Russell Cahalan

Animation Director

Leading animation teams in the games industry since 2004.

Directly animating has always been a part of my regular responsibilities, but my larger contributions as an animation lead are not always easily captured in video clips.

The short videos included here demonstrate the artistic and technical skills that support my ability to lead animation teams to success, creating high-quality animations that synergize well with excellent gameplay.

The slides surrounding the videos provide context with regard to direction decisions, gameplay considerations, and technical implementation details.

Why slides?

Atlas Reactor

• Lead animator from project inception.
   
• Developed an exaggerated cartoony style to make characters' actions easier to read from high camera angles.
   
• Authored gameplay animations, taunts (mini cinematics), and animation logic (in Unity).

Top down, turn-based strategy game

by Trion Worlds

Atlas Reactor Taunts

Cartoony Run Cycle

Cartoony Player Ability

Core

• Lead animator from project inception.
   
• Focused on building intuitive systems of hand-key animation "building blocks" for creators to use in their own game mechanics.
   
• Picked a "pushed realism" style to ensure broad appeal and adaptability to a variety of game genres.

UGC platform for multiplayer online games
by Manticore Games

"Pushed Realism" Run Cycle

"Pushed Realism" Melee Combo

Unreal Engine 5 Samples

• 2-person collaboration with a character art director, John Miller, over the course of two weeks.
   
• My contribution: scripting and tuning movement mechanics and targeting paradigms in Blueprint, with rough animation blocking for illustration.
   
• Demonstrates several UE5 skills/techniques similar to ones I used in development at Manticore and 31st Union (2K Games).

Zombie game prototype

Mechanics Showcase

Zombie game prototype

UE5 Animation Blueprint

The next video demonstrates the high-level animation state machine in action, including:

• Basic idle, run, and stop states.
• Strafing (Orientation Warping).
• Jumping, with support for variable heights.
• Distance Matching for pre-land.
• Dodge roll (Root Motion).
• Animation Layer Interface to contain logic for the states in a separate Animation Blueprint (similar to Lyra project).

Zombie game prototype

UE5 Animation Blueprint

UE5 Targeting Prototype

The next video compares different enemy target selection methods, all implemented in Blueprint.
 

• Quick prototyping enables direct comparison of how different methods of targeting affect gameplay feel.
   
• Implemented debug draw lines to illustrate the vector math and trigonometry being used for each method.

Zombie game prototype

UE5 Targeting Prototype

https://www.linkedin.com/in/russ-cahalan/

RussCahalan@gmail.com

Thanks for your consideration!