InDee Toons - Customizable Animated Game Characters on Kickstarter

[deee]

Dear fellow AGS developers,

As a long-time AGS user and member of the community, I have to tell you about my project currently live on Kickstarter.
The idea behind InDee Toons is to provide a library of characters, game developers can freely choose from and directly integrate them into their games while being able to concentrate on other aspects of development.
I have used some scenes of a (unfinished) game I created in AGS in my pitch video.




The goal of the campaign is a pool of 50 game characters of high quality, in the form of sprite sequences for maximum compatibilty.
Update : The parts of the toons can now be mixed, and there is a custom head generator included for every toon.
The animations certainly cover everything you need for an awesome adventure game (like walking, talking, interaction and more).
We have also wonderful features and stretch goals like customizable lighting, which allows you to adjust the color of the character lighting to your game backgrounds.

For more information and previews, please check out the Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2dee/indee-toons-animated-game-characters



Thank you. You guys rock!

[Darth Mandarb]

Have you guys considered the possibility of having a custom character maker?  Where you could pick the shape/size/color of each element (face, teeth, nose, ears, eyes, arms, body, legs, etc) so that a person would be able to make a completely unique character for their game?  I think this feature, if executed right, would net you TONS of backers!  You could implement it in such a way that people would be able to make custom characters and add them to a public "library" for others to use (then things like RON games could spring up all using the same characters).

I think some people are put off by the same characters being used in multiple games (I wouldn't want to see a character from my game being used in somebody else's game but as a completely different role, but looks the same).

I think the idea is off to a great start (and the lighting thing is pretty darn cool) but I think the "create from scratch" feature is what this REALLY needs!

Good luck with the campaign!

[RickJ]

Something like Charas for adventure games..
http://charas-project.net/

[deee]

I have considered that kind of customization.
Unfortunately, this brings up some problems:
Implementing this with pre-rendered body parts for each animation would result in extremely huge file sizes, unless you are working with pixel art.
The only way I can think of to overcome this would be to provide the information for rotation, scale and color of the body parts as external data like skeleton and animation data for a tool like Spine.
However, this would restrict the usability of the characters to people owning such an animation tool.

Thank you for the great feedback, you are absolutely right. Maybe I can find a way to implement a "create from scratch"-feature (within the next 27 days )

*Edit:
A possible solution: I could provide some kind of interface on my website, where you could compose your toon by choosing from different body parts and select the color and maybe the size of them.
This way, people could design their individual characters and order them through my website. The data would then be sent to me and I could create the customized character and deliver it to the customer when it is finished.
So my question is: Would you back the project if I would add this as a stretch goal?

[deee]

Great news: I have updated the project with a custom character maker option.

In addition to premade sprite packs, the toons now come with the skeleton and animation data, usable with the tool "Spine", where you can mix the parts of different toons to create your own.
For more customization, every toon now also has a custom head generator which is also a file for Spine that allows you to create unique faces for the toons by mixing different eyes, ears, noses, hair styles, head shapes and more.
The faces can even be furtherly customized by freely adjusting the skin color, position and scaling of the parts.

An example of a custom head generator of a simple female character:


A preview on the paper doll system to show how a toon gets dressed:

[Darth Mandarb]

MOST excellent!

You have earned my backing now  

I still prefer to make my own characters/walk-cycles but I think with this new addition MANY people would now be more willing to back the project!

I'm not an expert on Kickstarter by any means but I would advise making the new feature more prominent (I see you put it in there, but I'd make it stand out more)!

[deee]

Thanks so much for backing and for the nice feedback.
In addition to the update, and the small preview video, I have also updated the complete middle part of the pitch video.
As I have been busy working on the preview for the male toon, I haven't yet had the time to promote the new customization features enough, but I am working on this
Thanks again for bringing me on the right way with the customization feature.