Custom animations - planning

The first step before creating the 5 animations is to research what kinds of animations appear in a game.

I created a mind map outlining the main basic animations that typically appear in a game.

From these choices, I decided I would take a variety from across most categories.

My choices were:

Walk Cycle

Idle

Salute

Attack ready loop

Basic melee attack

Based on the categories, I grouped the animations into two sets and created a static pose for each to aid animation looping.

This pose I used for the attack starting position, with a ready weapon. This way I can easily create the battle ready loop and transition easily into any attack animation.

This pose was created to be a sort of relaxed pose to be easily animated into a walk cycle, for say an NPC patrol, an idle animation, for guard duty, and a salute, for if this NPC met a superior NPC officer.