Click here to view the embedded video.

Shot Breakdown

Below is a breakdown of what I was responsible for in each scene. The terms used are as follows:

Animatic

Initial layout of the scene, covering loose camerawork and editing as well as rough posing on the characters to be used as reference for the mocap shoot.

Mocap

Once mocap is received, laying it down and re-editing the timing and cinematography to match, including an initial pass on facial. Often a lot of artistic changes are made at this stage so this forms the bulk of the work.

Polish

The final stage where the VO, facial and all the details such as fingers and contact points are finalised.

I loved the game when it came out last year and immediately started replaying on completion as well as picking up the DLC and downloading the soundtrack, and the recent iPhone game, (a superior free version of which you can play here). Unfortunately without the accompanying talk the details are light, but some info can be gleaned. It’s interesting to see someone else thought of attaching a camera to a mocapped head, though it didn’t work out and good old animator talent was the solution.

Download the presentation from the Art section here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While I can’t fault the animation, it would be nice to know if they experimented with removing the in-between interpolation to more accurately recreate the 2D feeling, as some charm is lost when the motion is smoothed out during the initial comparison they give. Regardless, I’m sure the studio’s consistently endearing characters come through in the story as much as in these great visuals.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You know your artform is maturing when even homages are becoming part of pop culture – especially when the BBC picks up on this. It’s worth watching ozzy Simon Cottee’s pixel-art documentary referenced in the article – I’d never before considered the comparison between pixel-art and pointillism.

This should certainly factor into anyone’s plans to create an animation or motion-capture database for their studio – something that’s good for both animators and designers to ensure both parties are aware of the content they have at their disposal. Download the fbx plugin for Quicktime here.

First, a little bit of background about where I’m coming from. I’ve been working on games now for nearly a decade in a variety of both in-game and cinematic roles, with the in-game side mostly focussing on player control, cameras and animation-system design relating to gameplay, whereas the cinematic part is about pure art and storytelling, getting information across to the player in as efficient a manner as possible.

At the time of the presentation, our team was wrapping up the final stages of production on cutscenes for Mass Effect 2 and here’s an image of the wall behind my desk.

This was a deliberately blurred picture (so as to not give away any spoilers) of our workload as it stood, with only the last few bugs remaining and each of those lines there representing anywhere between 1 and 7 individual cutscenes, many of which we now know post-release were well-received cinematic experiences. However, with such a heavy history of in-game animation design, I feel that with games like ours and the recently released Uncharted 2 among others, we’re coming to the limits of where we can go with pure cutscenes in our games.

Uncharted succeeded with its seamless transitions into and out of cutscenes, as well as the sheer high quality of the characters and acting, and ours with the logic behind them that decides which sequences (and how) to play depending on choices. As animators, we didn’t know whether your player-character was male or female, what their face looked like, or who you’d brought along with you on your team, not to mention the myriad choices that you can make throughout the game that will determine the outcome of particularly climactic scenes. After this point I can see cutscenes only limiting our progress in terms of developing storytelling in games, so I’m interested in exploring alternative methods that will allow us to truly develop stories for our medium rather than continually within the pre-established constraints of film – which are essentially where cutscenes lie.

The Problems With Cutscenes

When researching this topic, I began by initially trying to define exactly what a “cutscene” is. I’m sure when we’re all watching one we can tell that it’s a cutscene, but we have had so many variations of them over the years that it’s difficult to define them in a pure sense. The first and most natural idea that springs to mind tends to be “whenever the camera cuts”, but this is not the case as we often have no cuts, particularly during “designer cutscenes” whereby the camera simply transitions to a location to show the relationship between the player and the subject.

Next is to assume that player control is removed entirely, but as we’ll see later there have been many attempts to include some level of interactivity during cutscenes that doesn’t detract from them being cutscenes. The creation method is irrelevant – we have different terms in the industry such as Cinematic Cutscenes, Designer Cutscenes, Ingame and Pre-rendered, but in the end what really matters is how the player perceives the result, of which length is a sizeable factor.

Below is a great example of a cinematic sequence from Resident Evil 4 that follows all the “rules” of what we typically consider to be a cutscene, but because of its short duration the player doesn’t consider this a cutscene, and instead just another cinematic moment that contributes to the overall feeling of the game being a cinematic experience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Defining The Problem

As such, a better approach is rather than to define what a cutscene is, instead to define the problem, so hopefully we can concentrate on simply attempting to overcome the issue rather than arbitrarily abolishing cutscenes themselves which has been done in the past to greater and lesser degrees of success.

Control and choice is restricted, if not removed entirely.

One second the player is running around, making choices and personally involved in many aspects of how the story or adventure is progressing, then the next they are force-fed exactly what we as developers want them to see and experience. This is fundamentally against the nature of our medium, and greatly restricts their experience for the duration of the cutscene back to the levels of the older medium of film.

Cutscenes make a clear division between the gameplay and the story.

The visual difference between cameras (and often character fidelity) in gameplay and those for cinematic cutscenes negatively reinforces the fact that most of gameplay involves little to no story progression at all.

Cutscenes are opt-out.

Once a cutscene is triggered, often without the player’s consent or choosing, his or her only option is to exit the cutscene. This brings with it issues of missing important information after the point of exit, and more importantly highlights the fact that we have a major problem here. If we have a design element in our medium that consistently requires we add the option to skip it entirely, then surely there is something fundamentally flawed with some aspect of that element?

This brings me to the definition that cutscenes are essentially “Imposed Cinematography”, whereby we as developers wish to impose narrative or progression information required to continue, or to ensure that the player experiences a part of the game exactly as we wish them to. This is the heart of the conflict between developer and player where, unlike other older mediums, we perform best when we play to our strengths and require participation from the player rather than purely imposing our creative will upon them.

Beyond examples of animated gifs like the one included here, you can download Photoshop PSDs of all the character animations in the game from this handy location. Certainly worth a look to get an idea of the animation process behind this wonderfully infuriating little game.

[via Motionographer]

Looks like a simple rig in Maya to compliment the game nicely, and they use morph shapes for the facial emotes which seems a natural fit given the squashiness of the character.