How Do Inkling Transformations Work?

hey everybody welcome to new frame plus let's do another animation breakdown today's subject by a patron requests the inkling transformations from kid to squid to kid again in splatoon too these are some quick little animations but very important to the world of splatoon and they're actually packed with entertaining detail so let's dive in the Inklings of splatoon are a strange species of humanoid squid things that can change form at will at any time if the player holds down the left z trigger their inkling will quickly transform from kid to squid while in this form the inkling can't use their weapon but they can swim quickly and stealthily through ink of their own color as well as reload their ink tank release that trigger and the squid becomes kid once more now this transformation as is the case with most video game character transformations is really just a well-hidden model swap a sneaky little switcheroo hidden behind some ink splash effects but character animation is contributing to that effect so let's go frame by frame and see if we can figure out what they're doing first the kids - squid - transformation it's kind of hard to tell exactly how many frames long this animation is on account of how smooth that blend in to the idle is at the end but it's somewhere around 20 to 24 frames long beginning to end very quick less than half a second on the first frame the kid's body starts getting coated in a layer of ink and their weapon begins shrinking by frame - the weapon has despond and the kid is starting to drop forward toward the ground by frame 3 they've already nearly face planted on the ground in front of them they're tucking their arms and legs underneath their body their ink canister has shrunk down and slurped right into their torso gross and by this point they are entirely coated in that layer of ink which is going to be very important to hiding what happens next on frame 4 you remember how I said this transformation involves a sneaky model swap well I lied because it actually involves 2 on this frame your custom inkling character model swaps for a much simpler generic model with a head shape somewhat resembling the squid you're about to turn into it's a transformation midpoint neither kids nor squid ace quick if you will but we're not done yet over the next four frames you're squick tucks their arms and legs completely underneath their body and flops down flat on the ground so that their body and their squiddy little head are all you can see your humanoid blob has indeed contorted itself into an almost kind of squid-like shape and at frame nine your kid blob vanishes in a splash of ink now if you're positioned over your own ink at this point then your character will effectively just disappear under the ink surface but if you transform over dry ground then at frame ten mostly concealed by that same ink splash boom your squid model finally appears and then for the next ten frames or so the ink splash dissipates and your squid flops to rest on the ground seamlessly blending into its idle animation and I do rather like that flop of the tentacles as they settle so all right now we are squid so let's see what it looks like if we release that trigger and transform back to kid now this animation is about twice as long as the first one closer to 42 ish frames on frame one the squid begins to shrink and tuck in on itself a little bit pulling its tentacles in and then on frame two already BAM thus quick is back limbs still tucked underneath the body and this time we're gonna get a much better look at what this transitional squick model can do over the course of the next 23 frames your blob of a character is going to stand up and it is wonderfully gross looking there is a lot going on here let me see if I can cover all of it those first few frames of this standing motion when you go through them slowly give a much better glimpse at how the limbs were hidden beneath the body and this is some pretty nice concealment on the animators part here they really had to contort this character to make that work it turns out that the feet were hidden up inside the head which is clever and gross now as this quick stands up and begins straightening their legs notice how the hands stay where they are tucked into the floor as the arms stretch out forgive me just a brief moment of super nitpick enos but I can't a hundred percent decide on the intended reason for this but one possibility could be that these quick is meant to be using its arms to help push itself up right but the arms straighten out a little bit too early to effectively look like they're pushing against the ground it really feels more to me like they're being stretched and that stretching makes me think that the real intent here was to make these tentacle arm limb things feel like a goopy shapeless inked mess under the body as it rises up from the floor which is definitely the feeling that all of these wonderfully drippy splash effects are selling but then I feel like the arms feels just slightly too rigid to effectively read as stretchy goo they feel pretty solid and plasticky here right of course I imagine that this character rig is fairly lightweight and simple the animator probably didn't have the robust arm shaping controls that you would need to make these arms feel all soft and gooey and stuff and to be even more fair this detail comes and goes in the blink of an eye so it's really meant to be felt more than seen speaking of seeing though this time we get a much better look at the squeaks weird head just look at that squid face the second half of this standing upright motion really shows some of the scaling and morphing control the animators have on this squid model we can see its head shrinking down to inkling size its arms are shrinking as well and that really does help to make this inkling feel squishy and then right about at frame 30 with another big ink splash to hide the seams the last model swap finally happens and our custom-made kid form is back although still covered in ink over the next 12 frames the kid settles back into their idle animation and that ink coding starts to clear but my favorite detail is how there's this very slight scaling effect on their entire body just increasing their size for a few frames before shrinking them back down to their default size it's very very subtle but again it keeps them feeling squishy even while in humanoid kid form these Inklings still retain some of that malleable squiddy bounce I love it oh and if you're curious about what this animation looks like for octolings it's the same same animation just applied to octoling kid and squid models and they even have their own unique squid model too now there's no overstating how important the ink splash effects are to making this illusion work those splashes are obscuring everything they need to to hide the model swaps and make this transformation feel seamless but really if they wanted they probably could have had this transformation just be instantaneous just an instant model swap behind a splash of ink poof done plenty of games do just do that but if they did it wouldn't feel like a transformation the way this does all of this animation might still happen faster than you can really see in the moment but having just those few frames of the inkling contorting into a new shape really helps to sell the feel of this weird creature shape-shifting and these animations are versatile you can initiate these transformations at any time the blending out of and then into the run animation is pretty fast but it's clean you can transform in midair to catch the transformations fast enough that you can jump start the transformation and then reverse it all before hitting the ground and yes the transformation does look a bit more awkward in midair especially if you are rapid swapping between forms like a goof but it all still happens too fast to look noticeably bad and as the player controlling this character having the ability to swap forms in an instant at all times feels really great I say that trading a little bit of animation polished for that responsive control is absolutely worthwhile it usually is I think these animations are great they happen quickly they look cool and gross and they help to contribute to this bizarre world's fiction without ever getting in the way solid animation work all around a big thank you to both unpronounceable and DX man for suggesting this topic this was fun if you would like to suggest a topic for some future video then consider supporting the show like all of these folks thanks for watching I'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: New Frame Plus

Views: 143,693

Keywords: Splatoon, Splatoon 2, inkling, inklings, octoling, squid, kid, transformation, squick, animation, explain, explained, compare, breakdown, gameplay, New Frame Plus, New Frame +, New Frame+, Animation, Game Animation, Animator, Video Games, Daniel Floyd, Dan, Extra Frames, Extra Credits, Extra History, PlayFrame, animate

Id: -oMTHqC5GxI

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020