I guess all writers have been there before. We have a looping animation we use while the characters are talking, and after they’re done we have to use a code to make them stop talking. Such as:
JOHN (talk_armscrossed_neutral_loop)
Hey Rachel, how are you doing?
I heard you got hit pretty badly by that bus!
&JOHN is idle_armscrossed_neutral_loop
But what if the portal could see the difference between a looping animation that was used with text and a looping animation that comes as a command of its own, for example:
@JOHN is talk_armscrossed_neutral_loop
And what if it could use this information to automatically stop a looping command if it was used for speech without forcing us to stop it ourselves? For example:
JOHN (talk_armscrossed_neutral_loop)
Hey Rachel, how are you doing?
I heard you got hit pretty badly by that bus!
We wouldn’t have to stop the animation, it would stop on its own!
Moreover, what if the script had default non-talking animations connected to those talking-looping animations so that the characters won’t simply idle after talking?
Such as:
talk_armscrossed_angry_loop was connected to idle_armscrossed_angry_loop.
So that we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves.
And if we wanted to use a different non-talking animation after the text, we would just put it manually. For example, if talk_armscrossed_angry_loop was connected to idle_armscrossed_angry_loop but I wouldn’t want to use the angry animation but a neutral one, all I’ll have to do is write something like:
JOHN (talk_armscrossed_angry_loop)
I can’t believe that idiot almost killed you!
Drivers these days should really pay attention to the road!
&JOHN is idle_armscrossed_neutral_loop
Like always.
This wouldn’t hurt scripts that are already written nor will this change the way they work, it will only benefit writers by saving them a lot of time!
If you think this is a good idea, please help me make this idea reach a lot of people so that the Episode team can actually consider doing this. I know it could save me a lot of time!
