Team Focus – GOUST Sep 19 - TheFeelTrain

Who are you and what’s your role on the Installation 01 team?

GOUST: Hello, my name is GOUST, or Gibson Weitzel. I am a first person animator for i01. I work on the viewmodel animations you see the most! My job is to animate the weapon, and hands, and make sure everybody is happy with the end result (Usually there are times when not all of us can agree on some things haha) then export, and hand it over to the people who can implement (and improvements can also be made in the future if need be!). The process can take awhile, but it’s always fun to do.

What made you decide to pursue first person animation?

GOUST: I have been animating for roughly 6 months now. I mainly wanted to start animating after watching a lot of videos by popular animators like: Hyper, Mr. Brightside, and Ha_ru. Something about it interested me, it’s the one of the most important part of games that seems to be taken for granted unless done correctly. So I picked up the student version of 3ds Max and started watching a lot of tutorials. I also watched a massive amount of Mr. Brightside’s animation Livestreams, and GDC talks, and gathered as much information as I could and just started.

Like every new thing you try, of course it was a disaster at first. I had a rough start and just continued to work on projects and trying to learn the program the best I could. I spent more time actually observing other people’s animations and seeing how they did things, and what made them unique. What makes them appealing to the eye, and how is it different from the last. Are these animations gameplay ready? Will they hinder the flow of the game? Questions to be pondered.

So you’re pretty new to animator and yet you’re already here. What is your main goal when it comes to animation? Do you have a specific philosophy?

GOUST: My goal personally as an animator though, is to be as unique as possible, which is difficult in a market of incredibly talented animators. I’m a hugely against copying anything anybody else has done (even if it’s debatably “bad” to begin with). I have a hard time with some things on occasion because things might look too familiar to works of somebody else, in which those usually get scrapped. I’d just like to say that, if you ever want to do this professionally, or even as a hobbyist, it’s going to be incredibly frowned upon to make things nearly 1:1 to something you see; like most mediums these days, there’s a fine line between copying and being inspired by something.

Could you go into more detail about the animation workflow? You mentioned some things about exporting, implementing, etc.

GOUST: My animation workflow isn’t anything special, in fact, probably one of the most common ways of doing things. I usually animate by moving the weapon around before the hands. After I establish the weapon movement, and making the curves look nice, I add the hands. I started doing this randomly, and realized it worked better than moving the arms with the weapon attached. After the process of animating the weapon, and adding the hands onto it, I select which frames I want for each animation, and export it. Usually to FBX, one of the more common file types.

What’s your favorite animation software?

GOUST: I use Autodesk 3d Studio Max 2016 Student. I prefer this because it’s what I learned in, and what I’m most fluent in. I tried Maya 2017 for a project, but it didn’t work out very well. There are other options for programs of course, like Blender, but I didn’t choose that because it looked a lot more complicated at the time.

What made you decide to join Installation 01? Have you always been a Halo fan or were you just excited to get to work on a project?

GOUST: Well I started out posting my animations in the public discord, then Jackskullcrack, another developer on leave as of writing this, recommended me to the team. Matt Lake, lead animator, then messaged me and we started discussing things. He then told me I took criticism well, and liked the worked I produced. One week later, Matt had said I made the team, if I wanted to join, I could. I happily took him up on that offer, and bypassed the interviewing system all together. I take pride in being the first to have done that ;).

I’ve also been a Halo fan out of the womb, so of course I joined.

Describe what it’s like to work on Installation 01 using only one sentence.

GOUST: I still can’t remember when meetings are.

Do you have any advice to give to aspiring animators?

GOUST: Try to be as original as you can. Take inspiration, and learn from what others do, without copying them. That’s how you learn everything.

Google can answer 76% of your questions about whatever you’re using to animate with.

Give yourself breaks to think about your work and don’t try and rush quality. Take your time.

Alright I have one last question. What was the inspiration for Seinstellation 01 and will we be seeing more dank memes from you in the future?

GOUST: On the advice of counsel, I invoke my fifth amendment, privilege against self incrimination, and respectfully decline to answer your question.

Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, GOUST. Maybe some new animator has been inspired to come join Installation 01.

Also, if you're wondering, the banner is GOUST's dog. He is forever memorialized in banner form.