That’s a million dollar question, literally. If there were a formula for defining fun, all games (video, board, tabletop) would be fun.
Some games like Minecraft and DnD5e hit just the right marks to make the authors filthily rich, but no one has ever managed to make more than a few hundred rules of thumb to get there.
If you want to dive deeper into this question, there are hundreds of books about game design available. I haven’t followed the field for quite some time now, but my personal favorite is The Art of Game Design. The author made his name by creating rides at Disney Land.
There's a preview on Amazon that you can flip through: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-Kaufmann/dp/0123743281?asin=0123743281&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
I have this picture in my People of Walmart coloring book. Has the cover, too, I believe. I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted: here's the book https://www.amazon.com/People-Walmart-com-Adult-Coloring-Book/dp/1945056088
So I don't know of any Anime particular effects resources to be honest, but there are some amazing books I definitely recommend that show some incredible effects.
A great start would be finding Joseph Gilland's Elemental Magic effects book. The book contains literal stepped processes on many different effects animation composed by fantastic american animators, a lot coming from classic 2d Disney backgrounds. It's a great start, and it isn't very hard to find a free pdf of it online, or buying the book physically which for some reason I like more.
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631
Other then that, studying, and practicing what you find from great effects animators on Sakugaboru is what I'd recommend. Some of my personal favorite guys that immediadly come to mind are:
Yoh Yoshinari (Classic Gainax/Trigger Effects)
Yutaka Nakamure (Impact Frames, fire, lightning, in bombastic style, the guy is a legend for a reason)
Masanobu Hiraoka (Surreal, and mind melting work, incredible what he pulls off)
Hope all this helps out. Have fun.
Schell Games. Jesse Schell wrote: Art of Game Design Book (great book)
Knew I recognised Toontown. Don't worry you're not on a wanted poster in the book haha.
Hi! I always think graphic designers make great animators!
As a 2D animator myself, I can tell you animation leans heavily into design—when I’m animating I like to think about my linework as “notes” for a logo design. Great animation, like Ollie or Milt, is about a logical flow of lines, very much a design (so-so animation is about making things move).
You can check out the idea (more eloquently) here (Amazon).
Welcome to animation!
I’m sure you’ll be great at it (don’t worry too much about software, TV Paint is the industry standard—expensive—but there’s also toonboom, and what I work in procreate). And be wary of grumps (they’re everywhere).
I wouldn't sweat it too much. People have posted amazon sales on here in the past. That's why I got FO4 and season pass for about 65 together.
A lot of great tools have been mentioned here, but as for teaching the concepts of design in general, I'd highly recommend trying to acquire a copy of The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. With its layout, it would probably not be too difficult to turn into a lesson plan!
I've been an indie dev for a while, and have secretly longed for the extra time to volunteer to teach a game design class at the local charter school using this book.
These books are your friend!
Elemental Magic, Volume I: The Art of Special Effects Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240811631/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_csJlFbTEJ0C0V
Elemental Magic, Volume II: The Technique of Special Effects Animation (Animation Masters Title) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240814797/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_xpJlFb7YJG8Z0
FYI the artbook is rather affordable on amazon..
FYI the artbook is rather affordable on amazon..
The closest thing would be Walt Stanchfield’s “Drawn to Life” notes (that’s how I learned to draw at least)
If 2D is okay, then check out Elemental Magic by Joseph Gilland. There are two volumes but I like the first one better.
https://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631/
Hope this helps!
The only animation book you really need is Drawn to Life Volume 1&2. These have single handedly taught me everyothing I know about drawing and animation.
https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961
As Glen Vilppu says, "No rules, just tools." So draw whatever you want, with whatever you want. Mechanical pencils are great for lots of things, but for me they're not super awesome for lots of variations in line weight. I don't really love charcoal myself, so I generally try a Conte Pencil sharpened up so I can work with the point or use the side to lay in stronger lines. Brush pens also work, as do markers, etc etc etc. Even just a good soft 3b pencil can work at the size you're drawing. One of the best artists in one of my recent life drawing sessions worked in a small A4 sketchbook and drew with a ballpoint pen, so you can make just about anything work.
Walt Stanchfield is great. After he died, a lot of his lectures and drawings (and his student's drawings) were published in two volumes called Drawn to Life. If you haven't heard of Mike Matessi's Force, that's also a great resource for pushing your drawings.
I cannot recommend Drawn to Life enough. I’m a self taught animator/storyboard artist. These books (two volumes) are 50% of my knowledge alone, w/ just practice and sporadic tips for the rest.
https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961
This book about the artwork of Atari is awesome and talks about this - how the artwork was designed to fill in the gaps between the game's graphics and our imagination.
Calc 3 itself covers many topics including triple integrals, partial derivitives, Stoke's theorem, Green's theorem, etc. You won't use any of that.
But for graphics, you absolutely need vector calculus. You need to know dot-product, cross-product, how to normalize a vector, how to determine the distance from a point in 3-space to a surface/polygon. If you want to bypass this course, a nice book to make you familiar with a lot of the necessary maths is this one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Time-Collision-Detection-Interactive-Technology/dp/1558607323
It has good explanations of the math and a C++ implementation of all of the vector maths including quaternions that you will ever need. Calc 3 in college is incomplete for game dev and this book (and some other game dev books) filll in the gaps.
But you must master vectors. Matrices is helpful. Quaternions is a must these days. Collision detection is it's own science which you should know. Learn and understand spatial partitioning.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Fallout-4-Bethesda-Softworks/dp/1616559802/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=8cdae342-6b46-40b4-aaee-aa17161636fc link for the book which is on sale! As a creative I really enjoy looking at it for its artistic merit and sort of fantasizing about the game’s development. I’m sure everyone involved had a lot of fun, and despite our disagreements about the game, it’s why we’re all talking to one another. So I’m glad all this exists. Thanks for the love on these past few posts but it’s the artists at Bethesda who made this possible.
Easiest way is ipad + apple pencil + procreate. Cheapest way (a lot more hard) is a camera and some paper (well, and pegs). Don't get bogged down in (27 ^(1/2) principles of timing and animation, or whatever)--just dive in. Motivation and experimentation go a looong way. You can tighten it all up later on.
This is very best book on the subject https://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961
The best resource I’ve found is Alphonso Dunn. I bought his books and watch his videos on YouTube. He’s the reason I got into pen and ink to begin with
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997046538/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_i_PH5Z0VTP0485ZNCJ9Z3Q
There is a very VERY interesting book called Game Feel
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https://www.amazon.com/Game-Feel-Designers-Sensation-Kaufmann/dp/0123743281
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This book talks about the term "kinesthesia" that basically means how the game feels.
A very important part of the game feel is the game control, so it does not mean fast or slow, it means the proper choices for the achieving of a particular kinestetic feeling that will enable the game experience to be controlled and adressed in the designed way.
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So in summary i would say, is a mix, you need game designers who know what they are doing + a development team skilled enough to land those concepts into a solid gameplay.
The attention to detail is fantastic. I recommend you check out the book they released The Art of Fallout which details a lot of the concepts and ideas they had.
It sounds like you're on the right track.
I don't have many references off-hand. There was a great video series on GameDev.tv about Board Game Development, but it looks like it's been removed.
There are a lot of great books on game design, I personally recommend The Art of Game Design: a Book of Lenses. It presents a bunch of "lenses" through which to view your design critically.
Anyone interested in deep understanding of physics taken into animation form, check out Joseph Gilland “Elemental Magic”, hes an animator that specializes on element representation and has developed a few techniques for stuff like the waves and rain in movies like Lilo and Stitch for example
https://www.amazon.com/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631
Missile Command.
BTW - If you havent seen the book Art of Atari it is amazing. I got it for Christmas two years ago.