New character: Blacksmith 🔨

After publishing the Steam page, I've switched to working on a Demo for the AdventureX conference. I already have the more-or-less complete write-up for it, so now I need to implement all the required characters. I decided to start from the Blacksmith because I had quite a clear vision of the character and environment. It all started from scratch: Steam post image

It looked quite promising, so I proceeded and got the concept version: Steam post image

And here I ran into some trouble with the animation. This is a fairly minor character, so I don't want to spend too much time on its animation. And the chosen almost frontal pose required quite a lot of extra intermediate keyframes with a different layout. The thing is that using such a viewpoint requires making her hand sometimes behind the body, and at the "smash" point, in front of it. And the visible part of the hammer is changing a lot. After some experiments, I decided to change position and use 3/4, to keep her hand always behind the body. Steam post image

And the trick worked! Steam post image

Of course, a lot more animations and poses ahead, but still - idle animation is ready! Thank you for being with me, and stay tuned!