Young love has a way of tying up the tongue at the most important moments. The new title Vokabulantis will explore the journey of two young friends who fall for each other, but can't find the words to express it. It's a heartwarming premise, but what really steals the show about this game is that it will be created solely via stop-motion animation. This is the style of using clay figures and sets to animate by taking pictures of a model, moving it slightly, and then taking another picture. The animator would then compile those images until it looks like fluid motion.
In a series of videos on Vokabulantis and its Kickstarter website, the developers show the detailed work that has to go into each figure, as well as how specifically they must be positioned. The props, sets, and characters must all blend together, so Vokabulantis also relies heavily on its CGI and concept teams as well. Vokabulantis seeks to be a responsive and innovative platformer that takes advantage of the best of emerging video game technology. While still a few years away, it'll be worth the wait to see what the final product looks like.
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Each of the puppets, including the two main characters, are carefully handcrafted by a team of talented artists. Given that the stop-motion figures will go through months of use, they have to create virtually identical copies. This speaks to the talent behind the team at Wired Fly Animation, who are responsible for the stop-motion elements. After the figures and props are completed, they still have to be animated. Wired Fly will then take the figures to its photo studio and carefully adjust the figure's movement before taking a picture. After doing this about 1000 times, it'll have about 15 seconds of usable footage.
After Wired Fly gets all the photos they need, it'll pass on the assets to Kong Orange. From here, the stop-motion animations will be ported into Vokabulantis and be used to create the character's animations like running, jumping, and pushing heavy objects. As seen during the Day of the Devs production trailer, the characters inside the 3D engine move seamlessly compared to their clay versions. The goal, as it was stated, is to make a responsive game that reacts in-time with the player. If the multiple teams behind Vokabulantis can pull it off, it'll be one of the first of its kind.
The problem with normal stop-motion animation is that the director can control where the light is coming from in any given scene. However, when the character is at the mercy of a player, the lighting needs to be responsive. If one of the main characters were to walk into a shadow. it would look extremely out of place if they were completely lit up. So to remedy this problem, the teams were able to come up with a way to simulate multiple kinds of light in any environment. In addition to the thousands of photos for the animation, the developers also have to take pictures from several lighting angles before compiling all those images into the same character.
With a game as complicated to make as Vokabulantis, it will likely be a few more years before players can get their hands on it. That being said, the studios haven't been shy in releasing videos showing how the stop-motion animation will play into Vokabulantis or how they were able to port in the characters. With tech innovations as impressive as the one's being used, it will be worth the wait to finally play this stop-motion adventure.
Vokabulantis is currently in development by Kong Orange and Wired Fly Animation.
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