Posted by olli on August 17th, 2009 |
1 commentHello everyone!
It’s been a while since the last interview from our fantastic development team. This is because we’re in the middle of the final crunch for Lead the Meerkats. However, we were able to manage our chaotic schedule a bit to bring to the frontlight yet another member of our team.
Petteri Nousiainen works as an animator bringing life not just for Meerkats and other accompanying animals in the game, but also all other movement that you see in the game. We went to ask Petteri a little bit about his working methods and thoughts about animation.
O: Hi Petteri, how’s it going?
P: Hey there Olli. It’s going fine at the moment, I’m enjoying my holidays, but always got time to answer few questions. 
O: All the animations of Lead the Meerkats are complete and running in the game. Are you happy with the way the animations turned out?
P: Artist is never completely satisfied of his work, but I have to say that the animations turned out good. But the main thing is that the animations are fun to watch, and they are.
O: Which of the animals you found the hardest to animate?
P: I thought it was gonna be the almighty cobra, but it may have been the Eagle. It’s pretty hard to get the fluid movement of the wings so that it seems natural. And another thing with the Eagle was that it had to stand on the ground and move a bit there. Pretty hard to find any reference about Eagles on the ground, but National Geographic helped me a lot. 
O: I happen to know that you are a huge fan of Pixar’s movies. Are there any specific characters or scenes that might have worked as an inspiration for your work in Lead the Meerkats?
P: Well, who isn’t a fan of Pixar? Theyre amazing. I don’t think that any specific character or scene (or if was, it had to be Ratatouille. the movie had alot of excellent animation and alot of excellent scenes) was an inspiration to me, I generally get my inspirations from anything that moves. But here the real inspiration was the real world counter parts of the animals in the game.
O: Finally, Is there any specific animation in the game that you are especially proud of?
P: Well, no specific animation maybe, but i liked to animate the eagle, that was fun and sometimes irritating, but i managed it.
O: Thank you for your time, Petteri!
P: Thanks to you too, and hope to see the game out soon
Petteri working with Meerkat animations. Image copyrights Jouko Manninen.
