How Animators Shape What Players Feel

You spent two weeks polishing a character animation, only to find out that the rig had been changed?

Welcome to an animator’s ordinary morning.

Dingyi Zhou has more than 14 years of experience in game animation. He has worked as a Lead Animator at Activision and a Senior Animator at Respawn, contributing to projects including Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, Apex Legends Mobile, and Final Fantasy XV.

In this interview, Dingyi explains how animators shape what players feel, how his understanding of strong game animation has changed over time, and what indie teams should know before hiring their first animator.

Main Topics

• Game Animation
• Character Animation
• Gameplay Animation
• Player Feel
• Animation Production
• Indie Game Animation
• Animator Career Advice

Interview

Q: How has your understanding of strong game animation changed over the course of your career?

Early in my career, I mainly focused on the animation itself—whether the movement was smooth, whether it had a good sense of weight and power, and whether the poses and timing worked well.

Later, I started paying much more attention to character personality. Especially when I was working on Apex Legends, we had an important rule: if Character A’s animation could be put on Character B and still work perfectly, then it probably wasn’t unique enough. A strong character animation should feel like it belongs specifically to that character. Even if you put it on a plain white dummy, you should still be able to recognize, “That’s Character A.”

Now, on top of fluid animation and strong character personality, I think much more about collaboration with other disciplines. For example, an animation might already be keyed and working well, but VFX may find that the timing is too fast for the effect they want to create. In that case, I think about how to adjust the timing without losing the original flavor of the animation, while making it work better with VFX. The same applies to sound, rigging, modeling, TA, and game design.

So today, I think strong game animation is not just about making a great animation—it’s about creating something that feels unique to the character and works well with everything else in the game.

Q: When you start working on a new character, how do you decide what the player should feel through their movement?

When I start working on a new character, I first communicate with the Game Designer, Art Director, and other related teams to understand how everyone sees the character and what we want the player to feel.

Then I start with the character’s bio to understand “who they are.” If there isn’t a detailed bio, I’ll create a simple background and personality for the character myself. This gives me a much clearer direction when looking for references, rather than just finding movements that look cool.

From there, I build the character’s movement language around their personality, gameplay role, and physical design. For example, a confident, experienced character and a young, impulsive character should have very different poses, rhythm, and weight, even when performing the same action. Their body type, equipment, and weapons also affect how they move.

Ultimately, my goal is that even without dialogue, players can get a sense of who the character is just by watching them move.

Q: Players may not consciously analyze animation, but they immediately feel whether a character is powerful, nervous, heavy, fast, or vulnerable. How do animators create those impressions?

I think posing and timing are the two most important tools for creating these impressions.

Different poses can immediately communicate a character’s personality and emotional state, while timing defines the rhythm, power, and weight of the movement. A powerful, confident character and a nervous, vulnerable character can perform the exact same action, but with completely different posing and timing, they will feel very different to the player.

↓ Character Performance Animation

On top of that, we add subtle behavioral and performance details. Players may not actually “see” or consciously notice those details, but they can feel them.

That’s one of the most interesting things about animation to me: players don’t need to know exactly what we did, but all those choices come together to shape how they feel about the character.

Q: What makes an animation feel satisfying to control instead of simply looking good on screen?

Gameplay animation needs to serve the player’s control first, rather than simply looking realistic or visually impressive.

When the player gives an input, the game needs to respond quickly and clearly, so responsiveness is extremely important. Sometimes we shorten anticipation, speed up the start of an action, or exaggerate poses and timing to make the feedback feel more immediate.

This is also a major difference between gameplay and cinematic animation. Cinematic animation is a one-way communication to the audience, where timing can be controlled around performance and camera. Gameplay animation, on the other hand, is a conversation between the game and the player, and we always have to consider the player’s next input.

So even if an animation looks great on its own, if it makes the character feel slow or gets in the way of control, it may not be good gameplay animation. Good gameplay animation should support the player’s control, not fight against it.

↓ Parkour Animation – Final Render

Q: How can animation change the way players feel about a weapon, attack, or ability?

I think the feel of a weapon, attack, or ability comes from the combined experience of Animation, VFX, Sound, Camera, and Game Control. Animation is almost like the skewer in a kebab—it holds all those elements together. We largely define the composition and rhythm of the action, while VFX, SFX, and Camera often follow the timing established by the animation.

At the same time, gameplay puts a lot of constraints on animation. For example, shooting animations usually have very specific checkpoints: which frame the magazine comes out, which frame the bolt is pulled, and so on. For the same weapon, those timings are fixed. We can redesign the motion and performance for different weapon skins, but those key checkpoints can’t change freely because they directly affect how the weapon feels to control.

So as game animators, we need to find creative freedom within gameplay constraints—maintaining consistent and responsive controls while still giving each weapon or ability its own sense of speed, power, and personality.

Q: In games, who is responsible for animating everything beyond the character, such as cameras, weapons, creatures, vehicles, and environmental objects?

It really depends on the project and the size of the team. There isn’t one standard way to divide these responsibilities.

On some teams, animators have a broader role and may work on characters, weapons, creatures, vehicles, cameras, and even environmental objects. On larger projects, the roles are often more specialized, such as Gameplay Animators, Cinematic Animators, Creature Animators, or Technical Animators.

Camera work is similar. In cinematics, cameras are usually handled by Cinematic Animators or a dedicated Camera/Layout team. In gameplay, camera movement is often defined through collaboration between Animation and Game Design because it directly affects player control and experience.

Personally, I think of the camera as another character in the animation. It doesn’t just record the action—it can use timing, composition, and movement to amplify impact, speed, tension, and emotion. So when we design an action, we often think about how the camera should perform along with it.

Q: How do you keep animation consistent when several animators, riggers, designers, VFX artists, and external teams work on the same game?

First, I would establish a clear set of guidelines and document as many of the project’s iconic animation traits, principles, and key points as possible. Every animator has their own style, so it’s important to give everyone a shared understanding of the project’s animation language and standards.

Early in production, I usually give the team more time to polish their work, with more frequent reviews and feedback to help them find the right style. My goal is that after the first two or three animations, each animator becomes comfortable with the project’s animation style, making the rest of production much more efficient and consistent.

Another important thing is to avoid changing direction repeatedly when giving feedback. A lead needs to maintain a clear and consistent direction—you don’t want to ask an animator to go one way in one review and then send them in the opposite direction in the next. This is especially important when working with external teams, where consistent direction, clear documentation, and specific feedback are essential.

The goal isn’t to make every animator’s work look exactly the same, but to make sure all the animations feel like they belong to the same game and the same world.

For Indie Developers

What should a small indie team know before hiring its first game animator?

For a small indie team, I think the first step is to clearly understand what kind of animator you actually need. The most basic distinction is between a Gameplay Animator and a Cinematic Animator. You should also consider whether your project needs a keyframe animator or a mocap animator. They all fall under animation, but the skills and mindset can be quite different.

When reviewing portfolios, I would try to find an animator whose style closely matches your project. I would also look at fundamentals like posing, timing, weight, and character personality. For a Gameplay Animator, it’s also important to see whether they truly understand gameplay and how animation works in the game.

For a small team, I wouldn’t put too much weight on experience with a specific engine or rig. Tools can be learned, but strong animation fundamentals and a good style match are much harder to develop quickly.

Also, don’t just think about “who will make the animations?” You also need to think about “who will put them into the game?” Responsibilities like rigging, state machines, retargeting, and implementation should be clearly defined before you hire.

For Young Animators

What advice would you give to young animators who want to build a career in games?

I think the most important thing is to build strong animation fundamentals. Software and tools will always change, but posing, timing, weight, and spacing will always matter.

Your portfolio doesn’t need to be long. I would rather see three or four highly polished pieces that clearly show your skills and personality than a large number of animations with inconsistent quality. And those three or four pieces shouldn’t all be the same type—for example, don’t make them all attack animations. Use different types of work to show your range. If you want to become a Gameplay Animator, try to include work that actually demonstrates gameplay animation rather than only standalone lip-sync or acting pieces.

Another important skill is learning how to receive and understand feedback. In game development, animation is almost never created in isolation. Don’t just follow feedback mechanically—try to understand why someone is giving that feedback and what problem they’re trying to solve.

Finally, don’t limit yourself to one piece of software. Maya, MotionBuilder, Unreal, and other tools are just tools. What really determines how far you can go is your animation fundamentals, artistic judgment, problem-solving skills, and ability to work with a team.