Old Mout Cider
To further aid Old Mout Cider’s sustainability efforts, a bottlecap collect-em-up adventure game was needed help to raise awareness. This gave me the chance to create a fully dynamic character rig fueled by scripted animation to bring the flightless bird to life.
Dynamic & Scripted Animation
After carefully creating individual parts for each part of the Kiwi’s body and unicycle, I was able to fully connect the bird together between carefully parented layers. This was further enhanced by using expressions and math to determine where the unicycle was on the screen horizontally, twisting the wheel in relation to its current position, with the feet following the pedals in unison.
With everything using the unicycle’s seat as the master layer, all it took was a few keyframes on this layer alone to create the action. Swaying motion was also applied to various body parts, all wired up to a global control layer which allowed for precision over how strong and frequent anything could move.
Kiwi-frames?
The other advantage to this character rig was the flexibility it provided for additional animations. The default ‘idle’ state of the Kiwi had enough character in it to make the balancing act of a unicycle believable. By simply adapting the body parts and variables carefully, I was able to create jumping loops, falling cut-scenes, and plenty more unique storytelling states to the game.
