Charles Tinney begins Age of Empires Online animation blogs

Charles Tinney an animator at the late Ensemble Studios who worked on Halo Wars has recently started a blog about his awesome animation work with Age of Empires Online. Charles or “chazbot” Tinney has been taking care of most of the animation on AOE-O while the game was developed at Robot Entertainment.

My initial role, once the art style was finalized, was to concept and visualize the animation style that best complimented the game’s art direction. It was great pulling reference from Looney Tunes and old Disney shorts. Through animation reference, exploration, pushing, pulling, trial, error, I eventually hit a style that was wacky and exaggerated in some circumstances, and kind of an overly animated subtlety for most cases; both with an overall defined timing and spacing that melded the extreme and subtle together

If you are a member of the Age of Empires Online beta community then you will already know about the quality of animations in the game. My personal favourite has to be the elephant. Unfortunetly, due to NDA restrictions I cant show you the elephant here, but it does have a most amusing set of animations :). Oh, the crocodiles are pretty awesome too.

If you dont have access to the AOE-O beta just yet, dont panic, you can check out some of Chazbot’s work by checking out his personal blog at:

http://chazamation.com/blog/2011/04/14/age-of-empires-animations-part-1-deer/

First up is the animation set for the deer, and there will be more forthcoming as more parts are added. These blogs arent on the Robot Entertainment website, so keep checking back. Remember ES will keep you upto date on new postings!

If you’re wondering about what animations Chazbot has done in the past his website as a wide portfolio spanning work on games like Halo Wars to some work on TV shows like Jimmy Neutron and even a feature film called “Ant Bully” – impressive!  Check all these out here:

http://chuck-o-rama.com/animation.html