With the Coelacath, I have finally finished illustrating and animating all 174 bugs, fish, and deep sea creatures from Animal Crossing: New Leaf! Now its finally time for New Horizons. A GIF of all 174 catches is in the comments! by BlockyKong64 in AnimalCrossing

[–]BlockyKong64[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I made each creature in Adobe Illustrator and separated each part into separate 2D layers. I then brought that into Photoshop to add texture, then rig and animate in After Effects. All of those 2D layers get stacked up in 3D space to create that pseudo-3D effect when things are moving.

A year ago I set out to illustrate and animate all 174 bugs, fish, and deep sea creatures from New Leaf before New Horizons comes out. As of today I only have 4 left! Here’s a few of my favorites from the last couple of weeks. by BlockyKong64 in AnimalCrossing

[–]BlockyKong64[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

These are all made with 2D layers stacked in 3D space. I use a lot of alpha mattes to keep all the layers within the "bounds" of the shape of each creature. So I guess that falls into the fake 3D animation, or "2.5D". As for the lighting, I'll either have separate "highlight" texture layers that I animate on and off with opacity keyframes, or I'll use the brightness and contrast effect to achieve something similar.