The Way Home

About

This page is dedicated to the work I produced for my 2nd-year university project. This project, titled “The Way Home” was designed by another student in the first semester, but was produced by myself and five others over a twelve-week period. As a team, we produced a verticle slice of the game based on a premade design. My role in the team was the Lead Animator, which meant my core role was to research different animating techniques, produce animations for all of the characters in this slice, and work with our programmer to get the animations working in Unity. We all had individual roles in the team, however, we did all work together to build off of the original design of the game to include more gameplay elements in a way that was better structured and easier to follow.

The story followed a teenage girl and her journey to get home. Along the way, she deals with issues surrounding grief and helps friends and strangers overcome their own struggles. This narrative had a twist, however, and for gameplay and mechanical reasons, the character would turn invisible and become weightless when feeling isolated and alone. This mechanic helped introduce platforming elements into the game, as well as puzzles that could be solved by triggering this reaction in the main character.

My Work

Below you will find examples of the sprite sheets I created. Every frame was hand-drawn, this was to keep in line with the design we received. The designer of the game was heavily inspired by more traditional Disney films and wanted the game to have the same sort of aesthetic. I, therefore, delved into rotoscoping, learnt the basic principles of animation, and created the necessary assets for the game.