Exploratory Animation: Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Hands and limbs were a big theme for The Final Shape. I was given the opportunity to do exploratory animations to see what attacks might look like, come up with gameplay ideas, anatomy, functionality, etc. Waaaaaaayyyy too much fun with simulation as well.

[@lactoastintolerant8837]

Me having my lego guys fight my hand

[@omnicquiod]

🔥🔥

[@84m30]

0:25 the little head nod of the Titan model was hilarious. I like the more “snakey” appearance of these arms too.

[@PanoptesDreams]

Passionate developers! 😁😁

[@animatedanimators]

Guardians kept getting wrecked in the other tests, I decided to have one learn a lesson

[@Tigerbro6]

oh this is so awesome to see stuff on the development of the mechanics that are actually in the fight

[@dominober]

all of the animation showcases that have been getting released are honestly so inspiring as an animator

[@84m30]

Aw man so many cool ideas. So many of these have more direct player interaction “physically” than what was final. So many neat things you can do with this

[@84m30]

The tentacled look makes him look like the weed digging into the traveler that he is. And the face growing out of the hand reminds me of the face stealer from AtLA

[@Laeshen]

when you get to the witness in the raid look down. it is still a snakelike-worm of a parasite. You literally climb up its body in part of the raid. A good portion of the raid takes place in the witnesses 'tower' (his lower body)

[@MikiBruh]

So freaking cool, wish we got at least a couple more from these in the live game. Nevertheless, it still came out absolutely amazing!

[@whatarewesomekindofspookysquad]

Very interesting see this stuff relative to the final project. Im guessing they saw the animation of hand folding out into 3 separate hands emerging from the wrist and decided "yeah, everything should be like that"

[@alexmaniotis2352]

Crazy good work! Mockup Ideas is really a super fun part!
Limb and hands transformation are so fluid and smooth.
You also had the freedom of exploring combat design ideas as the areas of attack that you showcase from 0:03 to 0:34?

[@animatedanimators]

Yep! There are permutations of those concepts that made it into the game, but obviously not 1:1

[@andrehasan810]

Cool exploration :)

[@cameronsalmon1314]

So many interesting concepts!! I wish we could’ve seen them all added into the game 😭

[@corzan721_3]

I wish some of these animations made it into the raid/excision somehow, these are so cool

[@ActuallyNTiX]

It's a common occurrence that "concept art" is usually "better" than what's in the final product, probably due to the fact that the idea of such a thing is usually better than the execution of said idea.
This isn't to bash the final design choices on the Witness or anything, but seeing these animations (which I assume were made to spark ideas or give a better framework for the attacks the Witness would end up using in the end) just makes me wish the Witness's hands (the lone ones, for the record) did more than just use three different attack animations. I get why such a decision may have been made, and it's still such a cool idea and execution, but if we saw the Witness's hands doing even just SOME of the other cool stuff in this showcase... it obviously would've gone so much better.
But obviously, coming up with ideas isn't the hard part. It's knowing which ones are the most important to focus on, both in theming and execution.

[@Akkanater]

i fucking love how in some the fingers fold and move in abnormal ways, so cool

[@cadensam7]

My god, i had no idea there were so many iterations

[@Falconer5752]

So the blue one is either Stasis or Arc, the orange one is probably Solar and the yellow-orange is Resonance. But what did you guys call the red one?

[@AgentTheVandal]

Your work is super awesome!!

[@iamlocknar]

So for this kinda stuff, how does deciding direction go? Does it just come down to the team director or do a bunch of animators weigh in before you pick a path to refine?

[@roberttheronin9803]

I guess you gotta keep it at minimum, only what is necessary. The three buff arms essentialy
Tho these would be neat for excision

[@animatedanimators]

We get rough direction from designers, art teams, lots of people in the conceptual phase. Broad ideas, which we explore and present like this in order to help narrow it down. Something like "there should be limbs attacking the players, and these will end up having some sort of aura mechanic." Lots of times you animate something and the result is "ok, this is cool but now that we see it, we DON'T want that". And that's ok! That's how you narrow it down. You need cohesive vision, I can't just say "well this arm is gonna move like a sentient, separate being" unchecked.

[@Ben-M112]

I feel bad for cayde, he’s always dying dawg

[@stevenbils]

0:42 crab mode

[@pencilswordfish]

Legend

[@fantom-fox8216]

Music?

[@kalk.2983]

I understand if you can't answer this, but the two scenes at the end with the giant head have me very curious. Was that supposed to be a raid set piece? If it was, then was it just a random head, or was that supposed to be the Gardener? (if you're familiar with the lore)

[@animatedanimators]

The reality is that we just had a massive sandbox of materials, characters, models etc to come up with ideas. I just thought that looked cool as a concept! Never know what will spark something within another artist.

[@kalk.2983]

@@animatedanimators TYSM for the reply!

[@MW2proification]

Are these canon attacks?

[@tyllua]

problem is the tracking sucks.