This was one of my first concept rounds at JB gaming - so lots of range trying to figure out the right mixture of scary and goofy.
We needed a generic flying enemy for Grave Danger's initial development. I started out a few months ago with a blob enemy covered in tentacles but didn't know enough about Spine to make it work. Here I am coming back to a more general purpose design with a bit more work under my belt and things are working out better.
I decided to animate the wings by hand and not with a rig due to the complexity of the perspective and animation, so started up drafting a few tests in Photoshop before drawing out the sprites and putting it all together in Spine.
Initial test.
Revision 2 with the body assets blocked in.
Blocked in the wings.
'Slow' 15 frame idle animation. The up and down strokes are held for a few frames and the tips of the wings are deformed with bones for a bit more organic look.
Here is the desert skin in the "Aggro" animation. The mouth can't open much larger than this at the moment.
Next stop will be to duplicate this project and create a ranged version with a projectile weapon below where the tenticals are.
Update: Removed the blur on the wings for now at the suggestion from a friend and I feel that it matches the game style much better than before. It was his opinion - and I agree - that the path blur I was using before looked more like a DoF effect and not like motion! Thanks, John!
Also tweaked the wing membrane color for the desert themed bat. Will hold final judgement for when he is in game.
And a bonus melee attack animation I forgot to export last time.