. They probably only had the uppercut as a followup to the standard punch and then added in the crouching version later and didn't have time to make an entirely new one from that position.
I think the reason the uppercut start up doesn't really match up is because its meant to be a punch, jump combo to make that uppercut happen. I didn't even know you could just uppercut from crouch.
Daniel you could also do an episode on the animation of the prince in the Sands of Time for the ps2! It conveys movement and momentum so smoothly. The cloth also looks wonderful. Excellent animation especially for that era!
Something I've noticed from this episode and the last is that in the cut scenes, when the camera "cuts," there is sometimes a single frame that is very weird. It's like camera takes it's new position a frame before or after the models do. Does anyone know the technical reason for this?
+Parker Bourassa I think your guess is more or less correct: it's the camera, models and lights all transitioning for a new shot but it doesn't manage all of it between frames.
+Parker Bourassa since it;s at 30fps, and this game was meant to be played by a younger audience who at this point would be far too invested in whats happening to really notice, it's most definitely the hardware and coding of the scenes just not being lined up perfectly. Since these cutscenes are "recorded" (in the sense that they are pre-rendered), each cutscene is animated in real space with the camera being placed somewhere to give that framing, and when the camera moves, the models have to be placed in their new animation place. Dan knows far more what's going on, I'm speaking from my experience with 2d animation in Flash CS4, but in simple terms, the game is loading the pre-rendered models to do their animated movements just a SPLIT second after the camera was moved around the room. If you ever saw hacked games where entire cutscenes played without moving the camera, you would see what i am talking about.
A really crude and easy to follow example of Blend Shapes would probably be Sonic Adventure 1. Not an example of quality, but one that's also easy to follow.
How come, I just discovered this awesome Channel of yours, despite the fact of being a Follower of Extra Credits for a few years now? This is awesome you guys and gals!!!
Is it just me, or in the most of the "celebration animations" at 14:22, Jak does one of two different sets of animations for all of them in the background, while Daxter does all of the main moving around with a new animation for each one.
Blend shapes are perfect for the cartoony style while the joint on the face is better for a realistic character. I am taking animation class where rigging the character is the hardest part to learn, especially with the paint weight.
Really interesting stuff! I never even imagined something like blending, but now that you explain it, it seems so obvious, haha. Though you say you're not in the field, I think you do a good job of conveying the concepts. The overly busy animation reminds me of some cartoon movies ... or more specifically, the bad ones I've seen on satirical reviews. The Magic Voyage and Felix the Cat come to mind. In fact, doesn't the Felix-era of animation have a lot of overly busy animation as well? Thanks for the video! I never got to play Jak and Daxter, but this is really peaking my interest!
I love the Jak and Daxter games! Especially the first one. They built such a really cool fantasy world for that first game, and it's a shame they never returned to it in the sequels.
Might seem like a funny recommendation, but think about doing a one-off on Sonic the Fighter, it's impressive what they were able to pull off on the model 2, and in terms of really odd facial animation, check out Sonic Adventure, they did something kind of like morph shapes, but they seemingly couldn't blend them, just transition between them.
I feel like you could have analyses a lot of the other parts of the game and it's animation, it had a massive amount of unique things occurring in the game that were just very special and different from so many other games both of its time and the modern times of gaming
I honestly never noticed how busy the animation was until you pointed it out. It doesn't really bother me as much as it seems to bother you. Probably the nostalgia glasses on, though
It's really cool to see a more in depth look at some games. It's what i plan on doing in the long run. I'm new to TH-cam and I would enjoy more subs. c:
I'm actually thankful for how often you complain about the over-acting because I can't help but notice it. In the first episode, before you even spoke about it, I was thinking right in the back of my head "Boy this is hard to look at for some reason." Too much activity on the screen at once.
nooooo! more jak and daxter! we didn't even see the enemy animations! or the roll! or the passive stuff! or the death animations! or the after-death animations! );
Can you do a look at jak II and/or jak III to see the differences/improvements in the animation? At least the attack animations, since in all three of the games they all function the same way.
I forgot how awesome the "YOU GOT THE THIIIIING" animations were in this game, I think Jak 2 disappointed me when I was a kid, not because of the guns, or the minor swearing, or the overall edginess. It was that they didn't have power cells slam for Daxter to slam dunk
if you guys wanted to do a Jak and Daxter playthough here on Extra Play my feelings wouldnt be hurt. Being someone who studdied/studys animation and a fan of the Jak series (I play 1-3 again every few years) i would love to see your thoughts on some of the level design and animation throughout the series and come on HOVERBOARD!!
Interesting how you have talked about a lot of PS2 games. Would be interesting see you talk about some games from the previous generation or the current.
I'm somewhat upset that they didn't go over how Naughty Dog used the invisible wall mechanic that they did with the fish. The different combat actions are also able to be strung together; forward roll (which does damage itself) + punch + uppercut + ground pound + (down + jump) + spin-kick = combo
The exaggeration is what helps, always. With humans in reality, what moves in an expression? Right the eyebrows and the jaw, maybe a bit of the nose or eyelids. In animation, they give animals extra exaggeration with the tail and ears. So each feature doesn't get abandoned. And in cartoons, they go far with the eye shape to. Especially with Daxter. But yeah, I am not fond of the Mayor or the bird lady... xd
Some newer games could learn from the idea of having different animations to the same move. Really gives longer life to repetitive actions, especially if characters have a limited list of moves.
Think the last uppercut animation is copy paste of the "square (hit) + X (jump)" animation while the character is moving. Would explain Daxter's sudden pop in placement
The character design and style remind me a bit of Jimmy Neutron, the Nickelodeon movie/TV show. I think the two were made about the same time as well. Probably similar look due to the limited technology of the time.
Ugh Dan, don't tease me with thoughts of naughty dog making a modern Jak and Daxter. That sounds way too cool.
I've always adored the sheer attention to detail in the animations of Jak and Daxter more than any other platforming character or duo. Their variety and expressiveness boggles my mind to this day (at least for the gaming industry). Thanks for the breakdown!
The open mouth on Daxter during the slamdunk, I lost it.
That slam dunk breakdown was really interesting! The Power Cell get animations are truly impressive.
Please keep this principles of animation series going! This has been a great learning experience and entertaining to boot.
You can also perform the uppercut by punching then immediately jumping, which makes the beginning frames make a bit more sense.
Jak 1, 2, and 3; The *only* games I would buy a PC/PS4 Remaster of. On a side note: Not finishing Jak and Daxter is my biggest gaming regret. Finished 2 & 3 multiple times, though.
Let's take a close look at the squash and stretch effect in action during Jak & Daxter's victory poses and more!
+Extra Play The animation around 16:33 typically follows the forward punch by pressing x afterwards. Might make it look a bit more natural.
+Extra Play I was kind of hoping you'd mention how he Jak different wading animations for different depths of water, but it never came up, I think it's one of the more interesting extra things they did for the game.
+Extra Play It occurred to me that perhaps the weird preparation animation before Jak does the uppercut is because they're trying to give the illusion of anticipation? There's no actual time for Jak to do a long preparation to bring his arm back and leap upwards but if they make Daxter look like he's flying back as though Jak did do it, then we'll think he did take the time to prepare?
+Extra Play I'm so happy you showcased the "slam dunk" animation. One of my favorites. It shows how much you can get away with when something is moving. When Daxter's on the apex of the jump, his arms clip through his head as he catches the Precursor, and then as he's coming down, his jaw goes into his chest at an unnatural look. But without it being slowed down, one wouldn't even really notice it.
I think, even in motion, that goofy T-Pose still works with the motion of being thrown back up into the air. B)
+terracannon876 I think the reason it looks weird is because it's meant to be done after the regular punch, by jumping at the end of it, so the beginning frames of the uppercut are the ending frames of the punch
Honestly, I played this game as a kid... and I think thats why everything is so 'busy'. I loved this game because it never let me get bored. I didn't moan and groan when I had to listen to people talk and give me missions, stuff like that. Honestly, I think it's meant for kids, and kids don't get 'subtlety'.
I used to get nightmares from the fish in this game. .. you know the one.
games will always have trouble with water levels
+Nujum Key (Hearthstone & Let's Plays) Not a water level, I think they're talking about the shark that acted as a boundary for the ocean. Misty island (I think), and the town area where Dan was is right next to an ocean that you could swim out into but if you got too far out a shark would come and eat you, to keep you from hitting the actual boundary wall.
n00bist723 ya exactly, whenever I accidentally fell in the water, and my death was inevitable, i would drop the controller and run out of the room for like a minute to ensure myself to not see or hear what happens.
YES! I would turn off my TV hoping I would have already been respawned by the time it would come back up (cus old TVs yaknow)
Also, my dad managed to glitch it onto that beach between the farm and the jungle. We proceeded to attack it violently.
I know it's been said, but you're really nailing it with this series. It's easy to overlook how important these animation touches are when playing these games, but man do they make a difference.
"I think that's enough for Jak and Daxter."
No such thing.
As a rigger who's used both bones and blend-shapes for character faces, I have to say it surprises me that blend-shapes are so out of vogue these days. I mean, I get using bones for stuff like the jaw, eyes, eyelids, even the eyebrows - that is clearly superior - but I've always found blend-shapes work so, SO much better for lip movements. They let you do a whole lot more delicate work when it comes to how the mouth movements effect the muscles and skin around them while simultaneously automating those very effects for the sake of the animator; it's both easier to get right AND easier to animate with. My preferred method of facial rigging has basically no joints below the one for the jaw.
I dunno, maybe that's just like, my opinion man ... SLEAZY PLUG: go look at my channel for examples of what I was talking about~
+Norvolo I tend to like a bit more precise control for shaping expressions and phonemes, so a blend of bones + blendshapes always feels ideal when I'm animating. At a certain point, it does come down to preference. That and how WELL the rig or blend setup has been built.
Yeah that makes sense. I guess from a rigger's perspective relying solely on blendshapes just makes it quicker/easier to get the facial deformations to look right - although, I also prefer to mostly use blendshapes when animating as well. To each their own!
I'd say that last uppercut animation looks weird at the beginning because it can be triggered in another way by punching and jumping while the punch advances. That way, the stretchy Daxter blends better with the previous animation.
+javierbg1995 Yeah, when seeing it frame-by-frame, it looked to me like they were using the same first few frames as a regular punch, probably to tie the combo together (or maybe just to save data space).
Oh, there it is, you found the funny attack additions I thought you missed in #1! On the subject of the upper cut, the posing at the start of the move suggests that it's something that was originally intended to happen after the normal forward punch, which is something you can do in the game. When doing it crouching down, the transition doesn't work because of that.
Something you may find interesting is that the animation for a move was changed for Jak II and 3. It's the high Slam-Bounce move that happens when you hold X while doing the ground pound move. In Jak One Jak does the splits in mid-air similar to the crouching High Jump. In Jak II however he does a mid-air tuck-roll type of move that looks way prettier (and goes well with the longer hair he has in that game).
Naughty Dog themselves didn't use bone animation all the time. Apparently for Crash Bandicoot they found bones too limiting on PSone for the cartoony animation they wanted. So they animated the vertexes instead! Obviously time-consuming, but the effort shows in crazy death animations where Crash flies around like a deflating balloon, or is atomized, or falls to the ground in charred ruins after being burnt by fire.
One of my favorite animations in the game is the roll/long jump animation. The way they animate the character models makes it really feel fluid.
The slam dunk was also my favourite power cell animation, and I never even noticed the T pose Daxter makes towards the end. Makes me really want to play the game again.
so something I noticed was most of Jakes signiture mores after getting a precursor cell is the exact same and that it is Daxter that mainly animates the duo. also just starting out on development this particular series is amazing!
So much care and attention to detail. It's great to see someone recognise and praise such great work.
I'm majoring Computer Science & Engineering in college and I'm not in any way an expert in animation, though I find your explanatory videos so much entertaining and so educational. To be honest, I've learned quite a bit of subtle things in Jak & Daxter's animation that I even had no idea back when I was playing these games as an 11 or 12 y/o. I kept admiring the work and effort the animations team put in the animation of Jak & Daxter as you explained the subtle details as in the principles of animation they've adopted and everything. I've noticed so much that I haven't even noticed back then. Thanks for making such videos, please keep up with the good work!
Holy crap, 2 in one day? Dan, you're spoiling us D:
Preaching it!!!
+Muhammad Gheith I'm guessing it's because there's only 2 videos for this game so it seemed pointless to spread them out.
Please keep up this series, Jak and Daxter is such an amazing game and really left an impression on me at 14. I now work in the games industry as an animator and I aspire to this kind of animation quality.
One thing I noticed about the power cell animations is that Jak and Daxter rarely change poses in unison unless there's a bit of a buildup and they snap to the same poses. It kind of juggles from a change in one to a change in the other.
I never noticed Daxter's different recovery animations either... Think of how few people actually got to appreciate that. What an awesome addition.
15:30 For Jak's uppercut animation, I believe that it starts out a bit weird because another way to activate it is from a punch to the uppercut (Square, then immediately X, and he'll do the uppercut.), so that weird couple frames is the transition from the punch to the uppercut. I just wanted to say that.
Those victory dances are easily my second favorite part of the game.
But the best part is using the blue eco jump platforms. God those are amazing!
Really liked the Splatoon Victory remix during Jak and Dax victories ^^
One specific animation I remember from this game is that Jack can trip in some places. I think its very rare and happens only in peaceful places like the village but is a blast when it happens.
Each video in this series just gets better and better. Keep it up Dan!
Really enjoying the new style of these animation videos, they seem more direct and less like a play through. Play throughs are great, but this series is about animation and you've done a really good job!
Hey Dan, I'm not sure if you're able to do a DS game for one of these, but have you considered doing an animation analysis video of the game "Ghost Trick"? That game has some *insane* animation. I don't quite have the expertise to articulate what makes it so note-worthy. It seems... too smooth, sometimes, I guess? I'd love to know why it feels the way it does. All I can tell you is that it's really beautiful but also really funky, so I'd love to hear your take on it.
I think the reason the uppercut has such an odd start is due to it linking from his standard punch if you punch, then immediately jump. Judging by the start, my guess is that the uppercut was initially only planned to be a follow up to the punch, but later the option of doing it from a crouch was also added. Considering the multitude of animations in the game it was probably a change late enough in development that they didn't feel the need to polish it up.
Wow... Never seen these games in action before. This was really eye opening to me. I can see now how easy it must have been to fall madly in love with this game right from the start.
I've two things to point out: the swimming animation is a modified breast stroke since it's the only stroke that you can complete with your head above the water. Two, the threading water animation sort of works, but it's inefficient.
I will always remember the cat/tiger/lion/ model in World of Warcraft. So few polys but the animation was so good you could always feel the feline grace in those edgy prowlers.
Thanks for making me get my dusty PS2 out the loft to play this again, may have been a mission but so worth it.
Just to let you know - from memory you could chain the upper-cut animation from the regular punch.
The animation - with the way Daxter's stretched out behind, is likely a hang-over from that combo, rather than the crouch upper-cut. Someone at ND probably went "eg, it's good enough, we don't need to animate another one!"
My favorite "floating and moving" pickup animation was the chocolate in Conker's Bad Fur Day. They look so good in the game world.
Watching the uppercut I think the strange frames at the start are because that animation can be entered from a punch, they probably built it around that first and only added the ability to do it from the crouch later to make the attack easier to do.
I LOVE making blend shapes. Animating them isn't so bad either, although bones are way, way more intuitive especially if you have a great rig. That said, getting bones to work properly in really finicky areas like the face is a NIGHTMARE.
I already watched almost all of your animation in games videos and as someone with a technical background and who had Kingdom Hearts and Jak & Daxter as his first games on the PS2 and already back then enjoying the really awesome animations, I more than enjoy your detailed, informative and cool insights into the animation principles and techniques!
Regarding Jak & Daxter, thank you for pointing out my favorite getting-the-power-cell animation :D Furthermore, there is another really cool variant of the spin attack animation, where Jak does the spin attack while running and keeps running after performing the attack --> Daxter will sometimes land on Jak's face and Jak will rip Daxter off from his face and throw him back onto his shoulder pad, all while running. Only shows all the sweet little details in this game :) Keep up the awesome work! Looking forward to whatever next principle and game you're going to tackle!
(Also thanks A LOT for that channel recommendation!!! I'll definitely gonna check out some of their videos as well!)
the urge to replay this on my old ps2 intensifies
15:45
I think the few weird frames are there because they don't actually belong to that animation. This uppercut can also be casted by jumping right after punching. So I guess what you noticed here is a part of the punching animation that doesn't happen when crouching.
Wow. A series about my favorite aspect of videogames, starting out with three of my favorite franchises. This is pure gold.
About games that I would like to hear you talking about, MGS2 and 2D fighting games. Specially KoF XII and Street Fighter III 3rd Strike.
that freeze frame on the slam dunk is now my avatar on teamspeak XD
Those weird first few frames of the uppercut are there because it is also a follow up attack after the forward punch, that is why Daxter is already stretched out.
I'm surprised you didn't cover the long jump; that's one with a LOT of obvious stretching going on.
I feel like a lot of modern video games miss the boat on expressive faces. Blend shapes kind of intrigue me, though I kind of understand why they might not have much of a place in modern tech - I would guess they're harder to use with a customizable face (eg, Fallout, any MMO), and maybe are a bit more prone to collision situations where part of someone's face intersects in a weird way. That's only my prediction though.
I'm also partly guessing that the extreme over-expressiveness of the characters is to make up for the game originally being on relatively low-resolution displays, and even very small TVs before many people had a 40" HDTV. A lot of those reactions would make sense to just be a lower-eyelid-raise and a slight head tilt, but then those small gestures would be so small as to be unnoticeable if you're not playing on something pretty big.
Even today there's times where an animator like me is prone to worry about "Well, now it doesn't look noticeable" - but it can be hard to admit that's not quite true, and sometimes the little animation nods are best appreciated when they hit the right subtlety; they can even contribute to someone's appreciation of it at the back of someone's mind when they don't notice it directly.
I love the very appropriate celebration music!
The blend shape method seems great for very cartoony animations, where the faces can change very heavily.
Also, ClassicGameJunkie has a video about how they made the water in Super Mario Sunshine? I HAVE to watch that. The water in Super Mario Sunshine is amazing.
In blender, they're called "Shape Keys"
I'm enjoying the animation videos, but I'm also curious if anyone else on the Extra Credits team can shed such a fine light on their particular areas of expertise. In part because I'm not sure who all is on the team or what their areas of expertise are.
+Timothy McLean James' particular area of expertise is destiny
+minch333 Destiny is his destiny, harhar
You can actually do the uppercut move by throwing a regular punch and while the animation is playing you can jump to connect into the uppercut move. If I'd have to guess, this is the reason why the startup of the standing still uppercut is so fast and kind of wonky looking. They probably only had the uppercut as a followup to the standard punch and then added in the crouching version later and didn't have time to make an entirely new one from that position.
I think the reason the uppercut start up doesn't really match up is because its meant to be a punch, jump combo to make that uppercut happen. I didn't even know you could just uppercut from crouch.
Daniel you could also do an episode on the animation of the prince in the Sands of Time for the ps2! It conveys movement and momentum so smoothly. The cloth also looks wonderful. Excellent animation especially for that era!
If you want to play around with using blend shapes, MMD is a free program that operates faces using blend shapes.
Dan, there is actually a reason why the uppercut starts so weird, it's meant to come after a punch as if you jump after punch you do an uppercut.
Something I've noticed from this episode and the last is that in the cut scenes, when the camera "cuts," there is sometimes a single frame that is very weird. It's like camera takes it's new position a frame before or after the models do.
Does anyone know the technical reason for this?
+Parker Bourassa I think your guess is more or less correct: it's the camera, models and lights all transitioning for a new shot but it doesn't manage all of it between frames.
+Parker Bourassa since it;s at 30fps, and this game was meant to be played by a younger audience who at this point would be far too invested in whats happening to really notice, it's most definitely the hardware and coding of the scenes just not being lined up perfectly. Since these cutscenes are "recorded" (in the sense that they are pre-rendered), each cutscene is animated in real space with the camera being placed somewhere to give that framing, and when the camera moves, the models have to be placed in their new animation place.
Dan knows far more what's going on, I'm speaking from my experience with 2d animation in Flash CS4, but in simple terms, the game is loading the pre-rendered models to do their animated movements just a SPLIT second after the camera was moved around the room. If you ever saw hacked games where entire cutscenes played without moving the camera, you would see what i am talking about.
Yes it does do that, I remember when I was younger it would have that weird frame, sometimes it went as far as to have a black frame in there too
A really crude and easy to follow example of Blend Shapes would probably be Sonic Adventure 1. Not an example of quality, but one that's also easy to follow.
How come, I just discovered this awesome Channel of yours, despite the fact of being a Follower of Extra Credits for a few years now? This is awesome you guys and gals!!!
One of these needs to be on a fighting game
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think they were on PlayStation all stars at one point
nick11crafter I worded that incorrectly. I meant to say that we should get an animation analysis on a fighting game
+PixelChaos Great idea, something like Skullgirls or Garou would probably be a good fit.
+Kotano I know he has mentioned guilty hear xrd on twitter, and that game has some crazy stuff going on for its animation
wow. never realized how good this game looked
Is it just me, or in the most of the "celebration animations" at 14:22, Jak does one of two different sets of animations for all of them in the background, while Daxter does all of the main moving around with a new animation for each one.
+David Vogel Actually, looking back, Jak only does one animation with maybe different facial expressions.
Blend shapes are perfect for the cartoony style while the joint on the face is better for a realistic character. I am taking animation class where rigging the character is the hardest part to learn, especially with the paint weight.
Sometimes blend spaces are still used to chain together animations like going smoothly from a walk to a run.
Really interesting stuff! I never even imagined something like blending, but now that you explain it, it seems so obvious, haha. Though you say you're not in the field, I think you do a good job of conveying the concepts. The overly busy animation reminds me of some cartoon movies ... or more specifically, the bad ones I've seen on satirical reviews. The Magic Voyage and Felix the Cat come to mind. In fact, doesn't the Felix-era of animation have a lot of overly busy animation as well?
Thanks for the video! I never got to play Jak and Daxter, but this is really peaking my interest!
I could listen to you analyze Jak & Daxter all day!😄
Great video!😊
I love the Jak and Daxter games! Especially the first one. They built such a really cool fantasy world for that first game, and it's a shame they never returned to it in the sequels.
Might seem like a funny recommendation, but think about doing a one-off on Sonic the Fighter, it's impressive what they were able to pull off on the model 2, and in terms of really odd facial animation, check out Sonic Adventure, they did something kind of like morph shapes, but they seemingly couldn't blend them, just transition between them.
I feel like you could have analyses a lot of the other parts of the game and it's animation, it had a massive amount of unique things occurring in the game that were just very special and different from so many other games both of its time and the modern times of gaming
I honestly never noticed how busy the animation was until you pointed it out. It doesn't really bother me as much as it seems to bother you. Probably the nostalgia glasses on, though
It's really cool to see a more in depth look at some games. It's what i plan on doing in the long run. I'm new to TH-cam and I would enjoy more subs. c:
This was awesome!!! Thank you!
During the victory pose montage I was really hoping you would include the easter egg from Ratchet and Clank 2.
I honestly thought that the "face bone" method was saved for movies while blend shapes were used for games.
I'm actually thankful for how often you complain about the over-acting because I can't help but notice it. In the first episode, before you even spoke about it, I was thinking right in the back of my head "Boy this is hard to look at for some reason." Too much activity on the screen at once.
the dunk is my favorite I got power cell animation to
really loving this :D wonder what the next game will be :)
nooooo! more jak and daxter! we didn't even see the enemy animations! or the roll! or the passive stuff! or the death animations! or the after-death animations! );
4:02 amen
the nostalgia of a memory card.
at 15:00 all my brain was hearing was: Shoriyuken
I love this game so freakin much. I'm gonna get a PS3 just so I can play the Jak and Daxter collection
so 3d tweening? (in between if you read this and new to animation, it is typically used in 2d animations.)
Can you do a look at jak II and/or jak III to see the differences/improvements in the animation? At least the attack animations, since in all three of the games they all function the same way.
Blend Shapes hm... Interesting! My animation mentor thought me something like that where I would replace puppet animation in flash with movie clips.
I forgot how awesome the "YOU GOT THE THIIIIING" animations were in this game, I think Jak 2 disappointed me when I was a kid, not because of the guns, or the minor swearing, or the overall edginess. It was that they didn't have power cells slam for Daxter to slam dunk
if you guys wanted to do a Jak and Daxter playthough here on Extra Play my feelings wouldnt be hurt. Being someone who studdied/studys animation and a fan of the Jak series (I play 1-3 again every few years) i would love to see your thoughts on some of the level design and animation throughout the series and come on HOVERBOARD!!
I really enjoyed this. But I wish you had gone over all of the attack animations.
Interesting how you have talked about a lot of PS2 games. Would be interesting see you talk about some games from the previous generation or the current.
+Anders Eklöf Yeah, that sort of happened accidentally... there will be a wider spread in the future!
+Daniel Floyd but i really appreciate this show!
I'm somewhat upset that they didn't go over how Naughty Dog used the invisible wall mechanic that they did with the fish. The different combat actions are also able to be strung together; forward roll (which does damage itself) + punch + uppercut + ground pound + (down + jump) + spin-kick = combo
The exaggeration is what helps, always. With humans in reality, what moves in an expression? Right the eyebrows and the jaw, maybe a bit of the nose or eyelids. In animation, they give animals extra exaggeration with the tail and ears. So each feature doesn't get abandoned. And in cartoons, they go far with the eye shape to. Especially with Daxter. But yeah, I am not fond of the Mayor or the bird lady... xd
Is daxter and jack the same "character"? Or is it 2 independent objects that just share the same states/event in order to run the animations?
If you get the chance I would love to see you do an animation series on Psychonaughts^_^
And you didn't talk about the nightmare inducing fish? Seriously?
i love the Balance of Jak animations being really basic Game movement as opposed to Daxter's over the top cartoony stuff
Please do one for Jak 3, the heavy characterization game in the series. Explore the improvements the sequels made.
Some newer games could learn from the idea of having different animations to the same move. Really gives longer life to repetitive actions, especially if characters have a limited list of moves.
Think the last uppercut animation is copy paste of the "square (hit) + X (jump)" animation while the character is moving. Would explain Daxter's sudden pop in placement
The character design and style remind me a bit of Jimmy Neutron, the Nickelodeon movie/TV show. I think the two were made about the same time as well. Probably similar look due to the limited technology of the time.