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| [ about | the team | Danny Cartwright ] |
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Animation, Graphic Design & Additional Background Art
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Perched over a desk with graphics tablet in one hand, can of Coke in the other,
artist Danny Cartwright is contemplating his latest creation - those irritatingly
cute Worms you see in the game. Everything from the ubiquitous Concrete Donkey to
the loyal but sadly stupid Homing Pigeon - this man is responsible.
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How long have you been working on Worms2?
Since I started with Team17 really - ever since May 96. The first
real job was deciding how we wanted the Worms to look as we wanted to do
something far more impressive visually than in the first game, especially
at a higher resolution. This was far from easy!
Where did you get your inspiration from for the Worms 2 graphics?
I think the predominant inspiration was from slapstick cartoons and
in particular, Ren & Stimpy. We did lots of tests and went for a
completely madcap style, but in the end it had to be calmed down somewhat
in order to actually pull the whole thing off.
How were the artwork concepts developed for the game?
I spent months drawing stylised Worms in PhotoShop, sketching them
and getting ideas for the possibilities. It's such an important character
that it had to be right, and it had to be right to work with the many
link-frames and everything we wanted the Worms to do in the game. In the
end we had to plump for a specialised piece of software, ANIMO from
Cambridge Animation Systems, which is a spline-based 2D-animation package.
ANIMO allows us to render and tween all the frames to create super-smooth
cartoon stylised animation, over 14,000 frames have been produced to date,
and it would have taken 3-4 man-years to do it by traditional methods. Even
with ANIMO, it was months before the steep learning curve of the product
was conquered and then 5-6 tryouts for the worms-character before we
settled with the one we felt was right for the job.
What were your objectives when designing the graphical concept for Worms 2?
Because we'd moved from low to high resolution, we had four times the
amount of pixels with which to detail the Worms characters. Even so, they
are still small and it had to be a compromise of being able to see enough,
but still keep the characters loose and cartoony. The original objectives
were to make everything as smooth and fluid as possible, using 25
frames per second as much as possible, for all actions, with links in and out
of every action, so there was no sprite 'snapping'. For this, an enormous
amount of sprites were required and looking at the version currently, we're
exceptionally pleased with the Worms motion. The Worms now are detailed,
you can see their emotions, reactions and how they work the weapons, it
brings the character of the game more to life, whereas the original really
relied heavily upon the audio as the graphics were very basic and really
only an indicator of what was going on, although we felt there was a
certain amount of charm about it all.
How important was it to make the graphical feel of the game different to
that of the first?
Exceptionally so, we felt that a lot of people simply ignored the
first game due to the visuals being so dated in style, they didn't even
bother to look for the gameplay it contained. To get more detailed worms
and retain the framework of the original gameplay, we had to increase the
resolution to SVGA and also increase the worm-size accordingly. This had
other implications such as more or less limiting the game to purely PC
platforms due to the memory requirements needed for this. We wanted to
make the game come alive with rich visuals, so people could get even closer
to their Worms and see the action really unfold, rather than getting what
we consider was an 'approximation' before. Having said that, we didn't
want to compromise the original game whatsoever, so whatever we did, we had
to consider very carefully, especially with all the link-frames, it's very
hard to get a completely loose feeling character, with link frames to feel
very responsive (akin to linking lots of motion capture files), but Karl
(the coder) has pulled it off and it feels superb.
How many frames of animation does Worms 2 have? How long did they take?
Currently there are in excess of 14,000. It's taken about 7 months
to get all those done, not including all the conceptual work and try-outs.
ANIMO has been excellent for us, but it's a very tricky and frustrating
piece of software to use. As to the final amount of frames, I don't know,
but it'll be a few thousand more! We're adding things all the time and even
silly things like the 'R' for the action replay have a jaunty animated
bounce!
What graphics packages do you use?
Photoshop and ANIMO almost exclusively. PhotoShop for general work
and ANIMO for the sprites.
What hardware do you use?
All the hardware is PC based, mostly P200/128Mb systems with
appropriate cards, scanners and drawing tablets. ANIMO uses NextStep O/S
and we had a few networking problems with the PC's to begin with, but on
the whole, the equipment is ok. The FMV animators render on DEC's.
Have you used any special techniques?
The specialities we have used have mostly been down to the way
ANIMO works. In the end we have conjured a PC game which has a very
different look and feel to most games these days. The visuals are
extremely fluid and due to the high frame rate, especially smooth. Lots of
techniques have been used code-wise to utilise the graphics in an
appropriate way, but at the end of the day, if the player doesn't notice
anything bad about how the sprites move, collide and animate, if there is
no criticism, then we have done our work well.
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| [ about | the team ] |
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Team17 would like to extend their thanks to all who played a big part in Worms2 and the success of the
original game, not least the thousands that gave us much valued feedback on our web-site.
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| Producer |
[ Martyn Brown ]
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| Development |
Craig Jones
Paul Kilburn
Paul Sharp
Espen Lyngaas
David Watson
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| Artists |
[ Danny Cartwright ]
Animation, Graphic Design & Additional Background Art
[ Rico Holmes ]
Lead Background Artist
[ Cris Blyth ]
Video Sequence Design, Animation & Production
[ Rory Little ]
Modelling Support
[ Mark Taylor ]
Modelling Support
Paul Robinson
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| Programmers |
[ Karl Morton ]
Game Code Design & Lead Programming
[ Colin Surridge ]
Menu System & Network GUI Design
[ Phil Carlisle ]
Network & Additional Programming
Rob Hill
Martin Randall
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| Sound and Music |
Bjorn Lynne
Allister Brimble
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| Web Design |
Paul James
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| Quality Assurance |
Paul Field
Paul Dunstan
Kelvin Aston
John Eggett
Mark Baldwin
Grant Towell
Andy Aveyard
Guy Palmer
Emma Aspinall
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| Original Concept |
[ Andy Davidson ]
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