I recently returned from a photography trip to Afrika, where the animals were the most realistic I’d ever encountered. Impressive quadruped IK solving and a keen look-at awareness placed them firmly in the world, and their 24-hour behaviour was a joy to behold where linear scripted sequences were topped by a free-roaming intelligence allowing me [...]

I’m currently playing through this one on my new PS3 slim and must say that of all the unique features Little Big Planet has, the puppet-like emoting is the most fun I’ve had in ages. Here’s a little bit of info on the animation in (I believe the incoming PSP version of) the game. Looks [...]

I loved the setting and scenario in their previous effort, Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, but felt the narrative methods used were a step backward 20 years, being more something akin to Dragon’s Lair. Nevertheless, some pretty impressive numbers here: Your partner at Quantic Dream, Guillaume de Fondaumière, has said that this is the biggest motion-capture project attempted [...]

A kid and a giant bird dog… sheer genius.

After months of studied deliberation, (as well as being sidetracked by the new condo), I’ve finally taken delivery of my first ever laptop – the new Sony VAIO VGN-FW190 – with this being its virgin post. It was becoming painfully obvious that my old PC just wasn’t cutting it for a supposed game developer, (I’ve [...]

It’s certainly some time after the event, (it’s slow going when you’re in the middle of a full production), but I’ve finally collated my remaining notes from this year’s Game Developers’ Conference that relate to animation and characters in games. So to start off, we have the head of R&D on last year’s landmark film [...]

At two months after the conference I’m a little late in posting my notes from the various lectures due to work commitments and the recent site overhaul, but now they’ll be forthcoming. As an extra little teaser, there will soon be something new coming to Game Anim of interest to videogame animators everywhere over the [...]

Every so often the internet turns up a gem. It may have been around for some time now in its original form, but below I’ve provided an animation-related analysis of SCE’s original “Making of Shadow of The Colossus” presentation – a technologically impressive game with one or two valuable lessons on getting the most out [...]