Regarding Anya, and Current Development Status (Patreon)

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Hey everyone, Kuso here. I'm the main artist for URAGONER, with an update for you.

Today I'd like to talk about Anya, our resident weeb/samurai. When we decided that the first preview of URAGONER should include a combat demo, we knew we were in for a ride. Initially, we planned to release the demo in two parts: the visual novel part (which is about 90% done) and the battle part, which we are working on right now. Along the way, we felt like this was not the best way to present the game as some people might assume that it's purely a visual novel experience, which would turn a lot of people away. We believe that first impressions matter, after all. 

We knew it was going to take a while, but we also believed the payoff would be worth it.

NEW ANYA ANIMATIONS

In our first iteration of URAGONER, Anya's entire attack animation had two (2) frames, or one frame if you exclude her idle frame. Today, Anya's idle animation alone, which you see at the top of this post has over 700 frames.

This is Anya's old attack animation:

If the image doesn't move or load, don't worry. It's a whole 2 frames of animation, including the idle pose.

This is Anya's new attack animation:

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The full attack now includes a transition from idle, to her charging up her attack (unsheathing the katana) and finally slashing all the way through.

Anya plays a big role in the upcoming demo and we wanted her animations to reflect that. She's also a lot of fun for Bantam to animate, with all the flowy elements in her design.

However, changing her attack animation doesn't mean the previous animation is completely gone. 

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As you can see, the idle can either transition to an upwards slash, or to a dash thrust, depending on which skill is chosen.

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Her previous Idle animation has also been changed into a blocking animation. Her previous stance is also one of the big reasons for the change in her animations.

ANIMATION CHANGE RATIONALE

Her old idle stance was inspired by a variation of "Ko Gasumi No Kamae", a stance you may have seen in movies such as Kill Bill.

Ko Gasumi as seen in Kill Bill

It's a very cool looking pose, unfortunately animating transitions from this pose to other attacks was rather awkward. It also seems to be the case in real life Japanese swordsmanship from my limited research. Attacking from Ko Gasumi apparently does not afford the swordsman too much versatility. However, this was of a lesser concern relative to the first point.

You can imagine how Bantam reacted when I told him we were going to have to change some of Anya's then already finished animations. In the end, I managed to convince him that having a more neutral stance will allow us to have more flexibility down the road when it comes to adding animations for Anya, not to mention it would fit her lore better.

I turned to one of my old favorites for reference: an old anime/manga series called Rurouni Kenshin. The story revolved around a former Meiji era assassin and his deadly Battōjutsu technique. 

Battōjutsu (抜刀術:ばっとうじゅつ), literally meaning "the art/science of drawing a sword", and developed in the mid-15th century, is the aspect of swordsmanship focused upon the efficient draw of the sword, cutting down one's enemy, and returning the sword to its scabbard (saya).

Although we didn't animate Anya sheathing the sword, switching her style to Battōjutsu accomplished the things we wanted to do with Anya. We wanted to communicate that she was an efficient killer weeb, and we also wanted a more flexible idle stance that we can add animations to in the future. Plus, it's also a flashy move and an iconic stance that a lot of anime fans would recognize.

You might also notice that Anya uses her sword left-handed; this is more of a game design choice. Drawing her left handed means more of her future poses can be drawn with her body facing the viewer.

During her initial design phase, a lot of elements of her Ultimate attack were also borrowed from another Rurouni Kenshin character: Hajime Saito.

In the series, the character of Hajime Saito, who is based on the real historical figure, has a saying or motto, "Aku Soku Zan" (悪即斬), which is translated as "Slay evil immediately". 

This is the same phrase that shows up during Anya's ultimate skill, so I thought it was only fitting to go back to Rurouni Kenshin for reference.

I'm not ashamed to say I went full weeb on Anya's design, as Rurouni Kenshin was what got me interested in drawing in the first place. Although drawing wasn't something I took seriously until several years later, I don't think I'd be where I am career wise without Kenshin.

UPDATE ON DEVELOPMENT STATUS

URAGONER has been so much fun to work on and we're currently finishing the last batch of animations needed for the combat preview. We didn't want to present ourselves as a visual novel only game, but rather an RPG with visual novel elements. We felt that releasing without a combat demo would be a mistake, and we wanted to properly show a full slice of the entire cake.

We feel that this was worth the extra development time, and hope you feel the same way. We're out here to make a game we ourselves would enjoy playing.

That's all for now, and as always thank you so much for your continued support for URAGONER. We can't wait to show you more of what's in store.

If you haven't already, come join our discord: https://discord.gg/uragoner 

We have a very active community, and from time to time we do dev streams to our members, not just patrons, on our discord. We're a very friendly bunch and we hope to see you there.