Edgar Kettle- Behind-the-Scenes

Edgar Kettle, despite his advanced age still continues his role as caretaker of the cemetery – digging graves, constructing coffins, and watching the abandoned church. Spending your life around dead people can somewhat put you on edge, however, made worse by the local children who frequently try to convince him he’s buried someone alive... again.

Edgar was an exciting prospect and needed two idle animations to bring him to life: a turnaround and a talk cycle that sets up part of a puzzle we won't spoil here.When you meet Edgar, he's busy hammering nails into a coffin, ready for burial and then returns to his table when he finishes. If you decide to talk to Edgar, he'll turn away from the table to face you. If you leave him alone, he'll continue working, returning to the coffin for more hammering.

This breaks down as:

• Turnaround and talk cycle- Turning around and talking to the player

Idle Animation #1- Hammering nails

Idle Animation #2- Returning to the table

That doesn't look too bad on paper, does it?

We didn't think so either, until like a puzzle, the reality of the challenge revealed itself when we sat down to animate.

Edgar needs to be at his table. He'll always need to start and return to this position. Another absolute is his position when talking to the player. So already, we've got points A (back to the player at the table) and B (facing the player).

For our first trick, we need Edgar to turn around.

Of course, once Edgar has turned to face you, he has to turn back. Luckily, this time we had a shortcut; we could play the sequence backwards without needing to reanimate. As well as timing, animation is all about taking shortcuts and not letting on.

Our next job was to get Edgar at work hammering nails into the coffin. The player has to wait for him to complete this sequence before they can talk to him, so it was an important one to get right. We faced a few obstacles, as Edgar not only has to put in the nails, he needs to travel along the coffin as he adds each one.

Our question was: how many steps does he need to take, and how many nails can he hammer in before the sequence gets too long and annoys the player?

We had to do a few iterations to find the sweet spot, but the answer you seek is four nails with a step per nail.

Reaching the solution was a matter of trial and error that saw Edgar side-stepping, hammering two nails at once, and trialling different lengths of stride (though not quite the splits). We also had to keep in mind that Edgar couldn't step too far away because he had to return to his table!

Once we'd solved the nail puzzle, we rounded off the animation with Edgar brushing down the table as a sign of a job well done, which also works to notify the player that the animation is almost complete. When he's done he turns around walks back to his table, ready for the next time he's needed!

As a gamer and animator, I always want to achieve good fast animation that engages the player. As this is a repeated interaction, the player doesn't want to sit through a long animation every time they need something. Even a funny or interesting animation will eventually bore the most avid fan, so time here was key.

Timing is a key principle for most of the animation of Foolish Mortals, but this sequence with Edgar really 'hammered' it home.

You can meet Edgar in the demo, why not see if you can beat his puzzle and find the last voodoo ingredients?

You can also help support Edgar and the game on Kickstarter!