A Modernized Methodology for Magical Mustelids

Hey, the first paid project I ever did with the ephemeral system is online!

I used the system to do this ad for Significant Otter:

I also used it to do the in-app otter animations, although in somewhat modified form—because we were originally planning to make the in-app animations 60fps, I couldn’t do them interpolationlessly (as I did for the ad above). So I tried out just taking the ephemeral controls—despite the lack of hierarchy—and simply splining them as-is.

Surprisingly, this actually worked pretty well. It wouldn’t be my preferred approach to most things, but it does have some advantages. For instance, since all controls are in world space and the camera never moved, the graph editor actually becomes a lot easier to use. Y means up in screen space, X means across in screen space, no exceptions. Of course that also means that, as far as interpolation is concerned, the controls have absolutely no relationship to each other at all. For this kind of very lose, cartoony animation, that turns out to be fine!

I’ll post some of the in-app animations too once I get permission from Pine Labs.