Once our work on Next Stop Nowhere wrapped, Well Told was brought onto Nightschool's next game, Oxenfree II. Although we supported many departments, a significant amount of our contribution was as a character animation team. They needed a crew that could quickly understand their project, character, and pipeline needs. And having worked with them before on several titles, they knew we were a reliable choice!
Our diverse and extensive experience working on all sorts of projects in different game engines meant we had the knowledge to onboard quickly. We got on their repo, set up our animators with their rigs and other assets, and were soon exporting game-ready animation assets!
The main item we were tasked with was to create the locomotion suite for the characters. This was pretty extensive compared to Night School’s other games and included: walking, running, jumping, vaulting, and omni-directional climbing animations that all blended together seamlessly.
All of these animations also needed to be expressive of the personalities of the two main leads. Riley’s focused, purposeful stride was very distinct from Jacob’s more relaxed nature.
Traversal was such a prominent part of this title, which meant the animations had to feel reactive. This needed to align with the design team's work on the character controller and controller inputs. Creating animations that had weight and felt like they were adapting naturally to the large variety of traversal types was crucial for an immersive player experience.
Similar to other Night School games, Oxenfree II is an emotionally charged, character and dialogue-centric narrative game. The biggest hurdle for an animator on a project like this is the fact that the characters are pretty tiny on screen.
Since the camera rarely punches in close enough to see their faces in detail, it was our goal as animators to make their personalities show through their movements and body language. Animations needed to be reviewed both up close and from afar to ensure the actions would read.
The team at Well Told has delivered on every front with flying colors. I am not exaggerating when I say that we trust their crew with just about any facet of our games' production.
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