Marcus Hultquist Showreel 2024

Music

Song title: Upper Bound

Artists: Fibre

[Marcus Hultquist Showreel 2024] was created under Riot Games' "Legal Jibber Jabber" policy using assets owned by Riot Games. Riot Games does not endorse or sponsor this project.

Rigs From

Agora Community and Unreal Engine assets

Below you'll be able to see each animation individually alongside a word or two about them.

SHOWREEL INTRO

A fitting intro to represent me, with an homage to my favorite genre, fighting games. As a cinematic piece I enjoyed playing with the camera, finding interesting angles and perspectives.

The initial idea was for the character to walk up to my name already spelled out, punching the letters and sending them into the air. Not liking the symbolism of having my name destroyed I instead opted to have the letters jumbled on the ground and making the punch spell my name out in the air instead.

I also took the opportunity to spell out my title as a 3D gameplay animator, although as the animation itself might suggest, I also enjoy animating a cinematic piece every now and then.

RUN CYCLE

The moment I first laid my eyes on the rig and saw the character's proportions, I couldn’t help but interpret the character as someone who isn’t perfect but tries his best. A strong individual whose heart is in the right place, even though his brain might not be.

While animating him I wanted to give the impression that this is someone who is strong yet friendly to those he cares about, and a little goofy. To achieve this, I paired big strong motions with friendly and goofy key poses.

By making his massive arms swing back and forth a large distance and exaggerating the size of his steps, I tried to emphasize the power of the character. By arching the spine back I could give him the characteristics of someone who isn’t too threatening.

With his fantasy aesthetics and stylized proportions, I also didn’t want his run to be too realistic, hence why I decided to give him all little extra hang time between every step.

JUMPING ATTACK

This animation was made with the intention to fit in a MOBA style game. This meant that the animation had to start quickly and the movement had to be big so it would feel responsive when playing and be clear from a distance.

Given the camera angle of MOBA type games, being above and quite far away from the player, being clear from a distance was extra important. For the showreel I wanted to give the animation a bit of a closeup, alongside the intended game camera angle in the top right corner.

I also wanted to add personality to the attack, and the time the character spent in the air gave me ample opportunity to do just that. I wanted to give him the feeling of someone who isn’t all that scary despite his intimidating physique. To achieve this, I made him do a flip and inelegantly flail his legs in the air, like he’s desperately trying to get into position for his attack, giving the audience just a little bit of insight into the personality of the character.

MOCAP PUNCH

This piece was an experiment in working with motion capture. I wanted to see how far I could push captured motion into something more exaggerated, and I was happy to find that the answer was “quite far”.

During the motion capture recording I asked the actor to try to carry out the downwards punch as close as possible to the reference images I provided. I explained my vision of how I wanted the final piece to come out, while making it clear to the actor that the idea was for me to add the exaggeration while editing the data and I did not expect him to perform a perfect reiteration of the reference material.

The actor followed through and I was very happy with the end result, and even happier to see the extent of how I could exaggerate and stylize realistic movement.

HEAVY SWORD SLAM

The rig and the large sword of this character immediately intrigued me, and I wanted to try to animate him wielding this large and heavy weapon. With the weapon being the size it was I wanted to emphasize the massive weight and its potential force, and what move would be better at that than a hefty downwards chop?

To set me off on the right path I decided to record some reference footage of me swinging around a baseball bat trying to mimic the motion I had in mind. I might have felt silly while swinging around that bat but it sure did help in giving me a stable foundation in how I should animate the motion.

With the character having some startup to his chop and following up with a swing with his sword I couldn’t help playing with some camera angles, giving a very satisfying end result.