GDC 2018 Animation Bootcamp welcomes talks on Shadow of War, Horizon, and more!

Heads up, animators and artists: GDC 2018 organizers want to give you an early peek at the informative and intriguing sessions taking place during the day-long Animation Bootcamp that kicks off the conference in March.

The Animation Bootcamp is one of many Bootcamps and Tutorials that take place during the first two days of GDC (Monday and Tuesday, March 19th and 20th this year) and offer attendees the chance to dive deep and explore focused topics like level design, game production, art direction and animation.

This year the Animation Bootcamp kicks off on Monday with a series of great talks aimed at exploring new animation techniques, processes, and dimensions of what game animation is capable of contributing to a project.

Bringing together a group of experienced and specialized animation experts across the game industry (from triple-A to indie), this tutorial is a day-long gathering to rally developers from all over the industry, with a focus on deeper discussions into the needs of strong character performances and player communication.

The day will go through all facets of animation expertise: "traditional" focused talks on animation process, but also technical achievements, bite-sized tips and tricks, insight into animation culture, and how to best apply all that knowledge to game development.

Through various tools and disciplines, this tutorial will show how the unique constraints and demands of game creation, are creating the need for not just great animators, but great game developers.

For example, in "'Middle-earth: Shadow of War': Creating Multi-Character Combat Animations" Monolith's John Piel and Camille Chu will walk through the high level philosophies of the studio and animation team, some of the challenges of the project, and take you through the process of crafting a multi-character combat kill in the Monolith Animation Pipeline from start to finish.

And in "Bringing Life to the Machines of 'Horizon Zero Dawn'" Guerrilla Games' Richard Oud (lead animator on Horizon Zero Dawn) will discuss what it took for the team to create the game's signature robotic beasts from scratch.

He'll explain the process from pre-production and prototyping, all the way to the final polish of the characters, reference, motion style, workflow, animation-tech, AI behavior, and polish will all be covered in-depth for attendees.

Attendees who make time to check out one or more of these talks will leave with all manner of new ideas on what game animation is capable of. Be it tips about leveling up their animation fundamentals, new tech and processes for implementing their work in game or how best to work with and understand game design, anything that animation comes in contact with during game development will be shown in a new light.

For more details on these and all other announced talks head over to the online GDC 2018 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week!

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