Hello and welcome to New Frame Plus, a series about video game animation.
This is not news to you, but swinging around in Spider-Man looks and feels amazing.
And of course it does. This is an Insomniac game. Their animators are awesome.
There is tons that I could dig into here,
but today I want to focus on just one of his swing animations: the Zip-To-Point move.
Let's just look at this whole move real quick.
As soon as the player hits the commands to initiate the move
Spider-man extends his arms in the direction of the targeted surface,
shoots the webs, yanks himself directly to that spot like a bullet,
catches himself with his hands, brings his feet down just behind them
and settles into that classic Spider-Man perch.
Pretty simple right?
Now, there are essentially three phases to the animation of this move.
Phase One: The Anticipation, where Spidey shoots the webs toward his destination.
The first few frames of this are actually an automated blend from whatever animation Spider-man was playing before.
See, the animators need to transition Spidey into this anticipation pose quickly,
but they've got no way of knowing exactly
what pose Spider-man was in at the moment the player entered the Zip-To-Point command.
They could theoretically just have him snap to that new pose the instant the player hits the button
But it would also look kind of unnatural physically
So instead, they spend the first fraction of a second linearly blending from Spider-Man's previous animation
into this new one, just to smooth that transition out a little.
This is something that you'll see most games do to smooth the transitions from one animation to another
Now, because that blend is somewhat automated,
this is the spot where you're likely to see the most jank, especially when played back in slow motion.
Notice how Spidey's orientation to the ground
changes rapidly (and kind of unnaturally) over the course of just a few frames.
It's a bit of jank that the player is likely to FEEL rather than SEE.
This brings us to the anticipation pose itself, which is really nice.
Spider-Man's arms are extended toward his destination,
which both communicates direction and clearly shows his intent.
His body is also curled up into a ball which is going to contrast really wonderfully with what happens next...
Phase Two: The Action, in which Spider-Man launches toward his destination.
He yanks on the webs and stretches out his body completely.
He's like a dart or an arrow shooting at his target.
And the contrast between the curled-up anticipation and THIS gives just a wonderful spring to the move.
This brings us to Phase Three: The Recovery.
As Spidey nears his destination, he extends his arms to catch himself,
and you get this nice, extended, overlapping bounce on his spine and his head as he absorbs that forward momentum
and settles into the final resting pose
One of the things I really like about this particular animation is how much Squash & Stretch plays into it,
and not because Insomniac's animators are noticeably warping or exaggerating Spidey's physical proportions or anything.
You don't actually have to turn your character into rubber to make use of this animation principle.
Imagine animating a rubber ball springing from one point to another of its own will.
It would squish in the anticipation before the jump...
stretch as it sprang toward its target
and then squash again as it hit the target and tried to quickly stop all that momentum.
Spider-Man's body does something very similar in this animation!
He curls up, launches into a stretched-out pose
and then bunches up again at the finish to try to absorb all that momentum.
The other thing that I love is that, throughout all this, all of the key poses are iconic Spider-Man.
The web shooting anticipation, the flight, the ending perch...
even if you only have a passing familiarity with this character
it all feels just right.
And one last thing worth noting about this
is just how much complexity is hidden inside this one seemingly-simple move
Like, sure, you've got the three parts of this movement: the web shot, the flight and the landing.
Simple enough.
Three animations ought to cover it, right?
What if the player wants to launch Spider-Man toward a perch that ISN'T directly in front of him?
Well, you could use the same starting animation
and just have Spider-Man whip around to face that new direction on the first frame,
but it would feel really unnatural, and totally ignore the momentum his current swing already had.
So, rather than doing that,
Insomniac has created a bunch of variants to that anticipation web shot.
If the player's target is off to one side
Spider-Man will twist his upper body in that direction to shoot the webs,
and then transition into that same stretched-out flight pose after launching.
Aha, but! What if Spider-Man isn't even flying?
What if he's just launching from one perch to another perch?
Well, I guess you're gonna need an alternate starting animation for that scenario too.
But ok, what if he's perched AND point-zipping to a spot behind him?
Well... dang.
I guess we need ANOTHER transition for that edge case.
All of these possible starting positions might lead to the same stretched-out flying pose,
but they require different initial animations to make that transition feel organic and seamless.
BUT it's actually more complicated than even that.
Because I lied a second ago!
Those starting positions DON'T always end up in the same flying pose.
Spider-Man will actually play different Zip-To-Point animations
depending on how far away he is from the target.
If the target is close, he may instead do this simpler hop animation,
more like a web-assisted jump.
But okay, what if the target destination is really far away?
In that scenario, Spider-Man will do this twisting flight path,
which is functionally the same as the regular one, but just a little bit more visually interesting.
I don't know this for sure, but I would guess
that the animators felt that having Spidey stay in this one stretched out pose
for a really long distance Zip-To-Point move felt just a bit flat and same-y.
So they put a little spin in there on the long flights to keep Spider-Man feeling visually interesting and dynamic.
And even the landing on this move can vary!
Not only will Spider-Man's follow-through momentum-absorbing bounce
be more severe and exaggerated after those long Point-Zip jumps
because he's having to recover from stopping so much more forward momentum,
but there's a potential branching point here.
If the player has unlocked the Point Launch skill on Spidey's talent tree,
they can press Jump immediately after Spidey's hands hit his target
to have him instead SPRING off of that target,
gaining more height and a huge burst of speed.
Think about that...
all of these variants... all of these alternate versions and branching points,
and all of this animation coverage just to make one single move look good.
One!
You would be surprised how common this is in game animation.
It is amazing how much work and technical complexity can go into making a gameplay move feel and look...
...effortless.
Dog GONNIT, this game's animation looks good.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this!
I wanted to try doing some episodes on just a single animation,
so I decided to take some requests!
Today's episode was a request from Nick Phan.
So, thank you Nick!
What about you?
Can you think of a particular animation you'd like me to dig into?
Come on, any game you want.
Is there some particular combat move or jump, or maybe a moment in a cutscene that you'd like an episode about?
Let me know down in the comments, or on Twitter.
Maybe the next episode will be about your suggestion!
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Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time!