Procedural Animations

It started out as part of this 30-day project held by Day9. The premise was to set yourself a goal with milestones you hit every week. The project I chose was to design a boss battle every week. My biggest problem is that I am an absolutely TERRIBLE animator. I’m very impatient when it comes to animating characters in the traditional way, and the results are usually not that great. So instead I decided to create a procedural animation system to help bring the creatures I design to live. I spent the first week of the challenge, creating the animation system and the biped mech. After that, I pushed myself to improve the system and design unique characters.

Inspiration

I definitely take inspiration from film and animation to come up with creature concepts. I think I’m one or two more videos away from Disney lawyers knocking at my door. But I always try to be inventive with how I use movement and shape with my creatures. That’s another reason why I don’t focus as much on the visuals for the creatures. All the creatures use the exact same primitive shapes, and this forces me to create interesting shape and movement since I can’t

lean on the beauty of the models. I also try to have a wide range of creature styles. This allows me to stretch the boundaries of the procedural animation system and add new functionality. The first one had 2 legs, then 3, then 4 and I had to adjust the system to account for all these different types of movement. So that’s my advice, just keep adding legs.