At Pokémon GO, work focused on avatar animation, NPC motion, and real-time animation systems, operating at the intersection of animation direction, storytelling, and technical implementation. Responsibilities spanned early concept development through in-engine execution, with close collaboration across Art Direction, Technical Art, Production, and Animation teams.
Avatar animation concepts and character animations were developed to balance personality, readability, and performance within a live, globally scaled product. In parallel, NPC motion concept development defined movement language, posing, and behavioral beats that supported gameplay and world-building.
Animation direction extended into VFX and particle effect concepts, partnering with Technical Artists to develop pipelines and workflows that allowed animation and effects to integrate seamlessly in real time. This included defining standards, reviewing in-engine implementation, and ensuring visual consistency and performance across platforms.
A core component of the role involved creative direction and mentorship — providing structured feedback, reviewing work from internal and external animators, and aligning animation output with product, design, and technical goals.
The goal Niantic makes is that they are trying to integrate AR more into the real world, making it understand and interact with the real-world objects and people around them. We all know that feeling when we turn on our AR to take an AR picture (especially on Android or with AR+ turned off) and we get that awkward image of the Pokémon floating midair, and we have to try and move around the camera and get the Pokémon to sit on a platform. With this new technology, it is very possible the AR object, in this case we will continue to use Pokémon for simplicity sake, will be able to place itself on the ground or nearest object without insistent positioning.
Codename: Occlusion 2018