Game Animation: Mechanics &
Interactive Gameplay
Pro Animators Mentor You to Be Successful
Our mentors are working professionals from the game industry: animators from studios like Blizzard Entertainment, Riot Games, and beyond, who work with you 1:1 every week to grow your game animation craft.
Why Take Game Animation: Mechanics & Interactive Gameplay at Animation Mentor
Personalized Mentorship
Learn 1:1 from a working studio animator who shares weekly feedback and reviews to grow your craft.
Studio-Level Animation Training
Our program immerses you in a studio-like environment, ensuring you're job-ready upon graduation. You'll learn with the same tools and workflows as the pros, including production-quality character rigs.
Live Weekly Q&As
Join weekly 1-hour live sessions with your mentor, on top of on-demand lectures and animation assignments.
Ongoing Rig Access
Keep access to the production-quality character rigs after class so you can keep building your demo reel.
What You'll Be Able to Do
- Explore the evolution and significance of Unreal Engine throughout gaming history
- Master state machines and animator workflows to optimize character animation
- Utilize production tools to animate a comprehensive character moveset, encompassing idle, walk, run, strafe, and jump animations
- Harness the potential of motion capture technology for immersive game animation
- Enhance animation quality through advanced cleanup techniques and personality-layering, maximizing appeal and realism
- Block out and refine interactive gameplay actions with efficient, studio-style workflows
- Build a reel-ready game animation moveset that shows you can animate for a real-time engine
Skills You'll Gain
Reel Pieces You'll Walk Away With
Mechanics & Interactive Gameplay is built around hands-on, engine-ready exercises, each one a polished, portfolio-ready piece for your game animation demo reel.
A Full Character Moveset
The five core gameplay actions every game animator is measured by, animated and refined to a reel-ready standard.
Engine-Ready Gameplay Animation
Your moveset wired into Unreal Engine and playing back in real time, proving you can animate for a game engine.
Mocap-Enhanced Action
A motion-capture-based shot cleaned up and layered with personality, showing the production techniques studios use every day.
The Game Animation: Mechanics & Interactive Gameplay Curriculum
Unreal Engine for Animators
Explore the evolution of Unreal Engine and set up the animator workflow for real-time game animation.
Get oriented in the engine where modern game animation lives.
- The evolution and significance of Unreal Engine in gaming
- State machines and animator workflows
- Optimizing character animation for real-time
Animating the Character Moveset
Animate a comprehensive gameplay moveset (idle, walk, run, strafe, and jump) using production tools.
Build the core set of actions every playable character needs.
- Idle, walk, run, strafe, and jump animations
- Production-quality character rigs and tools
- Studio-style blocking and refinement
Motion Capture & Polish
Harness motion capture and advanced cleanup to push your animation to a polished, professional level.
Turn raw mechanics into immersive, appealing game animation.
- Motion capture technology for game animation
- Advanced cleanup techniques
- Layering personality to maximize appeal and realism
Ready to Start Animating?
Game Animation: Mechanics & Interactive Gameplay is a 12-week, mentor-led course. Apply at Animation Mentor, choose your mentor, and register for class.
- 12-week mentor-led course
- Weekly live Q&As + 1:1 feedback
- Taught in Unreal Engine + Autodesk Maya
- $2,499 USD
Frequently Asked Questions
Unreal Engine is the real-time 3D engine widely used across the game industry to build and run interactive gameplay. In this course you'll animate directly for the engine, using state machines and animator workflows to bring a character moveset to life.
A cutscene is a non-interactive, cinematic sequence used to tell story between gameplay. This course focuses on mechanics and interactive gameplay (the playable moveset) rather than cutscene cinematics, which are covered in our cinematic cutscenes course.
A moveset is the complete set of gameplay animations a playable character needs: idle, walk, run, strafe, and jump. Animating a full, cohesive moveset is the core deliverable of this course and a centerpiece of a game animation reel.
12 weeks, mentor-led: pre-recorded lectures, weekly 1-hour live Q&As, and animation assignments with weekly 1:1 feedback from your mentor.
Unreal Engine and Autodesk Maya, plus a computer that meets the minimum requirements. You should have a working understanding of Maya before you start. The course is taught in English and is open to students 18 and older.
This course is application-based. Apply at Animation Mentor, and once you're accepted you choose your mentor and register for class.
