Animators breath life into nearly everything that moves in a game world. From the always on screen character animation to minor ambient touches like the subtle turn of a windmill or a small animal scurrying by. Animation keeps the world from being a static lifeless place.
Why are animators integral to the production of a successful game?
In film everybody knows if you have a great story the animation can be OK and still be a good movie. But if you have great animation and a terrible story then it's going to flop and no one would ever bother watching it. The same can be true for games. If you have a good story, great gameplay and level design but OK animation the game will probably still be fun to play.
For example years ago I worked on a game, Golden Axe: Beast Rider. The animations in the game I felt were beautiful. I was very proud of the work my team and I did but the game itself just isn't fun to play.
I'm not trying to say animators are unimportant! What an animator gives to a game is an aesthetic appeal. It's not going to make or break a project but it's going to stick in a person's mind that the movement was appealing and fun to watch.
At Sanzaru different animators focus on the NPCs, enemy characters, or bosses. I'm working on Sly and the other playable characters. It becomes a balance of making the animation appealing and also making it responsive but not abrupt. When you press the button the action needs to happen immediately.
For example you could make an animation of a character swinging a weapon look beautiful over 120 frames (roughly 4 seconds), but that could be sluggish in the context of a game.
Right, it's something that's interesting when doing animation for the player characters versus the enemies or bosses. With them you want to include anticipation or some sort of tell so the player can recognize what they're about to do and respond accordingly. With player character animations everything has to be immediate.
Boss characters will have patterns that the player has to learn to beat the encounter. As an animator we have to find the right amount of time to project these attacks or actions they're about to do all the while keeping pace with the action on the screen. You don't want a boss that takes too long to wind up that swing otherwise the player could get bored and not be challenged. How do you make those actions look believable while still taking a bit longer to help the player out? It's a fun challenge.
Are there strict guidelines when you're given animation assignments? For example Animation A needs to be exactly 15 frames long, B needs to be 20. Or do you get a bit of creative freedom to make the animation you feel looks best first then the timing is adjusted to support gameplay?
It definitely depends on what studio or even what project you're working on. I've worked on games where I was given exact specifications for frames and poses from the designers. At Sanzaru I have a good relationship with the design team. I get to go with my gut. They trust my instinct on certain things. I'll try something and they'll give me feedback and we'll iterate on it. On this project I've been able to come up with timing for animations. There's not much hand-holding, which I like. It's very rewarding.
I had a recent assignment to create the move set for a character that is unique and complex. I wanted to try something that was different from the original concept art. They gave me the go ahead to give it a try. They ended up liking it so we went in that direction instead. It's been really rewarding as an animator to have influence on the feel of the game.
Of the work you're doing now or in the past, be it personal or professional, what is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome?
I'm not a particularly technically minded person. Whenever I have a technical challenge, even with something like constraints, it's tough for me. I feel like I've grown over time by having to do those sort of things.
The biggest animation challenge I've had was a personal piece of a character climbing a rope while navigating this laser field. Animating the rope was a nightmare. I literally had to go frame by frame to get it right. It was like doing stop motion. I wanted it to look like a naturally reacting rope without using dynamic simulations. This was going on my reel so I wanted to be sure anything moving on the screen was keyframed.
Was it an IK spline sort of setup or were you just using FK, animating the rope bit by bit?
I was using an IK rope I'd found online. It wasn't long enough for what I needed so I ended up constraining 3 of them end to end with a 4th on the other side of the character. There were certain points where both hands would be touching the rope and at those points there weren't enough controls inside to get the exact shape I wanted. I used the 4th rope, which was at times invisible, when his hands weren't both attached to get the look I wanted. It was difficult but it paid off.
Even with your professed technical limitations it sounds like you came up with a creative solution to get the desired result.
When it comes to technical things I try to keep it as simple as possible. My solution definitely wasn't the most elegant. I'm sure a rigger could have come up with a much more refined solution.
So ropes were your most challenging project, but what work are you most proud of?
There's particular things I've been working on for Sly that I'm exceptionally proud of but unfortunately can't talk about yet! I had a pantomime exercise for school that wasn't necessarily my most solid animation piece I've ever done. I look back at it now and see plenty of things I'd like to fix. The main reason I like it so much is I made it during school and my mentor didn't get the joke I was going for. He didn't think it was very funny.
The idea was a character is leaning against a satellite dish amidst a field of other satellite dishes. He's wearing headphones listening to something. Suddenly a spaceship appears in the background and the character starts getting very excited. He jumps up and starts fiddling with knobs on a device his headphones are plugged into. In the background the satellite dishes start moving tracking the UFO. After a moment the sound the character is hearing turns into a song as the UFO floats away. It turns out he wasn't listening for UFOs at all, but a song he liked came on the radio and he got excited and turned up the volume.
I pitched this idea to my mentor and he felt the gag wouldn't work. I felt very strongly that it would. I felt I could achieve a good result. I finished the assignment, and to this day I still get people who will email me when they see it with comments about how they like it. They got the joke and loved the animation. It's always rewarding to hear responses like that. You know you did your job right. I stuck to my guns and did what I felt was the way to go and I'm glad I did!
Other than the paycheck what makes you want to come into work every day?
I actually have about an hour commute without traffic or bad weather. I don't mind it because I love where I work so much. I love what I'm doing. At least once a week I'll see something brand new for the game I haven't seen before. The work done here is so inspiring. Our conference room is filled with great concept work that would look natural on the walls of Dreamworks or Pixar.
The thing that makes it rewarding is remembering back to when I was a kid playing games. I remember having so much fun and being dazzled by how they looked and moved. It's amazing to me that I get to contribute to similar kids' experiences that they will have with the games I'm helping to make now.
That's kind of crazy to think that 20 years down the line you could meet someone who would tell you, "I wanted to make games because of this one game", and that game was one you helped create. Suddenly we're in a position to be entertaining and inspiring.
That almost makes it a little intimidating to me. We have amazing animators here who are much senior to me in terms of experience and I don't get intimidated by them critiquing my work. I get intimidated by the opinions the 10 year old kids playing the game might have!
Professionals are usually polite when giving feedback on your work but kids don't have that filter yet and aren't afraid to say it just flat out sucks! They respond honestly and because of that honesty you know when they like something they really like it. My 2 year old daughter responds to my different animations. She really likes the ones where I have this turtle character. Whenever she sees him she just wants to watch whatever he's doing over and over again.
Are there any techniques or best practices you have developed over the years that have served you well?
One thing that is particular to animation in game development is that you need to get things done very quickly. Because of that an animation can quickly become sloppy. It's very easy to get into the habit of doing something quick and dirty with the intent to go back and clean it up later. In my experience cleaning up later tends to be really difficult and more time consuming than setting a solid foundation and keeping it clean from the beginning.
I make selection sets of the core controls for characters I animate, which are the primary attributes I need to manipulate the most. It helps me to keep things simple and streamlined. I make sure to key each of those controls when I block things out, which helps ensure I have a clean, solid foundation. It's definitely helped me be more productive.
What is the title on which you are currently working?
I am currently animating on Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. This game is absolutely awesome! Fans of the originals and those who have never even heard of Sly will be equally pleased by the game! I am immensely proud to be working on it and that's not something I would say for every project I've been on.
Is there anything about your current or most recent title you are particularly excited about in which you are (were) directly involved?
There are so many things about Sly that I'm excited about; pretty much all of them I can't yet talk about. I worked on a character that is really unique and I was allowed to really stretch my animation wings and try new stuff with him. I'm excited to see how people react to him!
I think, perhaps, the thing I am most excited about with Sly is that I can play it with my daughter. It's a very family friendly game yet it's still fun for adults. The other day I saw a segment I hadn't seen before and the humor in it was SO good. I was laughing about it later that night. The previous game I worked on had an "M" rating so it's nice to do something that I can share with my daughter!
Tell me about your background.
When I was a kid seeing Disney movies it made me want to be an animator. Sometime in 8th grade it occurred to me that I wasn't a great artist and I gave up on the idea. However I was still really interested in animation. I watched the movies and read lots of books on the subject. I thought maybe one day I could be an animation historian or something.
The summer after graduating from high school I saw Monsters Inc. in the theaters. My entire life was changed. There's an amazing quote from Walt Disney and this movie was the epitome of it. The quote is "Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive". It basically means you can come up with whatever you can imagine.
Certain things weren't necessarily possible with just film and human actors. We can do anything now. You can have a doorknob that talks or an entire planet of alien beings you can make people believe exist. You can tell an entire story from the perspective of a toaster, a vacuum and a blanket. It's just incredible to me what we can do with animation.
Monsters Inc. specifically was that to me. When I saw it I thought it couldn't get any more creative than that. What's nice is that since I've seen things that have convinced me otherwise. It DOES get more creative than that. The envelope can still be pushed and more amazing things have been created. At that point I decided I had to get into animation.
I toured Cal Arts and realized I wouldn't be able to afford to go to school there. So I started taking Flash animation courses at my community college. I really wanted to work in film at a place like Pixar. That was my goal. Every day I'd talk with my instructor after class, all the way to their car sometimes! I'd be asking questions about animation, everything she knew on the subject. She realized I was very passionate about it and one day after class she gave me a DVD. It was from the recruiters at Ex'pression College she had recently met.
I checked it out and loved a specific short film on there by a guy named Mike Leonard. It was insanely well done, even for student work. It was very inspiring to me. At the end of the segment it listed his email address so I sent him a message. I asked him about the school and what advice he would have for an aspiring animator. He responded and became an unofficial mentor to me.
I ended up attending Ex'pression. It was a pretty amazing transition in my life from getting discouraged after touring Cal Arts, feeling my aspirations were financially out of my reach, to starting school at Ex'pression. A year later I had a mentor at Pixar. It was amazing to sit with him and talk about animation and to see the studio I had been dreaming of for years. It was incredible. It was really a turning point in my life going to school there.
After graduation my reel still wasn't where I wanted it to be but I ended up getting a job at Perpetual Entertainment doing weight painting for characters. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do but it was great to get experience. I had recently gotten engaged so I was happy to be working. Eventually I was let go shortly before Perpetual closed its doors.
From there I took a job as a cell phone content creator. We were making animations that ran at 3 frames per second, which was not terribly rewarding. I had come out of Ex'pression with this idea I was going to graduate and immediately land a job at Pixar. Getting experience at these jobs made me realized I needed to be more humble and realize I wasn't this god of animation I thought I was.
I worked there for about 6 months when I got a call from Secret Level. I was confused at first because I had submitted an application probably 6 or 8 months prior and they were just then getting back to me. They had to remind me what I had applied for! When I had the on-site interview the animation lead seemed set to see how much he could make me squirm.
It was him and me at a long table sitting very far apart from one another and he was asking me questions like, "Why did you bother applying to this job? I don't even know why they gave me your reel because frankly you seem underqualified. We're looking for animators who are going to pull their weight and don't need a lot of hand holding".
I got it in my head during the interview that he was trying to see how I would respond to these somewhat rude questions and comments. I tried to be polite as possible while earnestly expressing my qualities and interest in the job. He must have liked what I said because I got the job!
I worked there for about 18 months on Golden Axe: Beast Rider and Iron Man (the movie tie-in game). Both of those games actually made the Top 10 Worst Games of 2008 list somewhere. It was funny to write home to let my parents know something I'd worked on was on a top ten list. This didn't seem like where I wanted to be long term, so I started my search again.
My next job was at Cryptic. I was there for about 2 years. I worked on Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and a couple other internal projects. It was a great opportunity for me. The pipeline was great because it allowed me to stretch my wings as an animator. It was a great production environment with clear milestones and deadlines which I liked having to work toward. At previous companies things like that were a bit more open ended and not as well organized.
During this time I was also attending Animation Mentor. This was a turning point for me in terms of my feelings about my animation. I really killed myself during those years. I was working full time, attending Animation Mentor, and my daughter was born. It was a crazy time in my life.
Just before graduating from Animation Mentor I got an email from someone at ILM involved with the school. They had seen my work and wanted to interview me for Transformers 3. I went out for the interview and was really excited about the prospect. Around the same time a major effects studio let go of a lot of animators, so I didn't end up getting the job there. It hit me sort of hard.
I felt like I'd been working hard for so many years and I was ready for this sort of opportunity. I became a bit privately bitter about it all. Eventually I realized I didn't start down this path to get famous, or the status associated with big name projects. I got into it because I love being creative and contributing to whatever project I'm working on to make it better. I love having people respond to my work.
Sometime later I got an email from a friend who was working at Sanzaru saying they were looking for an animator. I didn't know a whole lot about them initially or what project they were currently working on. But as soon as I stepped inside the studio and saw the work being done for Sly Cooper I was floored. I knew I HAD to work there! I tried my best to convey that to everyone who interviewed me. And now here I am, animating for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time!
You touched on some of your inspirations in your background, what are your inspirations now?
I feel like for some animators, animation is their big inspiration. It'll be all they talk about. I have friends whose homes are covered with animation paraphernalia. For me I'm hugely into story. I love storytelling. The biggest inspiration for me that gets my animation creative juices flowing is putting my creative energy into other areas.
I'm writing a series of books that I've been working on for the past ten years. They're finally taking off and I'm just about done outlining the first of the three. I'm really excited about where they're going. Having that outlet for my creativity sort of pushes my animation and really inspires me to try new things.
I'm married with a child and spending time with my family is inspiration in itself. I love the work of other people in animation and other creative disciplines. My co-workers are incredible. I really like hearing people's stories they've written, or my musician friends' new compositions. I'm really inspired by people pushing themselves in creative ways all over the place.
My sister-in-law recently made this thing for our daughter. It was this simple craft, a metal star with pictures of our daughter all over it. It was really creatively done and pretty. It made me start thinking of other interesting things I could create to put in her room. Just seeing the work of others really inspires me to push my own.
There's a fellow animator I work with named Chris Magovern. He's a rock star game animator. He does such fast, good work. Seeing what he's doing makes me want to push my own stuff to try harder, work faster and keep my scenes cleaner. It's great being surrounded by people like that here at work.
Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out?
During my time at Ex'pression I got this reputation for being the guy who was at the school all the time. I never left. I would sleep there very often. That became a sort of pride thing to me as opposed to getting the most work done. I wasn't doing the best or the most work, I was just the guy who was at his computer the most.
If I could go back I would have kicked myself out of there and said to go get some sleep. Work hard, yes, but rest and find the time to do other things. Go for a walk, hang out with friends, see a movie, play a game. Do something other than working at your computer 24/7. I'm really regretful of not doing that.
I mentioned I had a mentor at Pixar. I would go over there every couple of weeks. I was always so burnt out from school that when I would go over there, apparently I was giving off a very bad impression. I didn't realize how much of one until later on. I always noticed my mentor always seemed a little tense around me.
After I had graduated and started working for Sega I met up with my mentor for lunch and to catch up. He said something I'll never forget which was, "Well, it seems like you're over your crisis". Crisis? I didn't realize I'd been giving off this vibe that I was losing my mind. I thought I was giving off a good impression at the time. It wasn't until I thought back to how I felt then and he was exactly right. I was this kid who wanted to work at Pixar so much. I was learning to swim and was desperately clinging to people who already knew how.
I would go back and tell myself that when you're swimming and you start to freak out, you tense up. You don't swim anymore, you sink. When swimming you have to relax. You have to pace yourself and allow yourself to accept that things will be ok. Push yourself along at whatever pace you can make otherwise you will kill yourself. Not literally of course. I feel like I could have improved professionally as an animator much faster if I had gotten more sleep, relaxed, and taken things one at a time.
We had a dialog animation assignment at Ex'pression for our final in Animation 1. It had to be 10 seconds long. Most students in the class kept to one or two characters. I decided to do a dialog piece from Three Amigos that had four. It was so stupidly ambitious looking back. Why in the world did I take that on? If I had known then to keep it simple I probably would have done much better work. I wouldn't have overexerted myself staying up late nights banging my head against the wall trying to do things I wasn't well equipped and ready for.
What motivated you to work in the game industry?
Actually my original intention was to get into film. Even when I originally interviewed at my current job I thought it would be a stepping stone to that end. But then I saw what the project was and thought it looked really cool. Once I started working here I'm actually not all that interested in going anywhere for a long time, even if a great film job came along.
It's an interesting time in the game industry. I feel like games over the next 10 years are going to advance as much as, if not more than, films have over the past 20. We had this sort of revolution of effects in films. All these technologies have come along that have changed the way in which they can tell stories. Games are starting to get to that point. We can be more cinematic with our gameplay and not just with cut scenes. An incredible example is Bioshock. It was such a great cinematic gaming experience.
I think over the next 10 years we're going to see this amazing change and I feel like I'm in the middle of a video game revolution. There's a renaissance coming. Pretty soon we're going to be playing games that have the same visual fidelity as film. You can get an amazing feel from playing a game that you can't necessarily get from film. That's something I've come to realize over the past year or so, how much things are changing in the game industry, and I'm really excited to be a part of that.
So while games wasn't initially what I was pursuing I feel blessed to have fallen into it.
I think a lot of people have the same experience. After maybe initially writing off games as an inferior platform for expression they explore the game industry for a bit and come to discover that games as a medium have the potential to tell great stories. Depending on how the story is being told games actually have that unique interactive advantage over film.
Absolutely. I was talking to a friend about this difference recently. We were talking about watching horror films. You always have some woman walking toward that one door in the creepy house and you're saying, "Oh no, don't go in that door"! And she of course goes in there and the scary moment happens. Games take that decision and put it in your hands. You suspect there may be a scary moment if you open that door and you have to consciously make that decision to go forward. Otherwise the game may not progress. The game is building up all this tension and suddenly the outcome of what happens on screen hinges on your actions and decisions.
I think that's true for every genre in games. Take mystery for example. Sure you can watch a 2 hour mystery drama movie and see the characters figure out what is going on but it can be much more engaging when YOU have to solve that mystery in order to move the story forward.
What are your favorite games, and why?
- Mario 64. This game inspired me so much. The explorable worlds, simple designs, the unique and constantly-changing gameplay. Everything about this game was wonderful. The most amazing part to me is I still have a Nintendo 64 and of all the games I owned, Mario 64 is perhaps the only one I still consider to be "playable."
- Little Big Planet. For many of the same reasons as Mario 64, Little Big Planet is pure clean fun that leaves me feeling inspired. It's the perfect game to play with a group of friends because the interaction between characters is so simple and yet so enjoyable.
- BioShock. This is the greatest game I've ever played. It has a deep story with twists and turns. It has suspense, heart, and a cinematic quality I've never seen before in a game. I felt like I was watching a fantastic movie; a movie I was in control of.
What are you playing right now?
Nada. I have a wife, a 2 year old daughter, and an hour long commute each way to work. When I get home from my game-making job, video games are the last thing on my mind.
I will say, however, that I am greatly looking forward to Bioshock: Infinite. I'm also very interested to play Batman: Arkham City and Arkham Asylum. Both look fantastic.
Thank you for your time and insights Travis!
If you'd like to see more of Travis' work check out the links below.
animatortrav.blogspot.com
www.sanzaru.com
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