Behind the scenes
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
The full sequence, my shots, and the raw animation underneath.
You commented FULL. Here it is, all of it.
Watch the full sequence- Ember Lab
- 2021
- Cinematics
- Character Animator → Animation Supervisor
The full sequence
The finished cinematic, exactly as it plays in the game. Lighting, effects, sound, all of it. Watch it once without thinking about the animation, then keep scrolling.
What to look for
If you're learning, don't just watch it. Look for these four things, then go back to the comparison and see how much of it is already there in the grey.
Weight and contact
Feet, hips, and anything the character touches. Without textures to hide behind, a foot that floats for two frames is impossible to miss.
The eyes
Where the character looks, and when they look away. Most of the performance is decided here, long before anything gets rendered.
Breathing
Nobody holds still. We built a breathing library on this project precisely so characters keep living between the beats.
The silence
Watch the moments with no dialogue. Those are the hardest ones to animate and the ones that decide whether the scene lands.
The render, and the playblast underneath it
The same shots, twice at once. On top, the render. Underneath, those exact frames straight out of Maya, before any lighting or textures. The bottom half is what I actually hand over and what gets notes in dailies. If it doesn't read down there, it will never read up top.
The project, in short
- 2018–2020
- Three years on the project
- 15–20 min
- Of cinematics animated
- Animator → Supervisor
- Where I started, where I ended
- Ember Lab
- PS5 · PS4 · PC
How I ended up leading cinematics
I started doing cycles. "Help us with this one, and with this one, and this other one." Three years later I was leading cinematics.
Little by little they handed me more responsibility, until it was clear cinematics were my strength. The big scenes, full of emotion, where you had to make people feel something real. That's where I felt at home.
I animated between 15 and 20 minutes, which is a lot at this level of detail. Along the way I built libraries of breathing, mouths and phonemes that gave the pipeline more agility without giving up quality.
It was demanding. One of those projects that push you to your limit and teach you as much about the craft as about yourself. I came out different from how I went in.
Want me to look at your reel?
I've sat on the other side of the table, reviewing reels and deciding who gets hired. If your animation is good but nobody's calling you back, that's usually something you can fix. I do free reel reviews.
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