Under Jugger Hollow Poster

Under Jugger Hollow

Project Length: 2 months

Team Size: 9 members

Role - Sprite Animator

Made in Unity Engine

Steven falls into an underground city and must help the residents to fix the only elevator to the surface. However, everything is not as it seems. Gain unique abilities, explore the depths of the underground and discover the secrets of the underground and its residents.

Under Jugger Hollow Trailer

Check out our game here!

In-game Screenshots

The hub world of the Underground City with NPCs to guide Steven and give him new abilities.

Fire level: a large stadium filled with crudely made standees. Fire Steven speeds around to catch Aiden.

Electric level: filled with large machinery for an unknown purpose. It needs to be powered by Electric Steven.

Ice level: a frozen bunker with a penguin trapped inside a maze. Ice Steven ground pounds so ice blocks fall down

Sprites and their Sprite Sheets

The combination of 2D characters and 3D world allowed for the team to showcase multiple talents and mitigate the process of rigging a 3D model in a 2 month project.

Each sprite sheet took around 2 - 4 days to sketch, color, and render. The base sprite sheet of Steven took the longest amount of time compared to the others. For both movement and jumping, I chose to break them down into three's. Three distinct running frames before switching feet, three frames of jump build up, etc. The Idle sprites only focus on breathing, but the front idle sprites have more to show some characterization of Steven.

I chose to only have four directions for animation because of time constraints. The four directions were necessary and showed the player's movement without needing more detail.

Steven: The playable character in his base form.

He stays in this form until you gain any of the other abilities from the levels.

Each Steven sprite sheet parodies off of this base sprite sheet, adding new sprites for the abilities that they used.

Base Steven Sprite Sheet - 71 sprites

Electric Steven: Obtained in the Electric Level to solve the rotating circuit puzzle. Shoots out small electric projectiles to power things up.

For the electric ability, I only did front facing sprite because he is planted when shooting the projectiles. Having Steven face forward showed the particle effects better compared to a side or back sprite.

Electric Steven Sprite Sheet - 83 sprites

Ice Steven: Obtained in the Ice Level to solve the penguin sliding puzzle. Jumps and slams onto the ground to drop ice blocks from the ceiling.

The ice ability is based on the jumping sprites and interrupts the jump when activated. I decided to create the four directions with the ability to match the directional jump sprites.

Ice Steven Sprite Sheet - 94 sprites

Fire Steven: Obtained in the Fire Level to catch the NPC Aidan. Ignites with a clap, gaining a burst a speed for a short amount of time.

This was the most intensive process after the base sprites. I wanted to try mimic the chaos of fire, which I chose to add more frames. The fire ability parodies off of the run and transitions as the player moves around. I chose to have a longer cool down animation as some flare for a fire burning out but also to give reasonable pause once the ability is used.

Fire Steven Sprite Sheet - 152 sprites

The Penguin in the Ice Level. Needs help to navigate the ice platform and get to his igloo.

The penguin is in constant movement in the ice maze so I chose to only create the walking sprites.

Penguin Sprite Sheet - 18 sprites

Cutscene Animations

For cutscenes, the team decided to make 2D cutscenes to fit with the character's shape and design. I chose to utilize various game animations and environments for the cutscenes, such as using Peri the Robot's waving animation, to keep cohesion and reuse previous work.

Each 2D style cutscene was animated within 2-4 days going from:

Concept/Idea of cutscene
Background framing (taking pictures in engine to assist in making backgrounds)
Storyboard for characters
Line art for the background + Key framing the characters
In-between frames for characters
Base color (background and character)
Shading/Rendering

Main Menu-1.mp4

Main Menu Animation

Steven falls into the seemingly endless underground. He must reach the end of each level to fix the elevator and escape to the surface.

Win Animation.mp4

Ending Cutscene

After completing all three levels, Steven enters the fixed elevator. He waves goodbye to Peri as he waits for the elevator. Peri, surprised by the gesture, hesitates. The helper waves back to Steven and the screen glitches out. Peri concludes the game is over.

Overview and Major Takeaways

Reusing sprites for multiple characters reduces a lot of time in the animation process.
For future projects, I would reuse the same body for all abilities and change the color values in engine to reduce time in drawing.

Under Jugger Hollow served as a great method to practice and understand more aspect of sprite animation and what goes into making multiple sprite sheets for the same character. I really did a lot of work that could have been reworked to be smarter, such as using nodes or code based knowledge to change a character's color in engine, rather than manually creating the sprites in my part program. However, I'm happy with how the sprites finished and the cutscenes for the main menu and ending. This project was a good starting point for me to delve into 2D animation and research more 2D software, such as Moho.