From Red to Rukey: Building and Animating Characters in 'Transistor' and 'Pyre'

[Music] somebody else is coming priest like sit in the middle because I think it's gonna be pretty full so yeah I'm gonna be talking about my work at supergiant games it's like this is my first job in the industry basically I've been there that for fight a half years so basically what I'm gonna be showing is somewhat like the key elements during this during this fight yet what I think it's like what I considered like something important what I do every day at work a little bit about me I am from Colombia I saw a visual art in Colombia and I also did am master into animation here in San Francisco I previously worked in a video editing motion graphics to illustration to animation all right as many of you I think bringing characters to life is my passion and then sort of exploring their personality how they deal with internal internal and external

conflicts to design an animation and I'm gonna emphasize in this part like the animation the sorry the design part of the process because I think is like something that a lot of especially a lot of animators they tend to forget about those things very often yeah I joined supergiant games in 2012 that was my first I was a person unknown Lee house we artist in the company I didn't have any previous experience in games so basically I had to figure out like a mic workflow for the for every project and then should have my schedule create my own route for like the to be production and also dealing with my self-doubt since I was very new to industry I didn't know much and everybody in the company we have like 5 to 10 years experience and they were like rock stars so I was like for intimidating at the beginning so basically I'm in charge of

all the three part line from oil into rendering I dig in I work with a great concern is they create directory will engine seat art director I try to figure out with them like the design the design of the character design and to figure out what comfort limits we want to keep they're important for this story but also what kind of things we have to get rid of because I don't want I deal with like that many like tiny details in the character so I kind of like have to find a balance between what we can do in production and the things that we can keep connected to a story basically I do also some of the rigging soldering is done from scratch some other ones like I just outer rig tools it depends on like what kind of character I'm gonna be doing the animation part were with a mere ouch is the one of the designers and also this to the director this is like a key part for me because it since I didn't know anything about video games I learned a lot from them here about game mechanics how to like implement them and like how

to combine like how actually every animation is gonna how they work together I like for example how all the attacks they work together things like that so and render him okay first thing modeling so tweet tweeting that I wanna emphasize in this talk is like first of all character design mindset to entire pipeline it's something that I'm always very aware of in the process because actually when people sometimes when people ask me questions about how I build the characters it's oh when did somebody ask me for feedback and there worked it like it's always I go to the same point like there are some principles that you a lot of people just tend to forget or you see probably solving is your most valuable skill when working a small team because in my case I was doing I was pretty much the only one working in Maya so if I have a problem with Maya it's up to me to figure it out cause this is like the project secret so there is no way for me

to ask somebody else I'm pretty much on my own in that sense expand your skill set in the interest of expressing the character's personality I think I learned to Molly I'll earn money but that was like I was actually that was not my major but something that was curious to see how I can actually improve the appeal of the characters how can actually get them to be to look actually to look and to feel like or career in some innocence so we have a everything is we have a to the engine so what the characters are trained different multiple camera angles the morning and Regan have a similar approach to TV or film which is like we use high poly models that means like fewer technical problems for me in that sense well in part as I was saying like design I start with a Chipwich

exploration of the gate of the moorland like for the modeling in this part there is this deal even though I already get like it the design concept for like frontier director I still try to figure out how it's going how can we improve the design so I know so like what kind of elements we want to emphasize in the in the isometric view because that's like totally different when you're talking about the character has a totally different beast again principles of character design so all the way in like in straight versus court and contrast Rio and all those things are actually applied in every part of like in the repair of the design like the arms the legs they held everything like this is a early exploration for for pyre like again like a most still thinking about all those things in the in the character trying to facade like a Delino faction on the flow of the shapes what is the part of the center of attention in the character like what kind of things I wanna emphasize in the design and also

like in this case I'm hoping like these kind of shapes Archer showing more of the personality like people for this one it was like something that feels more elegant in that sense so my part of my process is also like men like once I receive Li concept I'd fire my production to improve it in some way like try to figure out so for some of the problems and why it's not working why it's not like a fully like something that we love exactly so I here's a sketch that I receive from the from the art director and then kind of actually gave me opportunity to actually it's or sort of like Splore or design options for the cat for therefore the sword so I went and I I just like a deal a lot with tapering on the shape and then some brie I had some really the lower part of the sword so those kind of small elements

like lay around you like to start - we start to improve but like it's all sort of like it's my job to actually can I add to the Reno design next things rigging I did this super cliche but I think is like very important when I'm like at least for me since I'm like not the only one working on this just to keep it simple like a lot of animals I tend to really like intimidated by this by this process but like if long as you got like a basic understand like the basic principles are rigging like that you can get to peel pretty much anything you want unlike to me like that item in a paper planning like you actually go on trying to figure out what I really need and what contours I really need so it's kind of like serve me a lot of time and then I get to realize that with very simple

tools I get to build any any kind of character yeah plenty of plugins out there for that so also it's you need to explore whom the tools that you can find outside I still in this project I'm still like again considering like design principles because I want to make sure that like some of those concepts are still applying the in the character in animation so I need to figure out what kind of how many contours I'm gonna happen like if I wanna get like more straight stories and curves in the character in the poses the contours readability personality all those things are like considering the reading process because I need to figure out how many controls are going to have how many planes shaped I need to add to a character and things like that so yeah so basically also like again like it's I know I think I need to

keep in mind rigging like woke up what kind of parts I want to be - I want them to be like the principal like something solid versus flexible or something that I like adding the character to make sure that some parts are still very like rigid but like you can you have the freedom to there are parts to be more flexible I the way that I approach this is basically I break everything into models I think it's a the like for example for this Karen it was like everything was we all like into it into sections you was like the main body the platform and the horn and then I worked like individually never it is that was for me or is it just to like soften his drinking problem without thinking about the whole thing which is currently can be very overwhelming so dividing this way was like 'wait easier and there on doing production this time they decided they weren't the current to fly so in

the same sense because everything was built this way it was very easy for me to add like another model to the rig and then just like add wings and then later on they wanted to be underwater so that was another option so it was like by having everything breaking down this way it was like way easier just to me to to add and then 20 mate so some of those things like for example for the Karen entire like that was are something that I learned from working in transistor which is basically what is the same principles like a wench once you break the rig into very simple most simple sections like the the I process is like one section a little north section the joys in our section so kind of like that this this myself cannot help me to choose later again and again in different rigs like in this case they does the whole thing like it's it's a very small company so basically it's sometimes like if I want to try something like in the in this case the

official rig feels like it's it's pretty much like I mean it's up to me in many cases like I have different to just like explore whatever I want to in the character so in some point that there were like the computer of time that do you have that much to do so I decide to figure out how to rig the face and then this I sort of like I've been using that for a while in the after that next to the animation so everything is a basically written is like between 60 to 64 camera angles and now H is like 2500 PNG spur animation originals render like I just be very poor all the rendering all the Lighting's attaches to a camera so this is like the way that I proves all the images basically I do it

yeah the lighting that actually camera so basically the Lighting's also retainer on the character the whole time so some of the killings for for animating ice melted for me it's like at least eight angles should communicate the main idea of the animation so I start with like the basic like eight angles that I cut is gonna be in and I draw in in the viewport in those eight angles like to figure out a shape this is super this was like one of the key things for me because like every time that I'm not actually animating and I'm stuck I try to like it because I feel like I just doesn't look as good eyes I was expecting it to be I just go back and I go over that and that's like completely different to email it see the difference between what you were like thinking and when you actually trying up it like on on every port yeah so in this program until Katrina just in the angles like line of action until twist flow shapes all those things there are

6000 color adjustment that happen in this process because then at this point we'll start to see a character in length in the India metric and in the game combined with all the other assets the environment so we need to adjust it I work with your director to figure out how can we like improve the color in the character in and the last part of this process to me it's like adding like a lot of in-between plain shapes so I use a tool that is called shapes for Maya it's very it's very useful for me because I I like it to do like correctable in shapes and sometimes like actually and I get 20 maybe 20 mm and blend them doing that process so it's sort of like because I'm because my rigging is still and sometimes they might in the rainy process is not enough what you have the shape that you can get

so this is like the last step in the process where I go on like actually polish the silhouette more polish the shape that I want more so performance designer parts is we are doing a we're doing RPGs there are moments in the story where we need like a very specific animations that the follow this story so the way that I work on this is like I break down the main ideas of the other animation kind of like those I just meant those main ideas kind of defined like how much it's gonna take me to to produce them why of course I need to answer all the questions about what is the character emotional state where is the character coming from and how much time do I have to animate those things so kind of like based on the I need to find like a balance between what I can do in the time that I have yeah

another key thing for me like this working at supergiant games I think I'm working with the designers I started use locators a lot that was like something that I learned way before but I never actually got to implement it like every animation that I that I do now at least one or two locators because this is the way that I can actually work like if you rather chime in for the animations very quick and then also I just determine work with the designers see if it's working see if it's come like a combined with other animations is working well and then after that I can actually go and animated the rest of the body so that way it's like I'm not spending a huge amount of time animating the whole character I just like animating like simple locators and then I define it I just had like a box I burned them to a box so I can I sort of get a sense of

the the volume that's enough for me to actually work to show the designers basically so yeah okay so so yeah so basically the result in this case is a there's one located that is sort of defining the translation in the character projection and why and then there is another one for the rotation and then two cetera for the translation see of the of the main character that's how I been from the beginning like at the beginning just exploring just with one simple located and I had like another one still has no happy with the result so I got the third one move Decatur and they start to change the deposition of Decatur so that was like producer Lucy if I want to in this case if I went to Fortune recently sign here want me to they one day attracted to jump even higher that it was wait very very simple for me to Joe suggested like very quick similar idea here is the main locator is

actually driving the main animation and then there's a normal for the Carter going going down when I show you this is that right in transistor this is what like our not the key elements like I was I used in the low key reduce to type there disord so what's so big they were like there was a dementing that when you see a nationality you are late the main thing that you're gonna see so to me oddly the most important time for the CERN is also very important that you get like you get to read what is happening with the sword from the beginning so this is what I would what will render and we test her in the game and after that I just go on animators of the body some cases it's fine because in some case I didn't I didn't even know what the body was going to do I just like knew exactly what we wanted to sort is wondering based on that I have to figure out the rest

so it's like an inverse process in this case which it works really well because the designers just get an idea what is what is when I have in that animation way before I animate anything else so yeah I keep with the locators it kinda helps me to keep everything very clean like gives an example of like one of the locators like this extreme you know when the cartridge like going down and then also the hips are like the earth section and then you can see how here like or I transfer it into two locators and also a rotation of the car is one it's based on one locator and then the hips are like I had like extra small details to what I want the character to do that was like key during during part that was very important because the timing of those locators actually I just reduced them for every other animation since everything here

has to be sync with effects with our elements that historians are doing so the timing has to be very specific so to make sure that we don't waste a lot of time like trying to adjust the time into every specific animation it was very suggest to me to replace the character the time is already there so it was very easy to just like add a new character to tools locators so okay less so yeah let's follow the process for me is our ending we have a render farm in the office everything is exporting it's our format multi channels I combine all those all those layers in after-effects and also the Chou's are baked into the final render campus size is between 200 by 300

1024 by 1024 it kinda takes like three to seven hours of rendering per animation that's something I need to be aware when I'm working because I have to wait like three hours to see animation actually working in the game so I mean I usually have like plenty of like our animations at the same time that I'm doing because I have to wait for rendering time this is a lot about the process after that so I still after that so basically we need to we are trying to also as part of my job we are also trying to view like what kind of merchandise we can do further for the for the funds so like this is like the art direction that I go in this in this project was to make it look like candy that was like the main concept and then based on dicey I have to keep all those ideas that we have in the original

design like the auto shapes and how they combine if you have everything very active steel very clear so it's very it should be very easy just to translate those to continue yeah this is an example there all the things that I do when like when we are not working any gamer also think that we look for four packs I'm sure like exploring like to be printing see all the characters looking like and I got real in a curio figure or things like that this is a yeah so again like I think when you are working with external contractors I think is very important and very specific about about the design because a lot of probably 80% of the time they will do something different so the more the more information you give them the better so they actually don't let them come up

with some interpretations of what they think it is because it's usually it I mean it took a long time to figure this out so you come and you try to make sure that Steel's be true to the to the game let's see that when I mention here I think it's like I think it's important that like I think is important that you still like a point of view what you do because at it I think for me at least like when I got hired to pretend games I didn't have an experience in games and I'd actually do have any proof a previous world but I think what I feel their main reason for them to hire me was because I have like a very specific boys in the water I was doing so even though I do you have anything I didn't understand at all how to make a game basically so so yeah I think and

basically you still need to have a specific point of view what you do but also work with the constraints of the of the project because it still at the end is like you are event over small thing you are still part of a group of people and we are trying all of us we are trying to push a specific idea so like right now actually right now where we are looking for a 3d artist in the company and then like when I think that I'm considering a lot is like somebody that can actually understand drawing very well because that even toy of them the morning part is not really good but if they actually understand if you can see in the drawing and you can see how they interpret those shapes into I mean that you can tell it I mean you can see how they are the way they are thinking so it's very easy for if the if they are not really good at you brush but they decay the idea so it's very suggest to translate that into tweed alert like just a matter of time things that

I'd like also I wanna mention like I took me a while while walking to Bri I think it took me like two years to actually understand like that other parts of your life are actually affecting the quality of your work so you have to deal with all the stuff like apart from like life that for some reason yeah it's not working ie I'm very careful about not having touched I'm like I haven't any cross sign in final half years at supergiant games I 6 p.m. I lived with the office and no matter what happens I have work remotely from five different countries I think is the company is very small it's very flexible the rules are very flexible so your is give me a free one to actually go on travel and they still do my work for in any place I'm actually actually also working on other projects

in exhibitions TOI TOI design Bo photography and I still taking classes because uh you know it's already like fine half year so it still like there is a lot to things that there's a lot to things that I need to improve so they make the main things to for me to do that one emphasize of course was character design - it went iPod line so I did to be our in the whole process then they were like shift are always in mind and in the entire production probably salvage your most valuable skill this is gonna show every time at work like every week there is something that you need to figure out at the time usually is usually it's jewelley mire with some crash or something seek opportunities to expand your skill set I think it's also I have a I see a lot of people that get stuck in there's been an

in animator and then they don't try to explore any other options and then I see there is a lot of companies now they just hire people for like a specific specific tasks so I think it's expanding expanding those like skills it's always like valuable for dick for the team but you up for the way that you work with old people so I think it's like it's important to just like it's something that you can try on your own like from time to time so it's not so you are not going to stock in just an amazing and it's all in the interest of expressing the character's personality so yeah that's it [Applause] yeah any questions questions

this working yeah so you're saying about the the render time thing is just grace but you also showed like more pre visi thing where hey it's just the sword moving I assumed that doing a render with just like the one element moving whatever you could test that in game quicker than three hours or whatever the time yes yeah yeah yeah you still have to render it but I don't basically it's quicker because I don't have to animate the rest of the body so I got like I can do that in like probably ten minutes render that and then show it to the designers and then from that they decided like we decided like if the time is right and after I go and I do the animation which the animation would take like a day or two or three whatever it takes yeah just if I could have four more questions well you seem to essentially own the entire pipeline and I'm curious

because there's there's another person of the studio who's the like art director is that correct yeah so how does the how do the two of you work together because you have like such an incredible fine-grained control over the end product presumably you you guys must have to have a very good working relationship because they she's is it so I don't know who it is but yeah it's like you are this single focus point through which everything is getting porn screen wait again it's about me how I work with Lego yeah yeah how does just how does that relationship work like making these games because it's unusual for someone to so entirely owned the pipeline well it I think right I don't even know to put it because I think it's like it's it's me now why I didn't it was like we get I just like try to

understand what the 2d is like did the concept like the art director what she was doing and the style so I need to know like that it's you need to like think about that but like in some point we know each other very well so it's very easy just for us to a guy I'm already already guessing what she's gonna say and she's already guessing what I'm going to say so can I get this point it's you can it no we don't need to communicate that much about that kind of stuff because we already know what it's gonna happen more or less do that make sense thank you that's great hi you were saying you're from Colombia yeah I'm from Latin America too and many of the shapes and color choices a way to stylize some of the characters ring very familiar so is there anything like from Colombia that bleeds through the project like that ends up being part of like I

work there there is bombing there is some characters actually I don't have them here but like there is some cutters actually there I actually did them dancing salsa it's a but yeah so from time to time there's stuff like that I do yeah the frame oh yeah we're good is it cool next question just really quick yeah so what kind of training resources would you recommend to artists because the part where you're emphasizing improving your skills really resonates to me as a professional in the industry boy I I take classes everywhere but I think it's like I'm always trying to figure out trying to find like the right

teachers because that's like the key element like sometimes you find like a good class that it's probably is not I mean you have to find the right mentors basically so you have to find and then which ones are you wanna kind of people that you wanna learn from so I don't have like a specific resources that I will suggest you need to explore depends in animation is always different but like Bregan is also different like some of the rigging that I learned was from a guy from for Naughty Dog was a really amazing teacher but like the reason also I mean it's it's all like different places so I mean you have to be very open like sometimes like some of the classes that I take they are like turbo mm-hmm it's it happens but you stay I mean you always find something out there but yeah okay so trial and error and yeah pretty much going online or in-person typically or

ducks yeah okay thanks [Applause]