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Eric Ingerson
From Hellgatewiki.com
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Official Biography
Eric started animating in Super-8 with clay and wire-hanger armatures at the age of eight; due to Plasticine's softening under the hot lamps, all the narratives ended with characters losing the use of their legs. From clay King Kong he moved on to traditional pencil and cel animation, attending film school where he learned to wear cotton gloves when handling animation cels. As soon as computer animation was no longer primarily concerned with chrome spheres, checkerboard planets and mechanical flying dolphins, he bit the bullet and learned how to boot one up, and became the first 3d character animator at LucasArts in 1995, where he worked on Rebel Assault 2, Shadows of the Empire and other Lucasian titles, and co-designed and led animation on Grim Fandango.
Eric left games for features in 1998, and his film creature animation credits include The Haunting, Matrix Revolutions, Hellboy, Hollowman, and Mask 2. In between films, he was lead animator on Doublefine Production's Psychonauts.
Now happily back in the world of games, he has been animating and setting up player character animation at Flagship Studios since April 2005.
Features
Eric was the star of an IGN Designer Diary published on July 22, 2005. In it Eric talks about animating techniques, the rush to get the third person POV into Hellgate: London in time for the 2005 E3, and more. A quote:
In the ramp-up to this e3, though, man, we had about a month and a half to get the whole 3rd person melee conceptualized, animated and working, so it was a lot of throwing in stuff just to get it in, and then picking the worst stuff out to fix. The first things to fix are game play or game feel issues. Making it look pretty has to wait, although sometimes the move looks so bad in game that it interferes with the feel of the game, and sometimes the look and the feel of a move are so wrapped up together that they're virtually the same thing. Though some improvements to animation just make it look better, many also make it *feel* a lot better. A nice snappy, but heavy sword swing will feel better to the player than a paper-light swing or a sluggish swing. As an animator working on the player character, I spend a lot of time going back and forth, iterating to make things look and feel "snappy" but not "poppy" (i.e. weightless and papery) and, by the way, doing it in such a way that the player feels cool with the character instead of like a big dork. Which, you may be surprised to know, is more and more likely the more fancy and "animatorly" the moves get. I need to keep reminding myself to leave the Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, and especially the flowy, follow-through heavy Don Bluth-inspired techniques mostly out of it. Mostly. Think strong superhero comic key poses, and motion that pops and dazzles more than would reality, but with both economy of motion and the appearance of physical viability.
Then in the days and hours before everyone's flights leave for LA, there are the engine builds, where I do the necessary fixes like killing cycle pops and getting gun aims right, while sneaking in cosmetic adjustments just so I won't have to look at my nasty placeholder animation for 3 days on the floor of e3. Not a lot of this latter got done. In fact, when I could stand watching my animation, I made plenty of notes to hit as soon as we got back to the shop in San Francisco.
Resume
Eric is a multi-talented animator and designer, and has worked in the film and gaming industry.
Game Credits
- Psychonauts (2005), Majesco Entertainment Company
- Grim Fandango (1998), LucasArts
- Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (1996), Nintendo of America Inc.
- Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire (1995), LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC
Film Credits
- The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005) (character animator: The Orphanage)
- Psychonauts (2005) (VG) (lead character animator)
- Hellboy (2004) (character animator)
- The Matrix Revolutions (2003) (animator)
- Hollow Man (2000) (animator)
- Mission to Mars (2000) (animation supervisor: Tippett Studio)
- The Haunting (1999) (special visual effects animator: Tippett Studio)
- Grim Fandango (1998) (VG) (lead character animator)
See Eric's IMDB page for full details:
