From the Animator's Desk

Elizabeth Burke: The Frosh characters in The Legend Of The Greasepole took two months to sketch and animate on paper. The "Frosh" were based on the "typical" engineering student entering Queens University, complete with tam, plaid pants and socks hanging out of the tam to finish the look.

The Frosh were animated first on paper by using a number of sequences of different actions. If the action was "dancing" then the sequence would be 5 drawings of the Frosh first in his starting position with hands at the froshes sides, then one hand raising diagonally up, pointing his finger, then diagonally back down again to the Frosh's original position of hands at his (or her) side.

There were more than fifty different poses, ranging from hanging off of the tam at the top of the Greasepole to drinking a mug of beer that floats by in the water (if you can call it water). Once scanned into the computer the Frosh could be manipulated to be different colours etc.

This was a great project to work on (even if only at the begining) and it's amazing to see the Frosh running around in the game!

From Sketch to Pixels

After Elizabeth finished the sketchwork, the images were scanned into the computer and touched up by Kitty Lee, Sci '99. Here's an example:

Evolution of the Splashing Frosh: Elizabeth's sketch, and Kitty's on-screen touchup.

We had a tough time choosing the colour scheme for the frosh pants. The bright stuff was cool, but was garish in large quantities on screen.

We really wanted ethnically diverse frosh to accurately portray the Queen's community. It's done in the game with the magic of DirectX using a two-step drawing process. Elizabeth also did a fabulous job making them look gender-non-specific.

This was the only shot we tried colouring in outside of the computer. Scanned colours just weren't rich enough for the game.

The falling guys are just fabulous. Here's how they started life...

...and here's how that one ended up. Again, we saved the pants for last.

The final "transparency" colour ended up being a (hideous) bright green. We were picking up some of the bluey-purple in the crowd with the powder blue. And there's the trademark muddy-plaid pants you see in the game. I actually have a pair like that.

(This is Rob writing -- Craig has much better fashion sense)

Some Extra Stuff

Below is one of the sheets that Elizabeth originally received with requests for animation frames. If nothing else, it gives a pretty clear impression of how she took some things bouncing around in Rob's head and ran with them.

Here's a sheet full of "hotspots" and graphic dimensions that helped import graphic images into the game. These are actually for Al "Pop Boy" Burchell, but a similar set was made up for the Frosh character.