Hey everybody!
Welcome to New Frame Plus.
Let’s do another animation breakdown.
Today’s subject, by patron request:
the inkling transformations from kid to squid to kid again in Splatoon 2.
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 kid-to-squid transformation.
It’s kind of hard to tell exactly how many frames long this animation is
on account of how smooth that blend into the idle is at the end,
but it’s somewhere around 20-24 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 2, the weapon has despawned
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 schlorped 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: cause it actually involves two!
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 mid-point; neither kid nor squid.
A squick, if you will.
But we’re not done yet.
Over the next 4 frames,
your 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 9, your kid blob vanishes in a splash of ink.
Now, if you’re positioned over your own ink at this point,
than your character will effectively just disappear under the ink’s surface.
But if you transform over dry ground, then…
at frame 10, mostly concealed by that same ink splash,
BOOM, your squid model finally appears.
And then for the next 10 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 alright! Now we are squid.
So let's see what it look 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 1, the squid begins to shrink and tuck in on itself a little bit,
pulling its tentacles in.
And then on frame 2, already... BAM, the squick is back,
limbs still tucked underneath the body.
And this time, we’re going to 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 better glimpse at how the limbs were hidden beneath the body.
And this is some pretty nice concealment on the animator’s 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 the squick stands up and begins straightening their legs,
notice how the hands stay where they are,
tucked into the floor as the arms streeeeetch out.
Forgive me just a brief moment of SUPER nitpicky-ness,
but I can’t 100% decide on the intended reason for this.
One possibility could be that the squick is meant to be using its arms to help
push itself upright,
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 ink mess under the body as it rises up from the floor,
which is definitely the feeling that all of these wonderfully drippy splash FX are selling.
But then, I feel like the arms feel just slightly too rigid to
effectively read as stretchy goo.
They feel pretty solid and plastic 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 in 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 squick’s 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 squick model.
We can see its head shrinking down to inkling size.
Its arms are shrinking as well.
And that really does helps 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 coating starts to clear,
but my favorite detail is how
there’s this very slight scaling effect on their entire body,
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 squick model too!
Now, there is no overstating how important the ink splash FX 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.
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 mid air too!
Heck, the transformation's fast enough that you can jump,
start the transformation and then reverse it, all before hitting the ground.
And yes, the transformation does looks a bit more awkward in mid air
especially if you’re 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 polish 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 dxman 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!
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