#slamacow

My song has to be a parody of a more famous song because I'm not going to take myself too seriously. It's going to have double entendres related to Minecraft and it's going to have a campy tone.

Laura Shigihara in 2010:

Mine's about depression

We're here :)

Uhhhh stupid blocks in my brain. Based on an excerpt I wrote for RPSMP smile (Excerpt and Alt version under the cut)

Vanilla Minecraft doesn’t really allow expressive features for characters, so over the years animators have gotten creative with how they use the blocky bodies to convey emotion and movement. Here’s a list of different ways this has been achieved in the past 15 years.

The Captain Sparklez way:

In “Revenge” we see an early attempt at lip synching with these strange mouth shapes that cycle through the animation. This style of animating lip synch would become the basis for how Minecraft Story Mode operated, where there are base shapes for mouth expressions that sometimes defy the boundaries of their blocky faces in weird ways.

What I like about Captain Sparklez is that he’s been around long enough that his animations have evolved with him, and he’s got a whole new way of animating.

The feature I dislike the most about his newer style of animation is that they treat the face as soft and stretchable. This allows greater expression, but at the cost of bending the pixelated shapes in ways that pixels do not bend.

On the other hand (literally) one of the things I like about this style is the slightly rounded edges of the bodies that give everything a real sense of volume. I also like how hands are treated. Normally they are blocky fists, but they can open up into individual fingers when needed. A subtle trick that allows for greater animation movement without betraying the blocky aesthetic of Minecraft.

The Minecraft Story Mode way:

This method was inspired by Captain Sparklez but they take it in a different more defined direction.

As mentioned before, mouth shapes are pre-defined and are cycled through. For a video game, this has the advantage of needing only a few shapes that can be swapped in and out whenever needed to save on space and resources.

It does have the disadvantage however of occasionally looking stiff and sometimes the mouth shapes can’t quite convey the exact emotion needed. “Oh” shapes are are also weird as they extend beyond the boundaries of the blocky face and use smaller pixels to generate the shape. This can sometimes look off-putting or feel odd.

MCSM also treats the bodies more stiffly. The arms and legs have bends at the elbows and knees, but that’s about it. The toros can bend slightly but for the most part everything is kept pretty stiff. Again this has advantages and disadvantages. Broader movement is easy to do, but more subtle movement is tricky. There are no fingers either so when a character needs to hold something it just clips through the fingerless stump.

The Villager News way:

This method is even more limiting. One of the fun aspects about it is that they use their limitation to their advantage for comedic effects. The legs and arms for example are perfectly stiff and do not bend. This is hilarious with the villagers who have to gesture with their arms stuck in this folded pose, and when they dance their large stumpy legs clop around almost like a horse.

There’s still a tiny bit of flexibility though. The eyebrow bend and the mouth can push the bottom jaw down for big mouth shapes.

The Official Way:

In the official Minecraft update videos we have the last interesting way to animate characters… and that is to be completely stiff. Arms and legs do not bend. Faces are pixel art painted on the front. There is no dimensionality at all to their features.

Like the Villager News method, this has fun restrictions. Arms and legs sway in one motion just like in the game itself, and getting certain gestures can be extremely tricky. It also doesn’t allow a great range of expressions as most of the acting now needs to be done entirely through the eyes.

Conclusion:

Each method described above have advantages and disadvantages. If you’re looking for a smooth Pixar look, the Captain Sparklez way is probably the best, but it comes at the cost of abandoning Minecraft’s blocky norms. The stiff nature of the official style fits better with the conventions of Minecraft, but can come at the cost of being able to express the characters movements more fluidly.

I just find these various methods fascinating. How many different animators have tackled the challenger of animating blocky characters in such vastly different ways is neat in my opinion!