The first National Geographic game by Gusto Games is out, and you can see the trailer here.
I was in charge for most front end animation bits and the cute tree frog mascot. I probably sound like a biased proud mother, but he is possibly the best aspect of the game – definitely the most fun to work on. I had to work closely with the modeller and help out with the rigging, and using a latest flow chart like addition to our animation exporter I was able to have more control over the flow and timing of different animation actions, thus making the programmer’s life easier.

You can view a teaser trailer below that we made at the start of the NatGeo Quiz: Wild Life project to show the look of part of the game: ‘Stat Attax’. This is the part of the game where the frog has the most involvement is as he interacts with the cards and even pretends to give you advice. Half way through the project we decided to make the one frog into four, so each team will have their own mascot according to their colour – and quite conveniently, frogs come in a lot of bright and brilliant colours and patterns. This was achieved by using the same character model and rig, but different textures, and different morphs, poses and actions when they are all together on the team selection screen.

Stat Attax Teaser Frog from anna s on Vimeo.