Hi there! Foug speaking!

Today I’ll show you one of the two hats I wear while working here at Lightmare: 2D animation! I’ll readily acknowledge that everything we’ve shown about “Beware Planet Earth!” so far has been pretty still -to say the least- so this week, let’s take a look at something that moves! For this article, I won’t get into technical detail of how we animate stuff. I save that for another one, because while it’s not that technical, it is another subject entirely. So let’s start with some animations.

Ladies first! Our beloved pink-uddered friends have many expressions depending on what’s happening to them. Hopefully, you will most often see them grazing peacefully:

This is what you would call an “idle” animation, which loops endlessly until something special happens. Namely, if a Martian does manage to rejoin a cow, he’ll “cownap” her with his lift beam and try to go all the way back to the Crop Circle where he gets an extraction. However, if he’s defeated meanwhile, the cow will be dropped and try to go back to the pastures (slowly). We’re also testing the Cowbell feature, which allows you to ring a bell and get the walking cows to run.

The cows will also have one unique garment variation per season. You’ve already seen the spring garment above, which is…well, naked. We won’t spoil the surprise for the rest right now, but we will show you how the cows cool down during summer:

As a conclusion, I’ll share an amusing fact: I took a lot of pleasure animating the cows, and while watching the grazing animation one day, I found myself eating slowly at my desk, jaw loose, eyes dumbly half-closed. When I realized it, I was a little bit ashamed, and I finished my meal in the kitchen. Fortunately, I wasn’t animating a pig this time!

So that’s it for now! More animations later!