Make those In-Game Animations Shine

Much more goes into a game than just cool cinematics.  No experienced game developer will argue that point.  However, tight deadlines and huge amounts of assets that need to move doesn't have to equate to ugly game animation.  I agree that players spend most of their time running around in the actual game environment, but you want that experience to be a good one.  If a player loves how it looks and feels to move around in the game, and has characters and environmental cues that move in ways that heightens the experience, they will probably spend more time and money playing.

Here are a few samples of animations done for those in-game assets.

MECs Away!!!

There were a lot of fun animations to do during development of the expansion "XCOM: Enemy Within."  A personal favorite are the MEC animations I did for the leap out of the DropShip.  I did an early playblast with static cameras to try and figure out some fun things we could do to make the MEC's leap really epic. I really wanted this heavy, armored up hulk of a soldier to have a heroic entrance. Our cinematic lead, Andrew Currie, liked the ideas and did a great camera pass on these.

Watch the playblast, and final renders here:

Cry Me a River at the Deluge

I've been pretty excited to hear people's reactions to the "Deluge" cinematic.  The character of "Annette Durans" was pretty fun to work into our game.  Her character gave us an opportunity for a fun cinematic that had more story behind it than we usually get to do.  Almost immediately following the release of "XCOM: Enemy Unknown" I had the chance to pitch my ideas for what the flow of this cinematic would be, and had fun thinking of how we could craft something special for the player that took into account a lot of Dave Black's art direction goals.  Remember, your original mission is simply to retrieve a weapon.  Really playing up the human ramifications of the mission, and making a surprise twist out of your mission's goal, was an attempt at creating greater depth and seeing how the creation of character lore could positively impact our game.  Dave Black (art director) and Scott Whitbecker (writter) had written most of the narrative for Annette's back-story and how she became the "weapon" we were sent to recover.  The fun was helping him figure out how to best show those ideas.  The fact that the map is called "Deluge" and involves so much water and fighting did impact my ideas about how Annette reacts to being found.  Imagine a caged rat and you get my drift.  The concept of "flooding" occurred to me as appropriate.  The whole outpouring of emotion from this person that has been caged up was interesting to me.  Especially when you pair that with psionic abilities that she doesn't have a firm grip on.  Very X-Men in many ways.  The animation team in general had fun executing this one, and hopefully it shows.

Here is the full cinematic, and playblasts from shots I actually worked on:

Finding the EPIC in Everything

Setting out to make a game like XCOM: Enemy Unknown is, by definition, an EPIC experience!  This has certainly proven true for those of us on the art production and animation side.

I am of the opinion that if you set out to do something then you should really DO IT! No matter what that something is. This is just a taste of the fun that can happen when you try to take something just a little further than expected.

Every Good Containment Cinematic has a good Animation Test

Some of the fun animators get to have involves figuring out interesting movements that accurately reflect a character and their personality.  A lot of fun exploration, and reference collecting is part of trying to figure this out.  The beauty of the playblast is that it's a great opportunity to test cinematography, animation ideas, and see if everything plays in the environment the way you want.  The end result hopefully being something rewarding and entertaining for the player to watch.

Here is a playblast of an animation I did for the Muton's Containment cinematic.  I was trying to make him feel aggressive, and show how eager he is to escape and destroy something.

Playblast for Muton:




Playblast for Sectoid:



Playblast for Elder:

--Coming Soon--

Which Came First? The Chryssalid or it's Eggs?

An often debated question to be sure.  I pose that it doesn't freakin matter because these things are TERRIFYING!!!
And you thought that your squad mates stomach cramps were just pre-mission jitters.
I made a good many of the Chryssalid animations for XCOM: EU and my favorite has to be this little number shown below.  It pretty much sums up XCOM for me.  You start your mission in a good place, best intentions in mind, and then BOOM!  Chryssalids swarm in around you, and all your buddies turn into an exploding sack of flesh.
Just run back to your Drop Ship, crawl into a nice drafty corner of your Barracks, and pretend everything is going to be OK.
...Until the next mission.  :)

Watch test animation:

MOCAP Madness

I personally love to do physical performance.  It doesn't matter whether it's stress relief, self expression, exercise, filming reference, or just plain old having fun in public.  It's also a very important aspect of animation since so much gets communicated through our body movements.  One of the many things I learned on this project was Motion Capture works.  Not surprisingly, I loved suiting up and playing a character that would be in our game.
Granted most of the animation work in our game was keyed by hand, but schedule limitations and deadlines did make it necessary towards the end.  If you are going to use MOCAP then have either animators with good physical performance chops, or professional actors supply the performance being capture.  That will give the best results.  You definitely need to understand what you are performing for, and how best to approach the movements.
I put together a fun little montage of some funny moments of Firaxis Games' first shoot in Novato, CA.  2011 was a fun year, and we got to dabble in many new ways of doing things involved in both animation and game development in general.  Much of what we did was more focused and serious, but it's always great to look back at fun moments.

Watch: