I Could Hardly Contain Myself

Alien Containment was one of my babies in this game.  At least as far as the Muton, Sectoid, and Ethereal are concerned.  This was a rare opportunity to do some hand-keyed creature animation that could be presented with a cinematic flare.  What fun!  The turn around on these animations was insanely fast, but I can say with a smile that the monstrous effort was worth it.  The ideas for what each character would be doing had to be simple given the time frame, but also be rewarding to watch.  I didn't want to phone these in, and was imagining some XCOM fan at the tail end of a grueling mission wanting to interrogate this live alien they just acquired.  The moment needed to be satisfying and special.

Here are some play blasts of my animation ideas:




Here are the final containment animations I did in context:



After animation was done a lot of love was added via the Base modeling team, and our Cinematics Lead.  Just the right level of sweetness in my opinion.

It's always important, especially when you have no time, to focus on the important storytelling moments you want to hit and focus on those.  You can be the judge of whether I did a good job or not, but the intention was to get across the caged animal aspect of alien containment, show the characters personalities, and show in a non-gratuitous way the finality of the aliens situation.  This is their last stop before the autopsy table after all.