Game Animation

Joshua Eiki - 3D Animation Showcase

Good Morning, Afternoon or Evening everyone. I'm Joshua Eiki, here to share my entries on some of my 3D animations I worked on during my course in 3Dsense Media School as a Game Art animation student. I’ll go more in depth with my animations and some behind the scenes down below, hope you enjoy!

Here is my demo reel to wrap this year’s course in 3Dsense Media School.

Character Introduction: Riza

To start things off one of our main assignments as an animation student in 3Dsense game art is to animate a character’s moveset with their personality created by the student and a character highlight Intro (something like Overwatch by Blizzard and Wild Rift by Riot Games)

The main goal of this assignment is to equip the student with the basic fundamentals of body mechanics. 

Character Backstory:

When I was looking around for rigs to use for my assignment. I wanted to animate a character with multiple big arms like Asura from Asura’s Wrath or something big that floats behind the character. (It was a weird obsession I had when I was thinking of my character)

It was challenging as there aren't any rigs that have the arms or hovering things that I was looking for, thus forcing me to think out of the box for this.

I was able to finalize my idea and land onto the arms archetype as I came across Christoph (The Stoff) Schoch’s Ystra - Astral Witch Rig’s arms which fit the arms type really well. And Jonathan Cooper GameAnim’s Azri Rig, a very nice rig that I noticed a lot of animators (or at least with the limited amount of research I had at that time) animated her with a noble/cool knight that was “in control”.

Mini rundown of this version of Azri or as I would like to call her “Riza”, what happens if Ystra’s magic arms is an entity that got corrupted with dark magic and hosted another person that was Azri which caused her to lose her sword (her honor) and turned her to this crazed fighter, that is at the limbo of losing herself completely to the corrupted entity.

The rage and crazed personalities were inspired by some of these characters. Crazed Leona from SNK’s King of Fighters and Asura from CyberConnect2’s Asura’s Wrath.

Other inspirations from League of Legends - Sett, The Boss and Udyr, Spirit Walker.

The mini redesign:

Before landing onto the final design I had to pose and test how big the arms should be to fit the character, whether it had another extra mask to go with it or not

I leaned heavily on the red color as it fit the rage vibes (proven by countless characters in media and gaming). For the arms as well as because they had a very whimsical magic and a little translucent. I thought to give them a red and mat texture so the audience/player can see the arms finger poses and could feel the more hard solid hits of the fists. 

Character Attack: Riza’s Attack

First reel from one of my school’s assignments is the attack combo. She performs a 2 hit jab, a straight punch forward and a palm strike upwards to the famous Shoryuken and ends with a slam down.

For the attack I wanted her to have a few strikes on the ground and have her slam down from the sky. The first 2 punches were alright but I struggled to have her up into the air. One of my ideas was to have her interact physically with her arms, either stepping on her arms like steps or her arms pushing her up into the air. However, it broke the flow of the attack combo, thus as I looked around the famous Shoryuken or the Rising Dragon Fist fit really smoothly to the air and down slam. 

Two issues (or fun notes to look out) that I faced constantly throughout animating this character (especially the next reel) was to manage her arms, preventing them from stealing the show considering how large the arms were. Making sure that Riza is the main character and her arms won't block her, as well as having them delay at certain times, to create both detachment and attachment. (On the side view) In her strikes they are a little slow until the last slam down they move in front to start the heavy slam.

Character Intro: Riza’s Intro

The 2nd reel from one of my school’s assignments is the Character Intro. Riza does an anticipation, dashing forward to punch the screen and does another anticipation before she roars to the camera and does a final pose. 

This assignment pushed me to keep track of a number of variables, mainly body mechanics, camera work, framing and staging with the environment.

Previously my class worked on our movesets like the reel above, as well as walking, running idle, and idlebreaker. Camera work took awhile to get a hang of as there many attributes to adjust like the FOV, focal lengths, making sure the character is in frame and is the focus of the animation. As said previously, Riza’s Arms were things to take note of delay and having them not steal Riza’s spotlight but to boost her into the spotlight.

For example of delaying her first, when Riza punches the screen, she starts by punching with her right first for 3 frames then followed by her large arms to finish. 

Which follows to the next example making sure her arms boost Riza’s spotlight. In this pose her large arms were posed in a way to frame a circle around Riza to allow the audience to focus on her (like a big red circle behind her) 

Boss Intro: Ancient Oni

The 3rd Reel is one of our final assignments, was to create another intro sequence, but for a Boss. Both of the rigs were by Kiel Figgins; Kunoichi and Ancient Oni. Kunoichi uses her last strength to reach out for help but gets smashed in the head by the Ancient Oni’s Kanabo. Ancient Oni, walks up and steps onto Kunoichi, drags the Kanabo up and poses. 

For this assignment the challenge was to make the intro for a boss. Playing around with the camera and the poses to make the subject more “Bosslike”.

I had a lot of fun with this animation. My goal for this animation was to focus on my camera work and acting in references as I felt I could use more after my previous assignments. Along with that I wanted to create a boss intro that was really cruel and brutal to make that Bosslike evil villain vibe.

One of the main highlights of this anim was the changes made for how kunoichi dies and for a transition for Ancient Oni to pull the weapon up to the final pose.

For killing Kunoichi I wanted to have Ancient Oni smash her head with his feet and pick up the mask from the ground leading the camera up to his face and crush it with his hand to highlight the point of Kunoichi’s death to the audience but it wasn't brutal enough. (IT COULD BE MORE!!) It changed to her head getting smashed in by the Kanabo, with her mask in one big swoop to show how quick and easy it was for the Ancient Oni to end someone's life. 

Would like to give a special thanks to my Animations mentors Ricwan Hardjo and Justin Kwek from 3dsense Media School and the school itself for giving an amazing and awesome environment to grow, hone our crafts and the guidance! Shoutout to my classmates as well for lending their inputs working together during the late nights during this past year. To my family as well, thank you very much for always supporting my crafts! I hope to push forward in my crafts and create animations for others for them to enjoy and inspire!

And thank YOU (the person reading this) very much for reading and looking through my entry, hope you enjoyed it and hope you have a lovely day ahead.