Credits

Opossum model: Frida Backman
Red Hood rig: Alexander Jansson
Red Hood model: Anton BerngarnHunter rig: Jonas Gustafsson
Hunter model: John KardellCaine model and rig: Jacky CohKoala Bob and background character rigs by
fRigging Awesome RigsMusic: Ödlan Spelar Gitarr by me

Portfolio

Gameplay Locomotion

Project goal

Create and implement locomotion and combat animations for a character in Unreal Engine 5.

Features

• IK feet rig
• Additive leaning
• Root motion based movement
• Transition animations

Hunter

The Hunter character rig was made by my colleague Jonas, who let me use it for this project. You'll find a link to his page in the credits at the bottom if you want to see more of his work! Alternatively you can click here!

Implementation

The movement is root motion driven, making it easier to avoid foot sliding. This also meant that I had to make my own player turning script, since the movement is all based on the animations. I've made a script in Unreal 5 which I've used for multiple projects.

Finished Animations

After implementing and iterating the animations in engine and feeling happy with the results, it was time to polish the animations. Here are the finished animations!

Credits

Hunter rig: Jonas Gustafsson
Hunter model: John Kardell
Music: African Percussions by SOFRA

Edward Mocap

Project goal

Create an in-game cutscene using mocap data, blending seamlessly between gameplay and cutscene.

Features

• Mocap locomotion
• Mocap cutscene
• Seamless cutscene transition

Setting up in Motionbuilder

First I took mocap data which I had recorded with an Xsens suit and put it into Motionbuilder. Since I was the only actor I had to play both characters in the scene. I synced up the two captures together in Motionbuilder. After that it was time to start cleaning up the movements!

Cleanup

The scene has two characters interacting with each other, which can often be quite a challenge to clean up. In the raw data, Edward (the penguin) clips into Caine (the dead one) a lot. So I had to reposition him a bit. Then I used one aux effector for each hand to have the hands follow Caine’s chest.

Setting up the Unreal scene

The challenge here would be to create a seamless transition between gameplay and cutscene. To achieve this I used a trigger box to teleport Edward to the location where the cutscene animation starts, and then move him a bit more just to make sure the animations are completely in sync.

Gameplay Locomotion

The character also features a locomotion system that's all animated using motion capture! There are small details not visible in the showcase video at the top of this page, such as face and finger animations. Here's a video showcasing the locomotion system in action.

Below are some highlights showcasing the little details that add more realism to the movement of the character.

Credits

Caine model and rig: Jacky Coh
Music: Inspiring Cinematic Ambient by Lexin_Music

Quadruped Rig

Project goal

Make a quadruped rig, complete with a pose-able face and pose-able accessories.

Features

• FK/IK legs
• Ribbon IK spine
• Front and back body controls
• Local/global rotation switches
• Ribbon IK reins
• Face rig
• Controller for mountable character

Opossum

This project was in collaboration with Frida Backman, who made the opossum model. Go check out her portfolio!Firstly I received a blocked out version of the model, so I could begin building the skeletal structure, as well as add all the basic controllers. After making the basic rig, I started adding more features, which you'll see highlighted below.

Highlights

Credits

Opossum model: Frida Backman

Quadruped Locomotion

Project goal

Create and implement a rideable quadruped creature in Unreal Engine 5, having seamless transitions from playing as a small character to having the character ride on the quadruped.

Features

• Mountable and dismountable
• Root motion driven locomotion
• IK body rig
• Riding
• Jumping
• Transition animations
• Additive turning
• Pet (obviously!)

Red Hood locomotion

Red Hood is the character that would ride the opossum. I started by making a basic locomotion system, allowing them to walk and run around. I also added additive leaning and transition animations for walk start and walk stop.After this I made a block that would act as a placeholder for the opossum. This way I could implement the riding features before I had the rig ready.

Unreal blueprinting

To place the character on top of the opossum I move the character to a specific point next to it. Then both the opossum and Red Hood play a mounting animation at the same time. When Red Hood is on the opossum, the player character is switched off and another Red Hood which is in the opossum blueprint is activated.Here's an early version of the riding functionality.

Animating

After figuring all this out, as well as now having made a rig for the opossum, I spent the rest of the time playing around with making animations and building up a new locomotion system.

Syncing animations between both characters

Putting everything together was a bit tricky, since all the animations needed to be synced between the Red Hood character and the opossum. I made two separate animation blueprints, one for the opossum and one for Red Hood. Then I had to make sure that the state machines in both blueprints matched.

Other extra bits

On top of making all the animations, I also added some extra animations and procedural animations that make the movements more believable. Here are some highlights:

Credits

Opossum model: Frida Backman
Red Hood rig: Alexander Jansson
Red Hood model: Anton Berngarn
Music: Nature Walk by Olexy

In-game Cutscene

Project goal

Create a cutscene with seamless transition from gameplay to cutscene as well as cutscene to gameplay. Implement a quick time action event, playing an alternate cutscene if the player fails.

Idea

The original idea was to have my Edward character sneaking through a corridor, stumbling upon an enemy and distracting them by throwing a fish behind them.The cutscene would seamlessly transition from gameplay, and then after the cutscene ends it should go back to gameplay.

Layout

Firstly I made a simple scene and animation in Maya just to figure out the camera angles and timing of the shot. This would later be imported into Unreal Engine.

Cutscene Transition

To make the cutscene transition system in Unreal I made a trigger box that when activated moves the player to a specific point in the world and plays the cutscene animation. The player character is then switched out for another identical model which plays out the entire cutscene. When the player is hidden it is moved to the end point of the cutscene, and is switched back on at the end.

Quick Time Event

One feature I wanted to implement was a quick time event, having the character press a button to throw the fish instead of having the cutscene do that for you.I was able to achieve this by dividing the cutscene into three parts. One where Edward stumbles upon the enemy and gets ready to throw the fish, then a looping animation of him holding the fish, and lastly throwing the fish. I then used a keypress event to make it possible for the player to move onto the next cutscene by pressing F.

Rough Animations

After everything was in place, I started focusing more on making animations for the cutscene. I added the Caine character as the enemy Edward needs to bypass, as well as a door to separate the cutscene area from the continuing gameplay.

Polish

Then came the polish stage. I started experimenting with different materials for the walls and improved all the animations. I also changed the button press graphic to make it increasingly shake when you don't press the button, taking inspiration from games like Heavy Rain.

Alternate Cutscene

Originally I planned on having the cutscene loop before throwing the fish. But seeing as I still had a lot of time on my hands, I decided to add an alternate ending to the cutscene if the player failed to perform the quick time event in time.This was done by turning the looping cutscene into the alternate ending. So if you fail, the cutscene simply continues. But when you press F in time, the next cutscene plays.

Ending

By the point I had finished everything I planned to do, I realized there wasn't a clear reason to why Edward was sneaking around. What was his goal throughout the level? To solve this I added crates of fish at the end of the level, making that the goal of the game.

Credits

Caine model and rig: Jacky Coh
Music by me

Games

TGA Games (2022 - 2024)

Other Games

Films

Ascend

Ascend is a singleplayer story-game inspired by That Game Company's Journey as well as games and films such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Studio Ghibli's Nausicaä.This was the eight and last game I worked on at TGA, and was also the most ambitious as it had very large open levels, an emotional storyline, and many animations!

What I Worked On

My role for this project was rigging the main character, which would be the only animated character in the game. I also got to make some gameplay animations, as well as work on most of the cutscenes.The goal was to only have one character which would be the player character, so that we could focus all our efforts to making a lot of animations and details for the player.Me and another animator worked together on the animations and discussed technical details. What animations were needed, how and if the animations could be implemented. I was mostly responsible for putting together the animation tree in our custom editor.

Player Rig Progression

The character design went through several iterations before we settled on the final design. So a lot of rigs were made for the character as well. At one point we were planning on giving the character capes instead of wings, similar to Journey. But in order to make life easier we decided to go for wings.The biggest challenge we had to face was how we were going to scale the wings. My idea was to do it using override animations which would move certain joints in the wings to make them longer or shorter. However we later realized that we could easily make the wings grow using a shader made by the technical artists.We divided the wing into three sections that could be hidden by a shader. That way the wings could start out really small, then when upgraded another layer of feathers are added to the wings.

Animation Tree

Animation Tree In Action!

Most of the locomotion animations were made by Alisa. I made the flight and call animations.

Cutscenes

I was responsible for storyboarding and animating most of the cutscenes, as well as implement them in engine. Below you'll see the first versions of all the cutscenes in the game. Some had to be scaled down in order to meet the deadline, but for the most part they're the same as what you see in the game!

Animation And Implementation

Filip, one of our programmer, had made a cutscene system that we could use to implement cutscenes into the game without coding. At first it was planned that he was gonna implement all the cutscenes. But I ended up learning how to use the system to implement cutscenes myself.

If you want to try out the game yourself, you can download the game on itch.io!

Credits

Bruisin' for a Cruisin'

Game is still work in progress

Pirate Space-Penguins have commandeered a lavish Space Cruise ship and stolen your Raven.
Grab your Space Guns, avoid incoming Space Fire and exact extreme Space Vengeance!This fifth game developed during the TGA gamedev course is still in an unfinished state, so I am only able to showcase my animation work for this project. This project was also the first time that we got to work with a custom made state machine for the animations.

What I Worked On

For this project my work mainly revolved around rigging both the player and boss character, as well as making some animations for the player. I was also in charge of directing and making the cutscenes.During the development of the game we worked with motion capture data for the player animations and cutscene animations.Keep in mind that the game is still a work in progress, and that some of the animations showcased below will be subject to change.

Player

Cutscenes

Intro Cutscene

Ending Cutscene

Credits

Spite: Ragnareld

Game is still work in progress

As Fireborn, you are immune to the frost curse that has taken hold of the northern mountain. Slash, dash and burn your way through the corrupted masses to find and defeat the evil from the ancient past of giants.This sixth game developed during the TGA gamedev course is still in an unfinished state, so I am only able to showcase my animation work for this project. Additionally this was the first time we worked inside our very own in-house engine called Crownest.

What I Worked On

My job was rigging all the characters and animating the enemies. My biggest work in the project was rigging and animating the boss, which was to be a giant frost raven performing a variety of attacks such as wing swipe, peck and frost breath.

Boss Animations

Frostzombie Animations

Frostmage Animations

Credits

TÃ¥rta och Demoner

You're a demon slayin' kid and it's your little sister's birthday! Fight your way to the store through a Swedish town, return home and bake that cake!This was the fourth game project I worked on during the TGA game development course.

What I Worked On

For this project I worked on all the character rigs, as well as animating every character other than the player character.We wanted to have a more "frame by frame" look for the animations, inspired by movies like Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse. This was achieved by first making the animations like normal, and then keying every frame and remove the unwanted keyframes. That way I was able to make the framerate of the animations more dynamic.

Gameplay Animations

Credits

Graphics
David Widmer
Elden Bähni
Linus Arvidsson
Nelly LindbomAnimation
Alfred Nilsson
Marcus HultquistSound
Benjamin Cronstedt
Alp Erkin Çakmak

Bortom GÃ¥rden

The tomtes farmer is dying! Jump, slash and dash through dangers in the swedish landscape, to receive the cure from the good Grandmother trollThis was the third game project I worked on during the TGA game development course. This was also the first project in which I got to work with an in-house game engine.

What I Worked On

For this game project I made nearly all the rigs and made all the 3D animations for the game. I worked on gameplay animations for the character and all the enemies.

Gameplay Animations

Credits

Programming
Damjan Derdic
Filip Orrling
Johan Fryklander
Johan Rubertsson
Thomas HoltzLevel Design
Anton Johansson
Oscar Hildebrand

Your Rabbit Died

Play as a child who has lost their rabbit friend. Navigate through the spirit world to save the rabbit's soul.This was the second game project I worked on during the TGA game development course. Our goal was to make a game that could be played on a mobile phone.

What I Worked On

My role in this project was making the character rigs for the player and the rabbit, as well as making all the animations for both characters.I also made an ending cutscene. It was decided very late into development that an ending cutscene was needed, so it was made during the last three days of project time

Gameplay Animations

Ending Cutscene

Credits

Space Trip

Save an astronaut from losing their oxygen while experiencing a psychedelic trip through mind and space.This was the first game project I worked on during the TGA game development course.

What I Worked On

In this project I made the character rigs and gameplay animations for both the astronaut (Trip) and the robot (Chip). Me and the programmers communicated with each other and together we implemented a 2D blendspace for flying in different directions.I also worked on some of the shots for the intro cutscene.

Gameplay Animations

Cutscene Animations

Credits

Ghotsbusters: Afterlife

You have 60 seconds to exterminate and capture the ghosts! Grab your proton gun and shoot the ghosts without wreaking havoc!This was a project in collaboration with Media Molecule and Sony Pictures that I got to be a part of. Me and two other people from the Dreams community got to work with Media Molecule to make an arcade game to promote the upcoming movie Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

What I Worked On

I was tasked with rigging and animating all the ghosts. I received a handful of work in progress shots from the movie to have as reference when working on the animations.Below is a video highlighting some of my work for this project.

Bo's Island

Green Guy wants to meet up and play another duet, but needs a little help from Bo and his magical kazoo!This was a passion project I worked on during my freetime. I made all the animations, characters, scripting, music and design. Level design and asset creation was all made by Joep de Valcke.This game was also nominated for the Creation of the Year award at the Impy Awards 2023.

Credits

Alfred Nilsson
Animations, music, characters, programmingJoep de Valcke
Assets and level design

Ã…ke

Ã…ke is a point & click puzzle adventure game where you play as the characters Ã…ke, the stoic space enthusiast with his loyal robot companion 050. Throughout the game, you solve puzzles either through teamwork or through logical thinking.This project was made during my final year at Nacka Strand Gymnasiet together with three other students. I made the characters, animations, music and design.

Credits

Alex Hagelin
Programming, DesignAlfred Nilsson
Animation, Programming, Music & SFX, DesignChrister Johansson
Lead Programming, DesignJonna Lidberg
Background Graphics, Artwork, Design

The Green Wader

A surrealistic short film about a green wader.This was a passion project of mine, taking inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I directed, animated and made everything by myself, including the music which is a recreation of Also Sprach Zarathustra originally composed by Richard Strauss.

Noguchi's Bell

In a futuristic dystopia populated by ancient warriors, advanced robots, and creatures of Japanese folklore, one Lord reigns with oppression and atrocity over all who oppose him. All that stands in his way is a lone samurai with a strange bell.This was a kickstarter project I was a part of. I worked together with the Cyber Sheep Film team and animated two shots in episode two of the series.

The Snowball

During a snowball fight between Bo, a pink armless dinosaur, and his friend, Green Guy, Bo comes to a saddening realization - he cannot throw snowballs. This heartwarming tale explores Bo's journey of self-acceptance and learning that even without arms you can live a full life.This was a passion project I worked on, and was also my very first short film. It won best animation and best narrative at the Impy Awards 2021.

About Me

Hello! I'm a 3D animator who loves everything creative, including putting life into characters!I've always had a passion for making character animation, whether it be for gameplay or cinematics. It started with making stop motion animations on my iPad when I was a kid. Then some years later this passion had evolved into making short films and games!I spent many hours every day making animations in Dreams on the PS4, where I learned a lot about animation. Most notably I worked on and finished a solo project called The Snowball, which won the Best Animation and Best Narrative awards at the Impy Awards. I also made a game which was nominated for the Creation of the Year award.After having honed my skills with Maya during my education at The Game Assembly, I now feel exceptionally confident in producing animations with high quality, quickly and efficiently. To be able to work in the game industry as an animator is certainly a dream come true!

Lovely picture of me taken by my colleague David Hamark

About Me

Hello I'm an animator. I make very good animation yes? Specifically animation for three dimensional computer games. I add skeletons that which adds structure and order to bodies, and give life to an otherwise lifeless puppet. This is what I do for a living, and I love it very much yes.Please give me job. I love job. I work very good. Give me task and I finish quickly. I am speed. The pure definition of it actually.I love dinosaur. Dinosaur is cute. I will bring dinosaur to the office and cuddle with it. It helps me concentrate and warms my heart very much. I hope it won't be problem.Thank you for reading bye.