Q & A: BEARCOWBOY – Charlotte Seeker

Hi Warriors! I have a treat for you today! I was talking to a few of my friends who are using Mecanim in their current game project, and I thought it would be really cool to share their work with everyone in a new Q & A format. I hope you enjoy this little interview, and if you’d like to see more content like this coming from active developers be sure to let us know in the comments. 🙂

Dan Hernbrott, BEARCOWBOY

And now let me introduce BEARCOWBOY, an LLC made up of talented developers Dan Hernbrott (@hernbot) and Joseph Hogwood (@JRPGKing). They are currently working on their game Charlotte Seeker, which I encourage you to support via their Charlotte Seeker Kickstarter. (Hurry! It’s nearly over!) I spoke with Dan about their work, and here’s what he had to say.

Dan, tell us all a little bit about Charlotte Seeker.

Charlotte Seeker is a combination of a Roguelike and a Twinstick shooter. Starring the most badass treasure hunter in the galaxy, the player takes control of Charlotte as she blasts through an ancient spaceship that has been left behind in the furthest reaches of space. So its basically the coolest thing ever. Technically, the game is using Unity’s 2D toolset for it’s visuals/physics.

When we spoke before you told me that you’re using Mecanim for animating all of your 2D sprites. Can you talk some about how that has affected your development process?

Well, for the most part it’s made the development process a bit easier. I could potentially write my own animation system, but Mecanim does everything that I need it to do so there isn’t much of a reason to do all that extra work.

Mecanim is really the final piece of an animation pipeline. What tools are you using for asset creation before you bring things into Unity?

If I’m being totally honest, I don’t know the answer to this one. We don’t make our own art, so our artist just gives us the PNGs when he’s done. I imagine the pipeline would be a bit more complicated if we were working in 3D, though.

What has been the best part about animating with Mecanim?

A few things. First, I really enjoy the state tree. It makes it really easy to visualize where all the connections between animations are and where I need a connection that I don’t already have.  Second, I love how easy it makes it to bring in art assets and make an animation out of them. Its a little unintuitive (so its nice that there is a community documenting its use), but easy.

Is there any advice you’d like to give to other developers using Mecanim for 2D animation?

Yes! The two basic things.

1. 

   The simplest way to make an animation with sprites is to select the sprites you want in the animation, then to drag them into the scene.

2. Making an animation with a single sprite is also possible!
   1. Bring the sprite you want as an animation into the scene.
   2. Select the game object you just created.
   3. Go to Window ->Animation (or CTRL+6).
   4. Select “Add Curve” on the left.
   5. Select SpriteAnimator ->Sprite

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Alright, that’s it! I want to thank Dan and BEARCOWBOY for sharing their insights into using Mecanim with 2D animations and, I wish them the best with Charlotte Seeker. Don’t forget to support BEARCOWBOY by backing their Charlotte Seeker Kickstarter (with some pretty cool rewards!). If you have any questions for Dan, feel free to write a comment below. I’ll be sure to send them his way.

Happy trails, Warriors.

A goody for Kickstarter backers! Large poster, 18 x 24, Heavy stock

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