About two weeks ago I finished the animation for a creature in the game called a “wall monster”, or “Waller” for short. Rather early in the project we decided to give the player a candle that would be their source of light. If the candle was blown out it would become dark around the player, making it harder to navigate and avoid the enemies. At first we thought about having the light go out if the player sprinted for too long, but the idea quickly changed into having a monster that would put out the light instead. The monster, that we came to call a “Waller”, was originally supposed to be an arm and a hand attached to the wall that would reach out towards the player to put out the light. During a short discussion we thought about having the monster slap the entire candle out of the players hand, forcing the player to look for their candle before proceeding, but that was quickly changed into having the monster wave it’s arm at the player and have the light blow out by the wind of the hand, as the first idea felt like it would mostly irritate the player and would had been a lot harder to animate and code. When the light goes out the players field of view becomes a lot smaller, and the screen becomes darker, and in order to light the candle again the player will have to find matches that spawn in the corridors to light it with.
The wall monster got a few quick sketchdesign, were the focus was mainly on the arms and hands, as that had been our overall focus for the monsters in the game up until then. I made a simple sketchanimation of how the arm could move when attacking the player, and the group liked it.
However, after a meeting with one of our teachers, we began to re-think the whole arm-attached-to-wall idea. As our big monster (also known as the “Crawler”) is entirely made up of arms and hands, and will kill you instantly if it catches up to you, the player will soon associate arms and hands with instant death. Making the Waller look like an arm could confuse the player, as it won’t do any actual damage to the player. We still wanted the monster to have human-like features though, as humans are the scariest things around. If the enemy is an animal, you know that you can outsmart it as it is just an animal, but humans learn, and are a lot harder to avoid. We’re also so very familiar with humans that anything human-like that isn’t really a human will become very uncanny to us. After another discussion we decided on having a human face attached to the wall, that would use its’ tongue to lick out the light instead.
I made a couple of quick designsketches of different faces with varying shapes and expressions, and the group immediately liked it. The idea was to have the head attached to the wall in a sideways fashion, with one cheek towards the ground and the other towards the ceiling in order to show the player more of the face instead of having it viewed from above as just a circle with a nose, as that wouldn’t be quite as scary. We all quickly decided on one of the faces, and I went on to animate it. I’ve done tongue-animations before, so it didn’t take too long, and I quite enjoy animating wrinkled faces and drool. It adds a nice effect to it.
I wish you all a great weekend, and good luck with the projects!
MPh out.
Liten Skåning 
Hi Jonna
I want to start with that I really like the thought process going with the wallers. By thinking of the artifact in critical way of how the player will see it. The question that pops up in my head is how the waller will exist within the game world, are the wallers going to spawn at random occasions during the game play or are they fixed at a position within the world. Meybe it’s the wrong question to ask to you because I guess you’re not in the design part of the game.
A little idea for how you could continue to build upon the human nightmares is to replace the tongue with an arm or something similar, just to make it really weird but human resemblence
I am curios on how you made the the animation for the wallers, what references and where did you get the inspiration for you. Did you use pictures and videos from the net or was it recorded for reference to the animations.
Great work on both way. I really like the art style of the game, I think you’ve really put tought into each segment of the game. I am looking forward to see the final product.
Over and Out
Adam
Hi Adam
Thank you for the comment and feedback (:
The Waller will spawn at random occasions, but will always be fixed to a wall without the ability to move around, so the player may dodge them it they encounter one. I’m not entirely sure about changing the tongue to an arm, as we, as mentioned in the post above, didn’t want it to resemble arms or hands too much as it could become confusing to the player when some arms equals instant death whilst some don’t. I like the idea however. It would indeed have become even creepier.
I actually didn’t use any references this time. I’ve always been fascinated with things like this, monsters and other uncanny or creepy creatures, and have drawn snarling faces a lot like this before. I’ve also animated tongues in a similar fashion earlier. I studied animation for three years during upper secondary school, so I’ve gotten a lot of practice, even though the things I do are far from perfect. If you’re interested in animation I always warmly recommend reading the book “The Animator’s Survival Kit” by Richard Williams (:
/Jonna
Hello Jonna! Since we are more members in our group you’ll get a second comment today.
I must say I enjoy the art style, the darkness and the creepy feel. I think your post is well written and you walk through nicely what you have done and why. I think it seems like you thought this through a lot and I do understand why you didn’t choose the arm attached to the wall since I also believe it would get confusing. I think it is great how you take up the different ideas and walk us through your thought process and how and why you change things. The idea with faces and tongues is cool, and I think I you still get the creepy feel. I think the animation of the face is amazing and very well done; I really enjoy how the wrinkles grow forth as the mouth opens. What will be really interesting to see is this animation implemented in the game and I’m looking forward to see more from you and the final product of the game.
Well done, Frida.