Prison Break - Prototype (Animations, illustrations, and game link)
This is my other big project for the spring 2025 semester, a whole (prototype) game for a class! In my college's Group Game and Simulation Project class, I and five other students teamed up to create Prison Break, a 3D platformer where you smash your way out of a cyberpunk prison armed with nothing but an iron bar and your cool robot arms that make you strong. You can play it for free at itch.io: https://ragdollartwork.itch.io/prison-break
My primary roles for this game were those of director, programmer, and animator. I pitched the idea of the game all the way at the start of the semester, making the game a 3D one so I could have a project to practice animating in. I took up the role of programmer because I had the most experience scripting in C#, as well as having the best idea in my head of what it was I wanted to make (seeing as I pitched the game). I also did a bit of illustration work, namely concept art for the protagonist and the win card for completing the game, though I was not the primary 2D artist (credits down at the bottom). We worked hard to make the whole project come together, and toward the end I finally got access to an FK rig for our main character Riot the Hyena!
I only had about a week to put the animations together, so I opted to stylize things a bit. The animations were created using a step-key format, removing interpolation and focusing on key poses. I also was careful to try and make sure pose silhouettes were as readable as possible from every angle, as there's no way to know what direction the player will see the animation from in a third person game like this. The FK-only nature of the rig made some aspects like keeping hands and feet in place a bit more difficult, but I'm not afraid of a challenge and I think I did fairly well with the limitations.
Altogether, I'm very happy with how this all came out, and I'm thankful to the rest of my team for helping me bring this vision to life. It's the first playable project I've ever published (I'd still like to do more work on Mainframe before I make that public), and I learned a lot while making it.
Anyway, here's the full credits list for the game, with links if I know where their profiles are. I could not have made this without them:
- Calvin South: Director, programmer, animator, illustrator, concept artist
- Guillermo Montes ( https://www.artstation.com/guille_montess ): Environment modeler, texture artist
- Jonathan Rudduck ( https://www.artstation.com/jonathanrudduck1 ): Character modeler, rigger
- Kaitlyn Folmar ( https://www.artstation.com/kqanimations ): UI designer, illustrator, concept artist
- Mikey Hyun: Level designer, programmer
- Mila Tamez: Concept artist
Riot's full animation suite inside the Unity Engine. Movement scales its playback speed to match the player's walk speed, and everything is snappy and responsive.
Idle loop. The energy I wanted to convey for this one was that Riot is ready to go at any moment.
Run loop. My goal with posing was to make sure everything was as readable as possible from all angles. This resulted in Riot having big, swinging arms as he ran around with his cartoonish proportions.
Sprint loop. The goal with this one was to convey speed and power. If you're an enemy and you see this running at you, you're going down *fast*. The motion is slightly more streamlined, though the free hand still take heavy swings.
Attack animation. A good player attack is quick and responsive. Leaning into the step-key format, Riot is already winding up to strike on the first frame after the player hits the button, and attacks only a short delay after with a distorted weapon.
Crouch idle. The crouch was a fun challenge, because I had to condense Riot's football player proportions to about half his height. I think I did a pretty solid job, even implementing the weapon as a third point of contact.
Crouching walk loop. Riot of course moves while crouched, which is pretty tough to do in real life. I opted to use his weapon as a walking stick to aid his front-heavy balance on this one, which was a fun challenge with FK animation.
Win card for the end of the game. I drew this up in about a week so the player could actually tell they'd won the game and broken out of prison. This is currently the only time you get to see Riot in full color in-game.
Riot model sheet. This was drawn up at the very beginning of the semester after some trial and error trying to figure out the best way to depict the main character. Riot is a punk hyena with robot arms that make him stronger, making him a force of nature.