Big Time

Big Time Character Animation by JPB

Blockchain and gaming is inevitable, offering true ownership of in game assets and expanding the player experience beyond the game make sense as the next big step in video games.

Big Time is an upcoming multiplayer action RPG with instanced, procedurally generated levels where you fight with allies for loot. The premise is perfect for NFT inclusion and as long as the loot variety is exciting and more importantly the gameplay loop is enjoyable I can see the game being extremely popular and a pioneer in the blockchain gaming space.

Here is the original image of the Shadowblade class, which I have animated above (this would be my main).

Source: https://medium.com/playbigtime/announcing-our-third-playable-class-the-shadowblade-360c2b7371c9

The artstyle is reminiscent of Dauntless, which similarly provides instanced levels and a wide variety of loot. The design also lends itself towards screenshots and gif animations, which in turn make sense for NFTs and their images within wallets.

Source: https://bigtime.gg/press

Producing the animated image

Base Image

The starting point.

Background Matte Painting

Removing the character and litghtning FX

Character Isolation

Masking the character body and painting over gaps for the arms.

Isolating the arms

The arms, sword and back piece are isolated so that they can be animated individually.

Character Animation

Animation for the model including blinking eyes.

Weapon FX

A gleam and edge highlight is animated on the moving sword.

Lightning FX & Flare

Lightning is animated to the giant orb, which was present in the original image.

Particle Systems

A number of looping particles are created as additions to the scene.

Final Animation

The finished gif.

Having played Guild Wars 1 and 2 for thousands of hours I have an in-depth understanding of in-game economies and the vast opportunities for these economies to live on the blockchain. Additionally, the number of different items available within games offer a large number of possibilities for unique custom animations - which is of course something I enjoy.

My initial concerns regarding the majority of blockchain games has been the emphasis on tokenisation of everything, creating a significant barrier to entry and an emphasis on Defi tokenomics and yield farming - the actual gameplay loop (is the game even fun?) Is an afterthought. For me, the emphasis has to be on the game, it needs to be a space people are compelled to return to, NFTs then add on to this core experience and simply improve it; the crypto aspects are of course important but the game would still be excellent without them.

Looking forward to the release and hopefully producing some more video content around the game.