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This Maya workshop is for animators looking to understand how creature animation is handled for non-playable characters in AAA games. Ali Pournassari, Senior Animator at Treyarch, reveals how to approach animating an NPC’s defensive, threatening move before it launches an attack, sharing not only what it looks like, but also how it's approached, why decisions are made, and what it takes to make a creature feel genuinely alive in a real-time game context.
Whether you're working in the industry or developing your own projects, the principles and workflow covered in this detailed, two-volume workshop series apply directly to production. Working in Maya, Ali reveals how to build the complete movement set for an NPC boss creature from motion capture, covering the full pipeline from raw mocap data through retargeting, cleanup, and polish. The animations covered are idle, turns, and locomotion, the foundation for every other animation in a creature's moveset. Along the way, he digs deeper into the Graph Editor, curve cleanup, weight and timing adjustments, and how to read your own work the way a player experiences it in real time.
Ali’s focus is as much on craft and thinking as on technique. He discusses what a combat idle is actually communicating, why turn animations exist as gameplay states and not just transition filler, and how to build a locomotion cycle that sells mass and weight rather than just moving a character from A to B. These are the kinds of insights that come from working on enemy and boss creatures at a AAA level, and they inform every decision made throughout the workshop.
By the end of the workshop, subscribers will have a solid understanding of how to approach creature animation for NPCs with a production mindset, including how to work efficiently with motion capture, how to build a movement set as a connected system, and how to bring genuine weight and personality to a creature before it ever enters combat.
Volume 2 of this two-part series picks up directly where this leaves off, taking the same creature into a full boss combat set. Coming soon.
5 Lessons
Ali Pournassari introduces his workshop with a look at the creature rig and a discussion of his overall approach. He explains how he’ll cover the animation philosophy behind everything that follows: weight, commitment, and what it means to build animation for a game. He offers a first look at the creature and the rig he’ll use throughout the workshop.
Duration: 8m 45s
In the second lesson, Ali shows how to turn combat idle motion-capture data into a polished, seamless loop in Maya. Starting with retargeting and mocap cleanup in the Graph Editor, he shows how to shape the raw data into something intentional, covering how breathing drives the whole animation, how the head communicates awareness, and the difference between a creature that looks still and one that feels ready.
Duration: 43m 30s
In this lesson, Ali shares how to animate turns as proper gameplay states, built to function inside a game's state machine rather than simply a bridge between poses. He covers how the head initiates the turn before the body follows, what full-body commitment looks like on a creature of this size and weight, and shows how to build turns that read clearly to a player at gameplay distance.
Duration: 50m 36s
In this fourth lesson, Ali builds the run cycle from motion capture, working through blocking, breakdown, and polish to arrive at a loop that carries genuine weight. This lesson covers root and hip priority, including seamless loop construction, foot contact, and plant. His goal is to create a locomotion cycle that makes the ground feel the creature's mass.
Duration: 1h 19m 38s
In this final lesson, Ali plays back the complete movement set, including idle, turns, and locomotion, and discusses how they read together as a connected system rather than individual animations. He closes out Volume 1 by reviewing what was covered and shares what's coming in Volume 2, where this same creature enters combat with a full attack, pain reaction, and death.
Duration: 1m 32s
Primary tools
For this workshop you’ll need:
* Note that these programs and materials will not be supplied with the course.
Skills Covered
Who’s this Workshop for?
This workshop is aimed at animators who already have a foundational understanding of animation and want to take their creature work to the next level. Whether you work professionally in games, are building your own indie project, or want to break into the industry, Ali’s workshop offers helpful advice for anyone who cares about creature and character animation.
Working knowledge of Maya is helpful, as that's the tool used throughout the workshop. Intermediate-level animators will get the most out of the craft-focused approach, but more experienced animators will find value in seeing how this work is approached from a production standpoint, and how motion capture fits into that pipeline.
Learning Outcomes
By completing this workshop, artists will develop an understanding of how to approach creature animation for NPCs at a AAA game level.
Key skills include:
- How to approach creature animation with a mindset used in AAA game production
- How to work with motion-capture data and shape it into a polished, intentional animation
- How to build a combat idle that reads as alive, aware, and genuinely threatening
- How to animate turns that communicate intent and hold up as gameplay states
- How to construct a locomotion cycle that carries real weight at gameplay distance
- How to build a movement set as a connected system, not a collection of isolated shots
- How to use mass, weight, and commitment as storytelling tools in creature animation
- How to read your own work the way a player will experience it in real time
