When the monks fly backward a few inches, this is the “Knockback” attack we were testing.

I don’t suggest being this blunt as a rule, I am merely stating it this way to make my meaning clear. I’m not even going to try and explain some of the good ways of communicating a no – a different topic for a different day. What I =am= trying to convey to you today is that saying no is sometimes the right choice, and you will find that the people working with you and relying on you as a decision maker will actually be happier with you giving a justified no than if you attempt to be their own personal yes man.

Ok, not quite what I’m talking about. The question this article will address is “How to I ensure a consistent level of quality across all work on the project?” The answer is, as some of you smart readers may have figured out, is to set an example of the quality level you demand. This is similar to what I said in a previous article about telling people what a good job looks like, except in this case you are showing them.

Ok, you’re on board, you’re riding the gravy train with me, but how do you make it happen? Let’s use asset creation on the Kung Fu Kingdom project as a case study because it is easy to understand.

Kung Fu Kingdom Animations
The Kung Fu Kingdom project has some fantastic models done by Andrew Gardner. These models are rigged by Joe McCormick and then are animated before being cel-shaded and rendered by John Corbett. The problem is, animation is a huge bottleneck for us.

Animation is one of those disciplines where it is extremely difficult to attain even basic competency in organic animation; in a humanoid animation, if even the slightest thing is wrong our subconscious will pick up on it and we will say “That looks strange” or “Something just isn’t right.” Because of this it is extremely difficult to find highly skilled and experienced volunteer animators. Our project has a couple of university trained animators, but none of them have much, if any, professional experience. The raw talent is there, but it has not been refined. This means the number of iterations of making changes, submitted those changes for feedback, and then making the additional requested changes will be extremely high. Each of these iterations takes time because they will not only be redoing animations they have already worked on, but the communication of this feedback itself takes time. If we can cut down on the amount of communication necessary in order to achieve a desirable result, the amount of time required to complete these animations would be reduced significantly. We do that by providing an example that the animators can measure their work by without having to communicate with other people.

The construction of the example is rather simple. I prefer to hire a paid contractor, and while some of you may not have that option the process remains the same.

1) Find someone who can produce work at the quality level you want all your assets created at.
2) Have them create one of your assets. In our case, we have them create a full set of animations for one of our characters.
3) Display these animations somewhere that all of your other animators can easily see it and compare it against their own work.

By providing this example to our animators, we provide a reference they can self-measure their work against. By looking at this example they can easily tell if their work is good enough to be put into the game, and if it is not then they can begin looking for ways to improve the asset to a point where it is. Our animators still post their work in progress to our development forums and ask for help identifying ways to improve their work – but posts asking “Is this good enough?” are almost non-existent.