These puppets can move! 👋
Most of the animations you see in the game were actually recorded by our own team; our mo-cap specialist Caleb Bladh and actor/narrative designer Karter Duff! We were lucky to have had access to a fully equipped motion capture studio at our university, with dozens of cameras and powerful computers.
We use these animations for our interactions with Garth, the stringed, older puppet and Freya, who is the Wooden Queen.
The animations of Freya are tailored to the Voice Over.
Into the mo-cap studio! 📽️
After having completed a final draft of the script along with the final versions of the voice-over, neatly organized into small segments, we went into the Mo-cap studio. Doing Motion Capture isn’t without its’ challenges!
As you may have noticed, our puppets have no mouths and most of their expression comes from their head-bob. Our actor had to “speak” just by moving his head and gesticulating. This is why each animation segment had to be rehearsed several times before in order to match the audio.
Recording Garth (hanging from a ceiling) was challenging.
Another challenge we encountered were the strange proportions of the puppet bodies. Our actor had to imagine having a giant, round puppet belly and oversized head in order to avoid any “hand overlaps body moments” in the game.
Overall going through the process of recording our own animations was a great learning experience for everyone involved, and after some minor cleanup we took the animations straight into Unity 3D and hooked them up to our game.
Thanks for reading this devlog entry, check back soon for more news! 🌲
-G
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