UE ANIMATION CHALLENGE | ARTSTATION

A collaborative animation project for Artstation Unreal Engine animation challenge. For this challenge, we wanted to blend traditional animation techniques with more modern ones. We began by sketching a hand-drawn choreography to define the overall movement. To get a feel for the most important poses, especially since the animation had to be only 10 seconds long. The challenge was to discover, through drawing, what we truly wanted this animation to become. What emotion should it convey to viewers? What message could it deliver in such a short time?

– Cosmin & JeanClaude Grieco –

Project Overview

This project was long in the works. We really wanted to take the time to deliver something hand-crafted in a world and industry often dominated by quick productions that lack the care for detail and the time needed to properly reflect on and respect the craft of animation.

With that in mind, we sketched a pose blockout exploring the theme of fluidity in movement. The next step was to use a ROKOKO motion capture suit to bring the drawn choreography to life. We collaborated with a professional dancer who helped us perform the vision of the dance using the ROKOKO suit.

Animation

After capturing the performance, we moved on to transferring and cleaning up the mocap data. This involved a lot of refinement before applying it to the 3D character. For this, we used ECHO from Epic Games’ Valley of the Ancient demo.

We explored how fluidity, sharp contrasts and weight shifts could express emotion. While the movement flows, we also wanted certain beats to hit, moments of punctuation where the character almost “speaks” through stillness or impact. Some poses were exaggerated to push the character’s silhouette and gesture, especially with an eye toward stylizing the final mocap cleanup.

Mocap

Testing the raw motion capture data on the provided rigged character was essential to evaluate the flow of movement. This step helped us identify areas to tweak and modify the choreography to better suit artistic changes.

We properly transferred the mocap animation to the character and made a few technical tweaks to ensure it moved as I intended. Once satisfied, I baked the movement to the rig to gain full control over the character. Using Unreal Engine’s animation capabilities, I cleaned up and optimized the keyframes, especially within the Animation Graph-style editor.

Frame by Frame

Then the real fun began: going through every frame, carefully checking, correcting, and artistically adjusting each part of the body’s motion to match the original sketches. Every eye blink, every hand gesture, every subtle body intention, each control rig was refined manually.

By respecting the craft of pose-to-pose animation and blending it with motion capture data, we believe an artist can leave a stronger personal imprint on an otherwise automated process. It adds a personal touch, greater control and deeper refinement to the movement, honoring both the spontaneity of live performance and the precision of traditional animation.