This article is part of the Get Into Games feature presentation. Check out the rest of the series for a complete look into the reality of getting a gaming career, as told to us by some of the industry’s best talent.

How apt that animation, of all the professions within the modern studio, has proved the most animated. It isn’t just motion capture that’s become instrumental in games like Assassin’s Creed and Killzone 2 – it’s a complex blend of this, traditional keyframe and dynamic procedural animation, each of which has its share of fierce loyalists. We ask Guy Midgley, lead animator at Ninja Theory, to help us keep track.

How did you get started in games?

I came in straight out of university – a BA in Computer Animation at Bournemouth University. Simple as that. Although there wasn’t the wealth of animation courses there are today, when I went to university there were only a couple of places in the UK that did something applicable. So it was either follow my Rolf’s Cartoon Club dream or become an engineer. I chose Rolfaroo.

I was lucky enough that the guys from Just Add Monsters liked what they saw and got me in. Back then I wasn’t just an animator, I was involved in all parts of the character pipeline: modelling, texturing and rigging. That’s partly to do with how the industry worked back then and also the fact we were a small company.

How does your working day pan out?

Enter office, animate, exit office is the basic gist of it. Yeah, there’s obviously more to it than that but if you’re an animator here, you’ve been hired because you’re a good animator, not because you can complete Ninja Gaiden.

Most of the time it’s creating the various in-game animation assets, whether it’s walk/run cycles, attacks, action set-pieces or cutscene work. But then there’s also the technical side, talking with design and code [teams], making sure what you’ve made fits with what they need or want. The iterative side is very important to us.

How have you evolved as an animator?

University gave me a good grounding; before then I’d never really touched a PC in anger. I came out of it with a far more technical knowledge than I’d expected – though that isn’t the case with many other courses. The industry has changed, however, especially on larger titles. The pipeline is much more like film and TV production, with roles becoming more specialised – animators really do only animate and don’t have to worry much about modelling or texturing.

One thing everyone will find is just how quickly and how much you improve when you’re actually working in the industry. Part of it’s because you’re spending all day every day doing it, and part of it is because you’re surrounded by experienced people who can show what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing right.

What difficulties exist between animators and coders?

The first is language. We’re pretty good for it here but at the extreme you can have a very tech-heavy programmer used to gabbing on about Lua scripting, parameters, conditions and switch case loops, trying to have a conversation with an artistically minded animator. The second would be priorities. Programmers want the animations to be responsive and not break their lovingly defined rules. Whereas animators just want the thing to look hot – who cares if an animation takes longer than it should? Sometimes one is more important than the other and that’s a judgement call; in other cases it’s compromise.

What would you consider the ideal portfolio for an aspiring animator?

The main rule should be: only include your best work. There’s often a tendency for people, especially those just starting out, to include practically everything they’ve ever done on an application or website. A portfolio consists of two things: individual pieces you can flick through, and the showreel. To be honest, your application lives and dies by the showreel. A character’s walk cycle from a game isn’t going to interest me if the reel’s not up to snuff.

Also, know the role you want to do. If you want to work on the cinematic acting side, make sure you include lip-sync and acting pieces. Lots of people include pieces they’ve done for online competitions like 11 Second Club. If you’re interested in action and gameplay animation, put in some recoils, attacks and big action pieces. If you know you’re going to be working with mocap, demonstrate a bit of that.

Maybe this makes me sound cranky but, as someone who has sat through hundreds of these things, it’s appreciating the viewer that counts. Are you making something for yourself, or something to show off your talents to a prospective employer? And I don’t want to try and figure out that fancy Escher-esque DVD menu you’ve lovingly created. My computer will either complain or I’ll have to sit there trying to figure out what track five might be. This will make me hate you. Joke!