Check out Trunk or Tread on Itch.IO!
https://alittar.itch.io/trunk-or-tread
From October 18th to 25th I participated in the Halloween-themed Game Developers of Dallas Game Jam, working alongside four other students to create Trunk or Tread, a chaotic arcade driving game where you're an angry PTA mom trick-or-treating from behind the wheel of an aggressively driven car. We won first place!
I served as the team's 3D and Technical Animator, focusing primarily on bringing the car to life, rigging it up, and moving it around while accounting for game feel and creating as much personality as possible in as little time as I could manage. I ended up coming up with various simple animations paired with an aggressive vibration animation which scales its weight inversely to the player's HP, causing the car to shake more and more violently the more you run into things.
This was a fast-paced week of experimentation and problem-solving, and I’m really proud of how much personality we were able to pack into such a short development window. If you haven’t yet, give Trunk or Tread a spin, it runs right in your browser!
Huge thanks to the rest of my team, without which this wouldn't have been possible:
Chandler - Lead Programmer
Ashley - 3D Asset Lead, Sound Design
Audrey - Sprite Artist, 2D Animation Lead
Esther - Character Design, 2D Animation
Music used - "Threshold" by Michael Grubb, the same song we used in the game.
A little showcase of everything we'll be going over later as it appears in-game. Music is "Threshold" by Michael Grubb.
The car's animation is driven by velocity, a boolean, and a trigger. The braking and stopping animations are determined by whether the player was moving forward or backward as they hit the brakes. Crashing triggers upon the player's HP hitting zero.
The general locomotion consists of four simple poses which are blended between based on the player's velocity. As they drive forward, the chassis leans back, as they turn right the chassis leans left.
While I did not create the sprites, I did implement them and animate the sprite renderer to bring extra life to the minimal animation. NPCs wobble as they walk, jump in surprise as the car approaches, and shiver in fear until the car is far enough away.
Something I explored this project was using animation layers to organize and blend animations. On top of each animation being its own layer, a "Vibration" layer was created to overlay on each both in Maya and in Unity. Its weight scales inversely to HP.
My personal favorite animation, as the player finally runs out of HP the car breaks down, the front tires popping away cartoonishly and the front falling to the ground. In-engine, this is paired with smoke and fire to sell the damage.